Roadside Attraction----Sarasota Classic Car Museum: Lots of Iso Rivoltas, and a Little of Everything Else

Florida's Sarasota Classic Car Museum offers a collection which is less focused on pre-war classics and post WWII racers than the Revs Institute in Naples, but it has an eclectic collection of significant cars starting with the dawn of the horseless carriage era.  This 1905 Schacht, built in Cincinnati, produced all of 10 hp from 100 cubic inch displacement of a water-cooled flat twin.

The Schacht gives a new meaning to the term "half-restored", as one half of the car, as seen in the photo above, has indeed been restored.  The other half looks like this...

Unlike other "half-restored" cars, the Schacht doesn't appear to have been the victim of a budget cut, but instead appears to have been restored only from its right side to its centerline, as a sort of 3D "before and after" snapshot.  This approach will provide insight to museum visitors, but is unlikely to enhance driving enjoyment.

The museum has a couple of Rolls Silver Ghosts, both formerly belonging to John and Mable Ringling  of the circus dynasty.  The one above was assembled in the Springfield, Massachusetts, factory that Rolls Royce operated in the Roaring Twenties, and dates from 1922.  The interior shot is from the Ringling's 1924 model. 

Delahaye is represented by a seldom-seen Type 134, the four cylinder kid sister to the famous Type 135 six.  This charmer from 1934 is a reminder that Delahaye produced trucks and middle class road cars in the years before WWII.  They might've turned into the Volvo of France, if not for Peugeot's bigger production capacity and better postwar luck, which involved the French government assigning them to middle-class, mainstream cars, while Delahaye was restricted to the heavily-taxed stratosphere.

A similar Type 134 is shown in rear view below.  Bodies were by Autobineau, the series production arm of custom coachbuilder Letrouneur & Marchand.  Facel would provide a similar service after WWII, providing bodies for a variety of Panhards, French Fords and Simcas as well as making their own cars.

The one make of car represented out of all proportion to its frequency on the world's highways, though, is Iso Rivolta*.  The Sarasota museum displays one of nearly every kind of vehicle Iso built from the beginning in the 1950s until the end in 1974, including the handsome, Giugiaro-designed, 327 Chevy-powered 1967 Grifo shown below.

This phenomenon is due to the happy fact that Piero Rivolta, the son of Iso founder Renzo Rivolta, happens to live in Sarasota. The Rivolta family has lent part of their comprehensive collection to the display, including the Iso motorcycle that nestles next to the sleek, shiny flanks of the Grifo.

There's even a rare example of the Iso S4 (also called Fidia) 4-door sedan, which is parked next to an Isetta, the egg-shaped microcar that was Iso's first car design.  Iso later licensed the Isetta design to BMW, and it contributed to BMW's survival at a time when the German firm was losing money on its big, slow-selling V8s.

Iso Rivolta, on the other hand, did pretty well with V8s until the OPEC oil embargo that followed the Arab-Israeli war in 1973.  The impact on fuel costs suddenly made the American V8s in Isos (sourced from GM until 1972, and Ford afterward) unfashionable even for those who could afford them.  The last completely new model Iso Rivolta proposed was the mid-engined Varedo shown below, powered by a 351 Cleveland mounted in the 8th chassis Giotto Bizzarrini had produced for his stillborn AMX3* project for American Motors. That chassis, in turn, had its roots in Bizzarrini's P538* sports racer…

The fiberglass body on the lone Varedo prototype was designed by Ercole Spada at Zagato. Unlike many prototype cars, the final product looks a lot like the concept sketch.  In the case of the Varedo, that's not an advantage.  The finished body preserves the abrupt transitions and lack of detail resolution shown in the sketch.  The side window glazing, which is present both above and below the car's belt line, echoes a theme stated more convincingly by Giorgetto Giugiaro in his design for the Maserati Boomerang*. 

Mazda's long-playing adventure with the Wankel rotary engine is commemorated by the Series I Cosmo.  The two-seater was produced from 1967 to 1972, and this early version featured a couple of inches less wheelbase than the Series II.  Both versions are smaller than their somewhat American-influenced bodywork would indicate, with careful proportions and low roof height concealing the size of the 1,700 pound coupe.

Engines were twin-rotor designs produced in 1.1 liter (racing), 1.2 liter and 1.3 liter displacements from designs licensed from NSU in Germany. The cars were fixed roof coupes, with under 400 Series I models produced, and over 800 of the Series II.  The rear-end styling has hints of Chrysler Turbine Car, while the frontal treatment seems derived from Pininfarina's Ferrari Superfast coupes, with glass-covered headlights and the formed steel "speed lines" framing the slanted vents behind the front wheels.

Sarasota's Cosmo is right-hand drive, as were most of the production Cosmo two-seaters.

The Ford Prodigy concept car from 2000 is a largely-forgotten artifact of a program called Partnership for a New Era of Vehicles which involved the US Government and the Big Three. The idea was to foster US leadership in high-efficiency, low-emissions vehicles. Ford took the diesel-electric hybrid approach with the Prodigy, and their test car yielded 72 mpg. Styling reflected Ford's cautiousness after their experience with pubic resistance to their ovoid, "no-straight lines" 3rd generation 1996 Taurus*.

