Forgotten Classic: Pegaso, Spain's Flying Horse (Sketches of Spain Part 3)

As Spain's unlikely entry in the exotic sports car sweepstakes, the Pegaso was forgotten almost as soon as production officially ended in 1959, and certainly by the time the last Z-103 was assembled from leftover parts in 1962.  A car allegedly designed to bring attention to Pegaso trucks built by the Empressa Nacional des Autocamiones S.A. (ENASA), it showcased engineering features that were uncommon on any production car when it showed up at the Paris Show in 1951.  The layout (4-cam dry sump V8, rear-mounted 5 speed transmission with inboard rear brakes) seemed very advanced for a road car, but the Pegaso actually restated the technology established by pre-WWII racing cars. Mercedes-Benz and Miller had produced 4-cam V8s in that period, and the Pegaso’s De Dion rear suspension with trailing arms echoed a layout engineer WIlfredo Ricart had tried on his design for the mid-engined Alfa Romeo 512 GP car. Like many other Fifties specialist  car builders, Pegaso stayed with drum brakes throughout its production run, and this proved to be a problem in competition.

Once the somewhat clunky, slab-sided factory-bodied prototypes like this 1952 Barcelona coupe were introduced in Paris, Ricart looked for strategies to increase the car’s appeal. The factory built two Cupola coupes based on sketches by their student design apprentices with enclosed wheels and accentuated curves to attract attention at car shows. This approach to design was in line with Ricart's stated goal of using the sports car program to train engineers for the series-produced truck program.  The Cupola coupes certainly attracted lots of attention at car shows...

...featuring themes borrowed from futurist science fiction and recent aircraft practice, like the bubble canopy at the rear.  One bright yellow car was sent to the USA, where it was tested by a car magazine and exhibited at the 1953 New York Auto Show.  Brewster Automotive in Long Island was named the US Distributor, but had no luck selling cars with prices quoted by Road & Track as ranging from $12,000 to $18,000.  The yellow Cupola was nicknamed "El Dominicano" and sent to Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican Repubic dictator and Franco ally. One Cupola survives today, in the Netherlands.

A second strategy, of commissioning bodies from established coachbuilding houses, got off to a rocky start with the Z-102 cabriolet and coupe designs Jacques Saoutchik produced for Pegaso in Paris in 1952.  Unfortunately, the combination of swoopy, separate front fender shapes inspired by Thirties French Deco with Fifties envelope lines at the rear did not harmonize with the car's short (91.5 inch) wheelbase, and the car had what the British would call a "neither fish nor fowl" flavor...

But also in 1952, Superleggera Touring of Milan showed the timeless coupe design that became most strongly associated with Pegaso. This, like the contemporary Ferrari coupes by Touring and Vignale, featured tightly contoured alloy panels wrapped around the mechanicals. Working under the direction of Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni, designer Franco Formenti produced a clean, modern envelope body with details that were exclusive to Pegaso, including the nostrils cut into the forward part of the hood, the crossbar grille, and the delicate trim pivoting around a circular emblem which links the rear windows to the side ones...

The nostril theme was featured on most of the Touring Superleggera road cars, and even on the deck lids of the fastback berlinettas, until the Panoramica which came after the mid-Fifties.  The photo below shows the window trim which makes the C-pillar look thinner than it really is, as well as some functional air extractor vents.  By 1956 the price of this Touring berlinetta was $15,000.

Jacques Saoutchik caught up with the times (or at least with the chassis dimensions) by offering the sleekly elongated 2nd Series coupes shown below in 1954-55. Note how the rear fenders extend well beyond the trunk line to divert attention from the short wheelbase, with the arc of the wheel cutouts centered back of the wheel centerline to the same effect. The low, steeply-sloped roofline helps as well...

At the front, the fenders extend past stacked, hooded headlights, again exaggerating the car's length...

Ricart's design checked many of the boxes on the exotica checklist for 1950s car enthusiasts.  It was powered by V8 with four overhead cams sitting atop an aluminum block, it featured a 5-speed transaxle with the gearbox sitting rear of the axle centerline.  Engine sizes started at 2.5 liters, but most cars were built with 2.8 liters and there were some 3.2s. On the mechanical front, however, there was little development. Pegaso offered a 3-year warranty and free upgrades to improved components, but disc brakes were never offered, and nothing was done about the dead feel of the steering which owed to what one mechanic called “yards of linkage”. The transmission, despite its optimum location for balanced weight distribution, remained devoid of synchronizers. According to the late David Love, a master mechanic and judge at the 1994 Pebble Beach Pegaso show, the water pump was hard to reach, and early Pegasos were known for overheating. On Touring’s Thrill Berlinetta show car below from 1953, porthole fender vents were added to deal with this problem, but these were removed when the car was restored...

