Summertime Dream: The Colorado Grand Drifts into Mountain Towns, and One Reader Writes...

A friend and contributor happened to be in the lofty Western Colorado towns of Gunnison and Salida when the Colorado Grand drifted through the mountain passes and stopped on shady side streets. It's an annual event benefitting Colorado charities, and winds through scenic mountain vistas, beginning and ending in Vail. Our friend* has a talent for being where the cars are, and this time he sent a trove of photos* beginning with the question, "What kind of Ferrari is this?" 

Well, it appears to be a 340 / 375  Berlinetta Speciale bodied in 1953 by Pinin Farina. The alloy-paneled coupe was based on the 340 America which appeared in the beginning of the 50s as an answer to US Ferrari disrtibutor Luigi Chinetti's request for a big engine.  Aurelio Lampredi designed a 4.1 liter V12 (each cylinder 340 cc) for sports and GT cars.  Just over 2 dozen 340s were built and at least 4 were converted to 375 specs.; this is one of those. Lampredi's 4.5 liter (375 cc cylinders), engines followed the format of the earlier Colombo designs (sohc, aluminum block) but were made in two sizes, with the GP car under the 4.5 liter limit and the sports and road cars just a bit over.  The shark-like nose was introduced after PF built the first 340 competition coupes with the oval grille from their 250 berlinettas. The Speciale looks like it could eat other cars for breakfast, and perhaps that's why the 250 GTO parked behind it seems to be trying to fade into the background.  Only cars built in 1960 or earlier get to participate, so maybe the 1962-3 Series 1 GTO gets to play because it's nominally part of the 250 series which appeared in the Fifties. Anyway, that's what Enzo Ferrari wanted sanctioning bodies to believe when he tried to get the Gran Turismo Omologato, with its dry sump engine, new 5 speed transmission, and disc brakes,  homologated as a production car.

The 340s and 375s were the most powerful cars sold to the public in this era, and were known as beasts to drive, with drum brakes and suspension design not up to the task of handling all the power.  This body design set the theme for many of the Ferrari berlinettas that followed, including the more famous 250GT Tour de France.  But it was unusual in having those Ford-like convex round tail light enclosures, a feature dropped on most later versions...

Zagato* was a pioneer in supplying lightweight bodywork for Alfa Romeos, and this example from the early Thirties exemplifies the coach builder's elemental approach; minimalism before the word was commonly used...

RIght-hand drive was standard fitment on upper crust Italian and French cars during this period, and facilitated racing on clockwise road courses like Le Mans, where Alfa Romeo won 4 times in a row from 1931 to 1934, all with the 8C-2300 series, the last time with future Ferrari dealer Luigi Chinetti co-driving…

The view below is the one that became tiresomely familiar to Alfa's competitors during this period. Duriing much of that time, the Alfa racing effort was managed by a guy named Enzo Ferrari.

The Nuvolari badge on this example may be a reference to one of its former pilots.  During the decade of the Thirties, Tazio Nuvolari and Alfa Romeo made each other famous.

A Lancia Aurelia B20 from a couple decades later breezes through a shady lane as a happy passenger waves. The Aurelia was the product of Alfa Romeo's main rival in the Italian market, and appeared as a sedan in 1950 with the first production V6 engine.  It was also  a pioneer among front-engined cars in that its 4-speed transmission lived at the rear of the car for ideal weight distribution.  Unlike the Ferrari 340 from the same era, the Aurelia founded a legend based on sweet handling...

In 1951 Pinin Farina started production of the  Aurelia  B20 coupe.  Styling, however, has been credited to Mario Boano at Ghia, and it set the theme for a raft of what came to be called GT cars..

A silver Siata 208S spider and green 208CS coupe share an era with the Aurelias. They also share a 70 degree, 2 liter V8 with the Fiat 8V introduced in 1952. The 4-wheel independent suspension was as advanced as the Lancia's, cleverly adapted by Fiat engineers from a 4-wheel drive vehicle for the Italian army.  Bodies for the spider were from Rocco Motto*...