By the time Ford got around to producing a hybrid car, it was a gasoline / electric hybrid more closely related to Toyota Prius technology.  The Prodigy in Sarasota is a non-running "roller" built for display at auto shows.

*Footnote:  For a more complete commentary on Iso Rivolta history, you might search our archives for "Born from Refrigerators: Iso Rivolta", posted on Sept. 20, 2018.  The AMX3 saga is recounted in "Italian Jobs from the Heartland Part 2: AMX Vignale and AMX3 Bizzarrini" from Nov. 29, 2016.  The Bizzarrini P538 which preceded led to the AMX3 and finally to the Iso Varedo is reviewed in "The Etceterini Files Part 18: Bizzarrini P538" from Feb. 27, 2019.  The Maserati Boomerang is pictured in "One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars", in these posts for Sept. 7, 2015.  And the 3rd generation Ford Taurus design is given some context in "Nineties Concept Cars Part 2: Lost in Translation" from Dec. 31, 2018.

Photo Credits:  All photos are by frequent contributor Paul Anderson, except for the rear view of a Delahaye 134 from Wikimedia Commons, and the last photo showing the Ford Prodigy, which is from RM Sotheby's, which auctioned the non-running display car.  The design sketch of the Iso Varedo is from the Zagato Design Studio.

Forgotten Classic: Chrysler Airflow Imperial CV-8 Coupe

If you grew up in America in the 50s and 60s, the Chrysler Airflow was still a car people remembered.  Sometimes you'd see one, dusty and neglected in some forlorn used car lot in automobile row, and your dad or your uncle would just shake his head and say, "Too bad, when it came out it was too far ahead of its time."  You'd wonder, though, how any machine that performed its assigned function well could be ahead of its time...                                  

The AIrflow was a project that had its roots in a Chrysler program in the early 1930s to adapt modern ideas to a production car.  The ideas included moving the engine forward so all passengers could sit between the axles, widening the cabin for more seating room, and structuring the body as a semi-monocoque assembly with welded external body panels contributing to the strength of the steel truss-like elements underneath.  

And streamlining; the radiused curves of the Airflow that eventually emerged from chief engineer Carl Breer's workshops reflected wind tunnel testing done in consultation with Orville Wright (yep, that Orville). By the early 1930s, aerodynamic thinking, some of it sound, was beginning to appear in prototype cars, including front and rear-engined efforts from Budd Body Company, and Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion.*. In Central Europe, Hans Ledwinka was preparing to release the first of his rear-engine Tatra streamliners* in 1934, the Airflow year.

The body design by Oliver Clark began with the waterfall grille that fronted all Airflows (DeSoto, Chrysler and Imperial) that year, and was echoed in the radiused prow which enveloped the lights, the helmet-like fenders, and the V-shaped windshield (a one-piece curve on the Imperial limo) which angled back into the arc of the fastback roof profile.  

That first year, only the Chrysler Imperial models like this rare coupe had an external trunk lid; other Airflows allowed trunk access via a folding rear seat...  

The seats were raised above the floor on tubular chrome supports that seemed straight out of a Bauhaus living room, and the look was completed by the sober, purposeful, well-trimmed splendor of the cockpit.  Note that the two windshield panels can be cranked open at the bottom.




In addition to the semi-unitized body construction short-hood, long-cabin, wide-seat proportions, all Airflows, the straight six-cylinder DeSotos and Chrysler inline eights, featured hydraulic brakes, with vacuum assists on the big Imperial CW limousines, at a time when Ford (and Europeans like Bugatti) stubbornly stayed with mechanical brakes. One odd anachronism was the retention of solid axles even at the front, when a sophisticated double wishbone independent front suspension was already on the senior Plymouth line.  This was because engineer Breer was aiming at smooth ride, not sharp handling, and by lowering the spring rates he got the advertised "floating ride." The new body structure was strong enough that Chrysler advertised with an authentic newsreel of an Airflow being pitched off a tall cliff and then driving away under its own power.  It was expensive and time-consuming to assemble, though, and delays in tooling meant that Chrysler wasn't able to meet the initial demand...

There were other troubles, too.  Engine mount failures on as many as two thousand of the early cars hurt the Airflow's reputation, even though Chrysler fixed the mounts.  Chrysler had kept its more conventional-looking CA line of cars in production, calling it Airstream (they may have meant Mainstream) in 1935, and this helped keep them afloat when Airflow sales slowed during what was already a selling environment flattened by the Great Depression.  DeSoto, however, had only Airflows to sell in 1934. Perhaps the real trouble was not that the Airflow was "too far advanced" for its time, but that it was introduced at a time when people were more concerned about keeping or finding jobs, and feeding their families, than spending money on shiny new cars, even ones with pretty good reputations.  