The spectacular Thrill was unique in all senses.  Only one was built, and no other car of this period featured the boundary layer air control offered by the structural "flying buttresses" designed by the Anderloni / Formenti duo that had hatched the classic Z-102B berlinettas. Roughly half of all Pegasos eventually built would be by Touring Superleggera.  In the early 1960s, Raymond Loewy would propose a boundary layer control device on his Lancia Flaminia showcar.

The car also featured the use of seat belts, though Nash and Saab also contended for the pioneering honors on that safety innovation.  As the photo below shows, Pegaso likely did a better job of publicizing this feature than anyone else; note also how the door frame has been drilled for lightness.

Two competition spyders and one competiton coupe were built by Touring, and at least one competition spyder was bodied by Serra. One was running well in the Carrera Panamericana in 1954, but a crash ended the effort.  Pegaso's Le Mans effort suffered a similar fate.  

I shot this Z-102BS 3.2 liter supercharged Touring spyder at Laguna Seca.  Though the cars did well in Spanish hillclimbs, they didn't have to compete against Ferraris or disc-braked Jaguars there, and the uphill climbs lessened the likelihood of terminal brake fade. Engineer Ricart was never persuaded that disc brakes would improve the car's marginal stopping power.  The last Pegaso, built for his son from leftover parts in 1962, went out the door with drums...

The last time Pegaso got a retrospective on the West Coast, it was at Pebble Beach in 1994. A dozen of the cars showed up, comprising over 15 percent of the original total supplied by the Barcelona factory. The meticulously restored Z-103 Panoramica Touring coupe below was fielded at Pebble Beach and Palo Alto by the aerospace engineer who rebuilt it.

Rather than focus on developing one version of the existing 4-cam V8, the factory offered multiple displacements from 2.5 liters (the Z102), to 2.8 and 3.2 liters (the Z012B) and also supercharged versions of the 2.8 and 3.2 called Z102BS. A desmodromic-valve version was rumored but apparently never raced. Instead, Ricart abruptly abandoned the 4-cam and introduced what was claimed to be a completely new pushrod V8 at the Paris Show in 1955. This was to be offered in sizes from 3.9 to 4.7 liters, but car production was impeded by truck production sharing the same line, and few examples of the new engine were made.  Instead, the lightly modified Z103 chassis that was bodied by Touring in this Panoramic style with American-style wraparound windshield was usually outfitted with leftover 4-cam V8s, as were the Serra cabrios. Apparently around half a dozen of the Panoramic Z103s were built, including one notchback coupe. The pushrod Z103 V8, with its hemispherical combustion chambers, was said to resemble the design of the contemporary Chrysler V8s according to historian Thomas Parker. This is interesting, as Chrysler vehicles were sold in Spain by Barreiros by at this time, and eventually assembled there. 

During the slowdown which coincided with moving car production to Madrid around 1957, a handful of these these convertible bodies by Serra were built in Spain. At least three of these were rebodied Z-102s which had suffered accidents (perhaps because of those notorious brakes).  At least one received the pushrod engine intended for the "production" Z-103, and it is in the Salamanca Motor Museum.

In retrospect, the Pegaso enterprise seems to have succeeded only in promoting the company’s trucks; production and sales of Pegaso trucks thrived for a long time after car production was abandoned.  Three of the four Z-103s built were equipped with leftover Z-102 engines, including, apparently, all the Panoramicas, like the one below.  Perhaps fittingly, Dodge, like Pegaso a builder of trucks and V8s with hemispherical combustion chambers, adopted the crossbar grille for its trucks and eventually its cars.

*Footnote:  Most Pegasos were built in Barcelona, in an old Hispano-Suiza factory, but ENASA moved production to Madrid late in the series of an estimated 84 to 86 cars. Hispano-Suizas are featured in our post for Sept. 25, 2017, entitled "Hispano-Suiza: Swiss Precision, Spanish Drama, French Style" and also in "One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars" from Sept. 7, 2015.

Photo Credits: For simplicity's sake, we'll list these by type of car.

Z-102 Saoutchik cabriolet prototype (black & white shot):  IMCDB.org

Z-102B Touring Superleggera Thrill coupe, black and white shots only:  Touring Superleggera

Z-102B Serra Spider (black & white shot): pieldetoro.net

Z-103 Serra Spider (red car):  webcarindario.com

Z-102 BS Touring Superleggera competition spyder and Z-103 Touring Panoramica coupe:

These 4 photos are by the author. 

Special thanks:  All the other shots, including the color shots of the early Barcelona coupe and the Cupola, all color shots of early Touring berlinettas including the Thrill, and both Series 2 Saoutchik coupes, were generously donated by George Havelka, expert observer of anything with style.