…while the rounded contours on the CS coupe were designed and originally built at Stablimenti Farina (a firm headed by Pinin Farina's older brother), but were supplied by Balbo after Stablimenti Farina folded in 1953. Farina coupes and a lone spider have vertical grille bars, while most Balbo coupes have the grid shown. The retractable headlights were a very rare feature in 1953, a decade or more ahead of the mainstream curve. 

An Aston Martin DB3S is not often seen in Colorado mountain towns, or anywhere, really.  Aston built only 11 "works" racers to contend races in England and on the Continent, and 20 additional customer cars.  One difference between the works and customer cars was the aluminum engine block on the factory team cars. The engine was the 3 liter twin-overhead cam Lagonda six, and suspension was by torsion bars with trailing arms front and rear, with a De Dion rear axle. Aston's engineers tried a twin-plug head on the later cars built during the car's 1953-'56 production run.

Frank Feely's body design on the short, 87" wheelbase chassis initially highlighted a flattened version of the DB2 grille with concave contours on the bonnet.  The long arc of the front wheel arches became a signature of the car, and the smooth contours of Feely's design were a real improvement over the less aerodynamic lines on the car's unsuccessful predecessor, ex-Auto Union engineer Eberan von Eberhorst's DB3. 

In a search for better aerodynamics to beat the Jaguars at Le Mans, Aston produced a fastback coupe version of the DB3S.  Two works race versions were produced, but these proved unstable and crashed at Le Mans in '54; perhaps the lack of a Kamm tail and that typically British, too-vertical windshield were problems.   Ironically, though Aston converted the works coupes back to roadster configuration, three customer racers were converted to coupes...

1956 was the last year for the DB3S, and by then the Aston factory in Newport Pagnell had adopted a more aerodynamic nose that harmonized well with the car's rounded forms.  Headlights sat under contoured plastic bubbles, above a lower snout where the tradtional inverted T of the Aston grille gave way to an oval intake.  The new DBR1 overlapped this car in 1956, but had a long development period before winning Le Mans in 1959. The year before that breakthrough, a DB3S finished 2nd at Le Mans when all three of Aston's DBR1-300 racers retired...

Not all red racers are Italian; this roadster streaking along the streets seems at home in its state of origin. The Bocar XP-5 was manufactured near Denver in the late Fifties by Bob Carnes; thus the name.  Slanting quad headlights echoing a theme that once affected (or afflicted) everything from Buicks to Bentleys were covered in clear plastic.  

Power was supplied by the small block Chevy, and fiberglass bodywork was draped over a lightweight tubular space frame.  Bocars were sold in kits as well as finished form, like Colin Chapman's Lotus Elite.  But there were two different chassis types, one for torsion bars adapted from the VW Beetle and one for more conventional springing.  Though production never escaped double digits, model numbers extended from the X-1 through XP-6 with supercharbed 283, and the XP-7 and 7R (supercharged). Despite an XP-5 setting a speed record (175 mph) at Daytona in 1960, and the over-styled Stiletto successor to the XP series appearing in car magazines, a fire at Bob Carnes' Lakewood shop ended the Bocar's appearance on the sports car stage by 1962...

*Footnote:  Special thanks to LCDR (belated congrats on the promotion) Jonathan Asbury for capturing these cars. Other examples of his work are on view throughout this blog.  For more shots of the Siata 208 series, see "Sunday at the Races: Monterey Historics Part 2" (Aug. 29, 2018), and "Hillsborough Concours Part 1" (July 26, 2018). The 208 series and its sister car the Fiat 8V were given the retrospective treatment in "The Etceterini Files Part 10", posted Nov. 13, 2016.  Rocco Motto's work is surveyed in "Unsung Genius: Rocco Motto, the Closer" (March 25, 2018). Zagato bodied Alfas are surveyed in "Body by Zagato Part 2: Five Decades of Alfa Romeos" (May 6, 2020).  Finally, the founding of Aston Martin's road racing and James Bond legends is covered in "Rescued from Obscurity: Aston Martin in the Fifties and Sixties" (May 11, 2020).

