DM Dima: keeping the dream alive

Most of the crowds simply watched on as exotic sports-racers from Ferrari and Alfa Romeo flew round, but some saw an opportunity to join in the lower, sub-1100cc class, where derivatives of Fiat’s peppy 508C appeared to offer a relatively easy spot on the grid.

It occurred to one such observer, Dionísio Mateu, to approach Emilio Romano, the winner of the 1950 Circuito do Porto at Boavista, with the intention of buying his Cisitalia-Abarth 204A.

This is the sole-surviving DM Dima

The prolific Mille Miglia driver rebuffed the enterprising Mateu with an unexpectedly high price for the aluminium-bodied racer – perhaps seeing an opportunity in those hopeful eyes, or simply with his mind on funding a 1951 season behind the wheel of a Ferrari 166.

Undeterred, Mateu managed to acquire from Cisitalia a tubular-framed chassis with a leaf-sprung live rear axle and a Porsche-type front end featuring torsion-bar springing.

The engine was supplied by Italian tuning firm Stanguellini rather than Fiat; breathing through its own intake-manifold design and twin Solex carburettors, it made a healthy 65bhp.

The DM Dima’s cockpit is small, but there’s room for two

With a view to competing in the 1951 season, Mateu engaged a number of local engineers to manufacture and fettle various parts, including Auto Federal Lda for the hand-beaten aluminium bodywork, and he even toiled over some elements at his home in Porto.

The cigar-shaped racer that resulted had clear echoes of the Cisitalia, except with its headlights enclosed in a thick-barred grille à la Osca MT4.

Curiously, this would mirror closely the styling of another locally built special, the Fiat-Adler-Palhinhas in which veteran racer Fernando Palhinhas had placed second behind Romano in 1950; for 1951 the FAP’s Adler Trumpf Junior body was replaced by another Osca-shaped aluminium cigar.

The DM Dima’s narrow tyres are pushed right to the car’s far corners

Mateu readied two cars for the start of the Campeonato Nacional de Rampa on 11 March 1951 in the coastal Arrábida park near Lisbon.

On their debut, the two ‘Dima’ 1100s, finished in gleaming red paint, took a 1-2 class victory, soon followed by another win in the next hillclimb of the championship, at the Falperra course a few hundred miles north, which is still run to this day.

As June’s Portugal Grand Prix in Porto approached, a third car was prepared and hopes were high, particularly with a promising young driver, Francisco Corte-Real Pereira, joining Mateu’s business partner Elísio de Melo and Júlio Simas in the hot seats.

You sit high in the DM Dima, partly thanks to its generously padded seats

From behind a strange mixture of Ferrari road cars and racers, including one Emilio Romano in a 166MM and Eugenio Castellotti in another, along with Allards and Jaguar XK120s, the Dimas sprang forward on the beachside starting line in front of a mass of people turned out for the spectacle of 26 sports cars being wrestled around the street circuit.

As scenic as the 4.6-mile loop around the city park was, the cobblestone surface and criss-crossing tramlines made for a constant challenge, especially for the motley crew of racers all posturing for the best line over the near-three-hour run.

Perhaps not needing too much of an excuse, de Melo lost control of his Dima during the race, pitching the car over a haybale and into a roll.

He luckily avoided injury to himself, but the car’s bodywork was badly damaged.

The Dima’s 1089cc engine breathes through twin Solex carburettors to produce 65bhp

Simas also retired, leaving Corte-Real Pereira to run the sole-remaining Dima to a deserved class victory, ahead of a trailing Abarth – as well as pipping two Allard J2s and a Delage D6-3L from the class above.

The 1952 season was another blitz for the team, following a few key changes.

Perhaps inspired by the need to restore the damaged body of LF-11-52, revisions to the air intakes and wings were made in an effort to reduce drag.

This also began to give the car – by then officially called the DM, after rival Panhard had complained about the name’s similarity to its Dyna – its own identity beyond the distinctive offset bonnet scoop.

‘Enthusiasm overwhelms the DM Dima’s short gearing so quickly that third can soon be snatched for those not wanting to challenge a reluctant second gear’

There was a driver change, too, as the professional Joaquim Filipe Nogueira took Simas’ spot: after one year with the DM team, this more ambitious character went on to campaign Ferrari sports-racers and Formula Three cars.

Although Nogueira would finish last in the 1952 GP at Boavista, the team still placed 1-2-3 in class, thanks to DNFs from the duos of FAPs and Simca 8 ‘Tanks’ that had challenged them for under-1100cc success.

This glory buoyed the optimistic operation, allowing Mateu & Melo Lda to trade off its growing recognition and sell Simca and Austin engines, plus performance parts for Fiats, to hopeful enthusiasts – although just how much business was done is not known.

The classic Dima thrives on revs, but responds best to delicate driver inputs

Mateu also had ideas about a production version of the DM, and in 1953 a rakish fastback coupé appeared with the same fully enclosed body as that year’s racing barchetta.

Both were now finished in a soft cream-coloured hue.

But competition was surfacing. That year’s Circuito do Porto race fielded 15 cars in the 1100cc class, in a separate, shorter event to the larger-engined sports-racers that made up the Portugal Grand Prix.

