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Biography - John Gianlelli
I began racing karts at age ten, bought a Lotus 51 FF at 19 and began SCCA racing a Hawke DL2 in Southern California at 21 (you had to be 21 in those days). I eventually won an FF race at Riverside in a Titan Mk. 6B. Memorial Day weekend in '73 was memorable as I lined up with 98 other FF on the grid for practice. During this time I got to know David Bruns, Alex Cross, and Paul White who later became principal investors in Swift. In the early '70's Dick Shirey, another FF racer, and I tried to get together funding to have Bruns design and build a Formula Atlantic car.....it was to be called the Swift. We did not get too far.
After importing and preparing race cars in SoCal, including Formula Mondial for Patrick Shelby in 1983, I joined Automotive Development in Orange, CA and soon was drafted to work on the Swift DB-1 prototype program (really two full-time jobs). Eventually I left AD to concentrate on Swift. At this time Swift was renting space from AD. We moved to a larger shop in Anaheim owned by the legendary Don "Rotten Red" Edmunds.
It was at this point that I became overall manager. We expanded the line to include S2000, F2000, and Formula Atlantic. I took a chance and proposed the idea of the Atlantic car and felt that we could sell at least ten of them. I think we got that many orders on the day we announced it!
In 1988 Swift was going through another ownership change I was getting tired of Southern California. I was offered a job upstate in Monterey near Laguna Seca and decided to go for it. I missed Swift and all the gang but not SoCal.
--John Gianlelli