Photo Credits:  All color photos were generously provided by LCDR Jonathan D. Asbury, USN.  Monochrome photos were sourced as follows:  

Ferrari 340 / 375 Speciale:  mad4wheels.com

Aston Martin DB3S coupe and late model:  Wikimedia

Bocar:  Bocar Mfg. Co.

Boulder Classics and Coffee: August 29, 2021

The Boulder Classics and Coffee show returned to 8th Street just south of Pearl on Sunday, August 29.  This time around, air-cooled Porsches vastly outnumbered the more recent water-cooled variety, and included this cream-colored '59 Convertible D, snoozing under a tree between a white 911 and two green 912s, a '67 and a '68.  Air-cooled Porsches made up the most populous category, but there was a record turnout, and more variety than ever...

That turnout included two BMC Minis (ancestors of the current BMW-made Mini Cooper), 3 Alfa Romeos, 3 Jaguars, a Lancia, a BMW, a Saab, an Auburn Speedster, a vintage 1930s Packard, a vintage 40s MG, and what's rapidly becoming a Boulder tradition, the Ferrari of the Month. 

Above, a Porsche Boxster fronts a lineup including a yellow Jaguar E-Type Series 2,  a Jaguar 3.8 Mark 2 sedan, a barely visible MG TC, and that Ferrari (we'll get there soon enough). Across the street as shown below, the lineup includes a red Alfa 1750 GTV, gray 1970 Lancia Flavia 2000 coupe, '67 Jag E-Type (late Series I with open headlights), Datsun 280Z with backdated bumper, '91 Alfa 2000 Spider, and Porsche 911 Targa.  

The Lancia Flavia 2000 coupe was the last new body style planned by the company before the 1969 Fiat takeover, and appeared the year after. It's a front-driver based on the Flavia powertrain that appeared in 1961, a horizontally-opposed pushrod four but with two cams because Lancia engineers did things their own way. This one's a 4-speed, but 5-speeds were available, and the scarce HF version offered fuel injection. The Pininfarina coupe was never officially imported into the US, but you see them now and then.

Moving north along the same side of 8th, we encountered another Alfa GTV, this one a 2 liter, a BMW 1600 (the car that saved the company) from the late Sixties, a Saab Sonnett III, the V4-powered 2-seater that appeared in 1970 with fiberglass body redesigned by Coggiola in Italy, another 911, and those Minis. Anyone attempting a run to the grocery store on the corner may have been daunted by the lack of parking...

Neighbor Ron Farina brought his 1962 Jaguar 3.8 Mark 2 sedan with its original English plate. These were the Jags the police drove to catch gangsters…who drove the same model.  Next to the Mark 2, Dan McCarthy parked his 1949 MG TC...

The TC from Morris Garages was the car that started the sports car boom in the USA.  The Morris-based overhead valve four made 54 hp from 1,250 cc (around 72 cubic inches) and gave the 1,700 lb. car sprightly performance. Returning GIs that had seen the cars in England bought copies and often went road racing in events sponsored by the Sports Car Club of America, founded in 1944. Compared with the VW Beetle, an import that arrived on our shores in 1949 (2 were sold), the cars have similar weight and the same 94" wheelbase, but the MG was almost twice as powerful.  There was a price for the performance, though; at $1,895 the MG was around $600 more than the VW. Despite this, in those early postwar years, many more MGs than VWs were sold Stateside.

The 19-inch wire wheels and flat external gas tank enhance the spindly proportions of what seemed to Americans a romantic, 1920s era design in 1949. The separate, folding racing-style windscreens add a dashing touch.  An MG TC was selected by the Museum of Modern Art for its pioneering 1951 exhibit, Eight Automobiles, the first time that automobiles were presented to the public as art.

Also disobeying the No Parking signs is a 1970 Ferrari Dino 246 GT, demonstrating how far engineering and industrial design journeyed in two decades.  Though to be fair, the MG TC (1945-50) was close in its design to the first of the T Series, the TA which appeared in 1936. The year before that TA, Gordon Buehrig's design for the Auburn 851 Speedster* was released by the Auburn Cord Duesenberg combine in Indiana.  The inline eight cylinder boat-tailed roadster was more Streamline Moderne than the MGs, and it hinted at the lines of Buehrig's design for the landmark Cord 810...