Rival in nomenclature Panhard was on hand, in the form of two Dynas, along with a formidable array of locally brewed machines that included a resurgent set of FAPs and a slinky Alba with Fiat-Simca power, which attracted the talented Pereira.

The DM Dima has a wood-rimmed steering wheel and simple dashboard

Nogueira had also been lured away, to a Ferrari 225S for the main event.

Still, a determined quartet of DMs ran in qualifying, with fresh local aces in the drivers’ seats.

Duarte Lopes took a close fourth, with Ferreira Baptista eighth and Ferreira da Silva 13th, while Simas was out with mechanical issues that foretold the fate of all but one DM in the race itself.

Silva kept in it to the end, but after an hour and a quarter he couldn’t summon the pace to escape being the backmarker – even the DB-Panhards in the 750cc class below managed two more laps in the hour-and-a-quarter event.

The DM Dima in 1952, with revised original shell © fotold.com

It was a similar story at Lisbon’s newly opened Monsanto Forest Park circuit, while the idea of production cars was falling away amid the internal wrangling between Mateu and de Melo.

The 1954 season looked even less promising, with the arrival of more local wannabes and a rash of Porsches, some taking advantage of the new 1.5-litre class.

Silva fought for a valiant sixth place at the GP, followed by his teammates in seventh and eighth.

It would be the DM’s final appearance at the event that had inspired Mateu just four years earlier.

The DM Dima with its updated bodywork © fotold.com

Having driven the car from the start, and through its various evolutions, de Melo took ownership of LF-11-52 and joined the growing Portuguese enthusiasm for hillclimbs and regularity rallies for the following two decades.

The manufacturer was no more, and nothing is known of the whereabouts of the other three DM racers, but LF-11-52 survived.

From de Melo, the car passed to Antonio Cardoso Lima, architect and one-time president of the Clube Português de Automóveis Antigos, for more than 30 years before its current owners, Margarida Patrício Correia and Pedro Filipe, bought it for their collection in Porto.

Baptista leads away in the Dima at Circuito de Monsanto in 1953 © fotold.com

They have overseen a sympathetic restoration, and it regularly forms part of the duo’s active involvement in Portuguese historic motoring events.

As the sole-surviving DM, it’s a joy to see it in its natural habitat, at Madeira’s Classic Car Revival for a re-run of the Rampa dos Barreiros that has closed the Portuguese hillclimbing season since the 1930s.

The featherweight door and plain, sheet-aluminium dash speak to a purity of purpose even before the twin-carb vocals of four little pistons vibrate the car into action.

The restored DM overlooks Funchal on the island of Madeira, which it visited for the Classic Car Revival and Rampa dos Barreiros hillclimb

It fizzes forward, unencumbered by a kerbweight of just half a tonne, while enthusiasm overwhelms its short gearing so quickly that third can soon be snatched for those not wanting to challenge a reluctant second gear.

But as it climbs along the coastline away from Funchal, the DM is hungry for the revs necessary to keep its 65bhp peak within reach.

Throttle, clutch and gearbox take to delicate, perfectly timed movements with a delightful lightness that belies their unwillingness when mistreated.

The reward is a throaty snarl of a tuned Fiat unit happily on cam, and a needle clawing its way up the big central speedometer that reads, rather optimistically, to 200kph.

‘The DM Dima’s featherweight door and plain aluminium dash speak to a purity of purpose even before four little pistons vibrate the car into action’

Third is out of puff by not much more than half that, but it proves handy for the longer curves that put the DM on its high-speed toes, if never feeling overly sensitive as it glides on the narrow tyres that are sensibly pushed right to the car’s far corners.

In slower turns, an eccentricity with the geometry and steering lock threatens excessive scrub, although uphill the understeer is more easily avoided.

The brakes are as strong as you can expect of all-round drums, fighting fade only in the sense that there is little bite to begin with – but there is not much car to stop.

Changing down and settling the rear axle into its next charge demands more of your concentration.

The Dima’s simple design still looks elegant

The cockpit is so small that you never completely sit ‘inside’, but the major controls are managed with only minor contorting of the limbs, and a passenger can even be taken in relative comfort.

The minimal effects of the aeroscreen are likely undermined by plump seat bases installed during restoration.

Apart from a bit of trim and paintwork, however, LF-11-52 has survived in remarkably original form.

And yet if the DM’s fate hadn’t been to become one of Portugal’s first – and few – lost manufacturers, it’s likely that this car would have been rebodied once again to continue facing the fast-evolving competitors pouring into the sub-1500cc classes.

This DM Dima is all that remains of this lost Portuguese car maker

Perhaps it would have morphed into the Italianate form of the Alba or been reworked into a mid-engined layout echoing the Porsche 550 Spyder, only to be challenged by the Cooper-Climaxes that would soon be part of Circuito da Boavista’s brief inclusion in Formula One.

As it is, sitting at the crest of one more conquered climb, this sports-racer marks the point at which pioneering post-war enthusiasts such as Mateu and de Melo were hoping to turn their growing passion for motorsport into something more serious.

Images: Joel Araújo

Thanks to: Margarida Patrício Correia and Pedro Filipe; Visit Madeira

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