Ghia 450 SS: Foreshadowing Fiat Chrysler

It’s often been said that if you want to lose a bunch of money in a hurry, going into the car business is even more effective than farming.  The saga of Burt Sugarman and the Ghia 450 SS is a case in point.  The story really begins sometime in 1963, when Ghia was aiming to attract repeat business from Fiat, which had commissioned their 6 cylinder grand tourer, the 2300 S coupe then in production (first photo below), from Ghia a few years earlier…

So that car’s designer, Sergio Sartorelli, took up the task of sketching out something a bit more like a sports car, and the Ghia Fiat G230 S (2nd & 3^rd photos) appeared at the Turin show in autumn of 1963, then quietly got lost in the shifting sands of the car business for awhile, as Fiat prepared to replace the 2300 S inline six with the Fiat Dino V6, with the body contracts for the new spider and coupe going (much to Ghia’s disappointment) to Pininfarina and Bertone.  The Dinos would show up in 1966, but in the meantime Road & Track featured Ghia’s sleek, deftly proportioned prototype on its cover during 1965, and Hollywood producer Sugarman (movies and TV shows, not cars, at least not yet) was immediately smitten. 

He approached Ghia about producing a limited run of cars for the U.S. market, but suggested two changes: making it a convertible and substituting an American V8 for the inline 6.  Ghia had commissioned a tubular chassis from Gioacchino Colombo to be built by Gilco (a team involved early in Ferrari prehistory) that was stout enough to take more power, and the coupe inherited the disc brakes from the production 2300 S.  Ironically, by this time in December 1965, the designer of the new Fiat Dino coupe had arrived from Bertone to take over the chief designer spot at Ghia from Sartorelli.  Georgetto Giugiaro must have seen much that he liked in Sartorelli’s coupe, because he retained nearly everything in his rework except the fastback roofline and glass hatch, substituting a convertible top, flat deck and removable hardtop for the new 450 SS.  The "production" car featured a Chrysler 273 with either Torqueflite or a 4 speed from the Barracuda, and rectangular tail lights replaced round ones.  Giugiaro is often credited as sole designer of this car but a comparison of the green coupe with the convertible below as it appeared at the Turin show 3 years later will help you decide where credit is due…

So a kind of accidental Fiat Chrysler went into limited production in 1966.  It wasn’t the first time Ghia had bodied something with Chrysler power; there were the Exner-designed show cars and the Imperial Ghia limousines (on which Sartorelli had worked) and most famously the Dual-Ghia (see our posting for Aug. 29, 2015) which had been aimed at the same show biz celebrities as this new car.  So you’re probably thinking, “What could possibly go wrong?”  Well, labor costs had gone up a lot since those first Ghia projects had been built in the 1950s, and combined with shipping costs involved in the circuitous supply chain, the delivered price of the car was $13,000 in 1967.  That was close to Maserati territory, and by this time Ghia was also building bodies for Maserati as well.  Still, most people (including Johnny Carson and Wilt Chamberlain) who took delivery of the estimated four and a half dozen cars built were happy with them.  Happier than Burt Sugarman, who lost money on every car he sold… 

Footnote:  The most frequently quoted production tally runs from 52 to 56 cars.

Only two Fiat-engined G230 S coupe prototypes were built, and only one is known to survive today.  For notes and photos on some other Ghia-bodied, Chrysler-powered cars,
see our post in the archives for August 29, 2015 entitled "What Defines a Production Car, and Why Would Anybody Pay $3 Million for One?"

Photo Credits:

Top: 1961 Fiat 2300 S Ghia:  Fiat as reprinted in cartype.com
2nd & 3rd:  1963 Ghia Fiat G230 S:  Wikipedia Commons
4th: 1966-67 Ghia 450 SS:  the author (from the 2012 Concorso Italiano)