This Auburn 866 Speedster is not an original 851, but instead one of 138 replicas built by Auburn enthusiast Glenn Pray between 1967 and 1981. Fiberglass bodywork was molded from an original 851 Speedster and mounted on a V8-powered Ford F150 pickup chassis.  The T-handled shifter is evidence of a modern automatic transmission.

The boat tail design was a feature of earlier Auburn Speedsters, including the V12. One external clue that this is an 866 instead of an 851 is that all four external exhausts line up on the driver's side of the hood on the 851, as it was an inline eight.  Here there are two on each side...

Steve Tebo, the owner of the Auburn, also brought this 1933 Packard Super Eight Touring. Attractive design details include the traditional Packard radiator with trademark cormorant hood ornament. Note the way the headlights echo the the V-shape plan of that radiator.  

This phaeton style was the most open of the 142" wheelbase Series 1004. As with other luxury cars of this period, the cabin was long but narrow, owing to the space occupied by the external running boards.  The 6.3 liter, side-valve straight 8 made 145 hp, and sent power to the rear wheels through a 3-speed synchromesh gearbox.  Drum brakes were servo assisted, but they had to stop a car that weighed over three times the weight of, for example, the MG TC...

Perhaps to compensate for needing to rely on side curtains instead of winding windows in cold weather, rear seat passengers got their own removable windshield. As the decade of the Thirties progressed, 4-door convertibles with padded tops and winding windows became more popular than touring cars and phaetons.  Packard built 788 of this long-wheelbase chassis for 1933.  The Depression meant this was the lowest production year for Packard in the Thirties.

A gentleman named Pietro brought the Ferrari of the Month, and a real crowd pleaser.  This immaculate, award-winning 1970 Dino 246 GT has been in Pietro's family since 1976. The Dino line of cars, named for Enzo Ferrari's son, began with front-engined V6 racers but led to a production mid-engined road car in 1967.  That 206 GT featured a 65-degree, all aluminum V6. Fiat used the same engine at the front of their Dino coupes and spiders.  The Dinos were the first Ferraris to use electronic ignitions.  By 1969, Ferrari and Fiat schemed to make the car competitive with the Porsche 911S, and expanded the engine to 2.4 liters, now with a cast iron block. British testers found the new 246 GT to be faster than the Porsche, and only slightly more expensive as priced in England.

The 246 version of the GT looked much like the 206, but the Pininfarina body was now primarily in steel, where the 206 GT had been all alloy.  The packaging is compact and tidy, on a 92.1" wheelbase (the 206 GT was 90").  Weight was around 2,400 pounds, about like the original Mazda Miata, while the 206 GT had been just under a ton.

While the mid-engined Dino racers had longitudinal engines, all the production Dino GTs used the tidy transverse mounting you see here.  This makes for extra space in the cabin. It also means there's room for luggage under the deck lid behind the engine...

…which made about 195 hp in European market form.  As on the 206 GT, the four cams were operated by a toothed belt. The 5 speed gearbox, unlike the transmission in the transverse-engined Lambo Miura (or contemporary Mini Cooper) did not share its oil with the engine.  Ferrari engineers selected the 65 degree angle between cylinders after trying 60 degrees on some of the Dino race cars (+ Ferrari V12s) because Ferrari still used carburetors, and wanted more space for the intake plumbing. It's striking what a successful exercise in packaging this power plant installation was, and it's also striking how immaculate this example is.

These are the original seats, which were, and are, covered in vinyl.  The gated shift lever is a Ferrari trademark.  The Dino 246 GT is a reminder of how serious Ferrari was in aiming at a broader section of the sports car market, the upper-middle served by Porsche.  It was the first Ferrari to sell in large numbers (over 3,500 cars) and it may have been the first Ferrari to turn a profit.  It's also a reminder that Ferraris were not always powered by large engines, or V12s.  The first Ferraris sold to the public were 2 liter Type 166 V12s, and these were followed in the early Fifties by a series of sports racers with inline fours and sixes...