*Footnote:  Tatra automobiles are featured in "Cars and Ethics" in our Archives for November 27, 2015, and also for Dec. 31, 2016 in "Roadside Attraction: Rolling Sculpture at the North Carolina Museum of Art", and in "When Mobile Homes Were Really Mobile" for Jul7 30,  2017.  The Fuller Dymaxion saga is reviewed in "Architect-Designed Cars Part 1", from May 7, 2017.

Photo Credits:

All photos are by Paul Anderson, who kindly shared a bounty of shots from a recent trip to the Collier Collection at the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida.

The Cars of Henrik Fisker: Bad Karma or Just Bad Luck?

Not long ago I happened upon this car while strolling around Palo Alto.  What looked at a distance like a customized Mercedes SL turned out, upon closer examination, to be...

…a Fisker Tramonto.  Never seen one?  That's probably not just because you haven't been looking. Fisker Coachbuild, the outfit formed by former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker, only managed to build 15 of these before giving up the idea.

The idea was to revive the time-honored art of custom coachbuilding by using modern computer-assisted design and construction techniques. Beginning in 2005, Fisker Coachbuild's Southern California workshop based their first two efforts on the big Mercedes SL chassis and on the BMW M6.  The Mercedes-based car was called the Tramonto.  There was a reason, after all, that it looked like a customized SL.  In essence, it was, but with an emphasis on the custom part.  The Tramonto retains the SL retractable metal top and glazing, but features new body panels fashioned in carbon fiber and alloy. Fisker's trademark divided grille fronts an engine bay that houses a supercharged AMG V-8 on all but one car; the final example received a 700 hp. AMG V-12.

The Tramonto also has Fisker logos replacing the familar 3-pointed star, and distinctive head and tail lights.  Perhaps not distinctive enough, however, to justify the price tag, a $108K jump over the not-inconsiderable sticker on an SL.  The Tramonto appeared in 2005, along with its sister car, the Latigo CS…

The Latigo applied the Fisker treatment to the V-10 powered BMW M6.  The Latigo CS performed on the road as one might expect an M6 with lightweight, aero bodywork to perform. Its sales performance, however, lagged behind even that of the slow-selling Tramonto.  Only two examples of the Latigo CS ever left the factory; the prototype and the car pictured above and below. Friends went to test drive it when it was for sale on the Bring a Trailer auction website, and admired it, but not enough to bid.  It sold at auction for a bit more than a third of the $300,000 original sticker price.  Not a lot for a nearly unique example of the coachbuilder's art, featuring engine performance mods not even seen on BMW's M6.  Fisker's original plan had been to limit production to 150 each for the Tramonto and Latigo; in the end, production was limited by demand, as it was for Zagato's similar effort, the Diatto Otto Vu from the same era.*

What went wrong with the original idea?  Well, shortly after the rollout of the two new Fiskers, the price of oil more than doubled, with a resulting impact on the price of gasoline. This shouldn't matter to the kind of people who can afford a six-figure car, but their attention had been attracted to cars like the Tesla Roadster, the all-electric 2 seater that entered production a year after these Fiskers faded, in 2008.  Over a four year span, Tesla would build 2,450 of the $100,000+ roadster, showing that there was a market for expensive, energy efficient cars.  Fisker decided to offer a hybrid electric vehicle to compete with the upcoming Tesla Model S all-electric sedan, first showing the Karma in 2008, and entering production in summer 2011 with a swoopy 4-door that ran a turbocharged inline GM 4 cylinder gasoline engine along with 2 electric motors and lithium-ion batteries.  The cars were built by Valmet in Finland (which had built Saab convertibles and Porsche Boxsters) and shipped to the US, but Fisker secured a Federal loan that was conditional on moving production to their US facility. The price was at or above that of the coming Tesla 'S' ($102,000-$116,000), but the car was only half as efficient as a Chevy Volt when running on batteries alone, and when the car went on sale in November 2011, some testers noted the gasoline engine's noise and lack of smoothness...

There were other troubles.  239 of the first Karmas delivered were recalled for a battery glitch that could cause fires.  Later, three cars experienced fires.  When Fisker cut back on orders for batteries because of slow sales, battery supplier A123, already paying for replacement batteries under warranty, went bankrupt.  To make matters worse, Hurricane Sandy destroyed hundreds of Karmas at the docks in Newark, New Jersey in October 2012, about $30 million worth of cars. By 2016, the Wanxiang Group, an automotive products company based in China, announced the availability of the "all new, ultra luxury" Karma Revero.  It has the same propulsion system as the Fisker Karma, and is still available at $130,000.  As for the "all new" claim, we'll leave it to the reader to decide.  The original Fisker Karma is pictured above, while the Karma Revero appears below...

*Footnote:  Zagato's Diatto Otto Vu is featured in our post for March 11, 2019 under the title
"The Etceterini Files Part 19----Zagatos Old and New: Fiats and Diattos."

Photo Credits:
Top thru 3rd:  the author
4th:    George Havelka
5th:  bringatrailer.com
6th:  wikimedia
7th:  Karma Automotive