The British contingent included Mini Coopers, the current BMW kind (around 12 feet long and containing air bags, microchips and software) as well as the original BMC kind (10 feet long and originally containing none of that).  The '72 version below had been modified though...

It was now powered by a Honda VTEC 16-valve four making at least 100 hp. more than old Mini Cooper in which it's installed, with the aid of software and microchips galore.  The wheels are upsized 3" from the original 10 inchers, and the Honda engine, unlike the Austin / Morris original, no longer has to share its oil with the transmission...

This Austin Healey Sprite, nicknamed the Bugeye for those headlights, showed up mid-morning, and happily the owner parked it next to the Packard to provide a sense of scale.  At 80 inches, the Bugeye's wheelbase is 62 inches shorter than the Packard's.  At 1,460 pounds dry, it weighs 2 tons less than the Packard, and 240 lb. less than the MG TC on display.  That makes an interesting comparison, because the Bugeye (1958-61) was British Motor Company's idea of a basic, entry-level sports car, something like the MG TC had been a decade earlier.   By 1958 BMC owned MG as well as Austin and Morris, and also made the big 6 cylinder Austin Healey.  The Sprite had a smaller engine than the old TC, but it was easily modified and the Bugeye was adopted by SCCA racers, who liked the easy engine access and the low price; at $1,795 in 1959, it was a hundred bucks cheaper than the TC a decade earlier.

Some of the crowd stayed after the official closing to trade stories. The Brazilian ladies pictured had stories of cars in their native country (Willys, VW) and we hope the field expands to include some cars we haven't yet seen, like the Brazilian Puma that we spotted downtown.  The next Classics and Coffee is on Sunday, September 26, between 8 and 10 AM on 8th Street, just south of the intersection at Pearl Street.  We can hardly wait...

*Footnote:  The July 25 Classics and Coffee in Boulder's downtown appeared in "Classics and Coffee in Downtown Boulder", in our post for July 27, 2021, while the June 2021 Boulder show as well as an earlier show in Lafayette, Colorado show, figure in "Classic Cars & Coffee in Boulder (City and County)", from July 16, 2021.  Auburn Speedsters were featured in "Auburn Speedsters: In the Shadow of Cord & Duesenberg", posted July 8, 2020.

*Postscript, Errata + More Local Car Shows & Events:  We got the weights right for all the cars listed except the Dino 206 GT; that was just under 2,000 lb. of course, not "under 2 tons." Also we originally guessed the Alfa Spider was a '94 instead of a first-year for this style, 1991. And the Datsun Z had me fooled with its 240Z front bumper; should have noticed the 280Z hood vents…apologies!  The Colorado English Motoring Conclave hosts its annual all-British show of cars and bikes at Oak Park in Arvada, Colorado Sunday, Sept. 19.  An associated Ride the Rockies event is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 18.  There's a fee for exhibiting cars, but the show is open to the public at no charge.

Photo Credits:

Top 5 photos, plus photos 12 & 13, 15-17, 19-22:  Matt Kennan

Remaining photos are by the author.

Jet Cars Part 4: Socema Gregoire, and Early Turbines from GM, Chrysler & Rover

You probably thought we'd finished dealing with the subject of turbine-powered cars back when we completed Part 3 of our Jet Cars series*.  But recently an old friend and patient reader of these meandering commentaries sent me this postcard of something called, for short, the Cemo Turbo. It's the Socema Gregoire from 1952, powered not by a turbocharged piston engine, but by kerosene-fueled jet turbine gulping air through that chromed, circular air intake.

The chassis design, by Jean-Albert Gregoire, was based on his aluminum-intensive Hotchkiss platform. Though it lacked that car's front-wheel drive, Gregoire's decision to mount the engine forward of the front wheels meant that it shared the large front overhang to wheelbase ratio of the Hotchkiss.  Location of the fuel tank (the oval shape behind the front seats, below) meant there was no rear seating. The fuel tank needed to be a large one, as early turbines were thirsty. They also produced lots of heat, which along with their demanding metallurgy and resulting high cost, offset their relative simplicity compared to internal combustion engines. Automotive turbines featured about 1/5 the number of moving parts as the average piston engine, but they were expensive parts...

In the photo at the left below, engineer Gregoire stands next to the partially-completed, handmade aluminum shell designed by Carlo Delaisse. The body was built at the Hotchkiss firm's Paris automobile factory, which was then in its final days after attempting to work out the flaws in Gregoire's front-drive boxer four-cylinder sedan design, of which Hotchkiss made around 250 before bankruptcy. Though body designer Delaisse was, unlike Gregoire, reported to be publicity shy, and we wonder if that's him sitting in the completed car at right...

With most French luxury cars of this era, the bodywork was the highpoint because it was more modern, in appearance if not construction, than the pre-war chassis designs featured by Talbot-Lago, Bugatti, Delage and Hotchkiss. In the case of the Socema turbine car, the smoothly-contoured bodywork was notable because it was more thoroughly worked out than the Jet Age chassis it covered. The claimed Cx for the body was 0.19. But it's not clear whether those aerodynamic contours ever got a real test outside a wind tunnel...

No videos or even still photos could be found showing the Socema Gregoire being tested, or even in motion.  One British journalist who examined the car suggested that with the engine mounted in front and with no heat exchangers to recapture exhaust heat, temperature gain in the cabin would likely have been excessive.  Like many of J. A. Gregoire's engineering works, the Socema Gregoire was more effective at generating publicity than in delivering performance on the road.  Pretty, though...

If the Socema Gregoire wound up being more show biz than serious experiment, Firebird 1 by General Motors (at far left below) was a flat-out exercise in Hollywood sci-fi. Harley Earl's appropriation of jet fighter styling on this 1953 Motorama show car meant there was only room for the driver under the bubble canopy. There was no heat exchanger to reduce the 1,250 degree exhaust temperature, and only drum brakes to handle 370 hp, though the drums were finned for cooling.  Firebird II, the center car from the 1956 Motorama, at least had seats for 4, and two features that would show up years later on the Corvette: 4-wheel disc brakes and 4-wheel independent suspension. Like turbines already tested by Chrysler, it had a heat exchanger to lower exhaust temperature and improve economy. Concerns about economy apparently went out the window with Firebird III, designed for the 1959 Motorama by Harley Earl (who else?), with its turbine engine supplemented by a two-cylinder gasoline unit to "run the accessories." Hapless occupants were housed in separate bubbles and perhaps limited to communicating by hand signals.  The bodywork relapsed into a hopeless imitation of fighter plane imagery; after the comparitvely sedate Firebird II with its lonely fin in the center of the deck, seven (7) fins festooned the sides and rear of Firebird III. Perhaps the gasoline engine to run the accessories was added to placate oil industry lobbyists; after all, the turbine would run on peanut oil or alcohol.

Meanwhile, over at Chrysler Corporation, engineer George Huebner (at right below) was taking an approach based on solving the turbine's practical problems rather than showing off its sci-fi aspects. Few cars could've looked more practical than the '54 Plymouth sedan that housed Chrysler's automotive turbine. Like later GM efforts and Rover's 2nd generation turbine, the engine relied on heat exchangers to capture heat from the exhaust, using it to heat the intake charge and increase fuel economy, which had been dismal on the first turbines...  Rover's 1950 JET 1 managed 6 mpg, but set a speed record of over 152 mph.

In the photo below, engineers in hats marvel at the low exhaust temperature on the running turbine Plymouth, showing the effectiveness of the new heat exchangers.

Unlike GM and more like Chrysler, Rover in Britain took a practical rather than show-biz approach to solving the problems of turbine car performance.  With their first Jet 1 appearing in 1950, they adopted a mid-rear engine location to put noise and heat behind the cabin.  By the time their T3 was tested in 1956, Rover had adopted an engine location behind the rear wheels to allow more cabin space, all-wheel drive to handle the engine's torque, a De Dion rear axle, and fiberglass bodywork with a low beltline and large windows.  Like Chrysler, they employed a heat exchanger to improve efficiency.  Performance was lively for the era, with 0 to 60 taking 10 seconds and 0 to 80 taking 17.7. The T3 set the stage for the T4 which appeared in 1961, a couple years before Chrysler built 50 Turbine Cars for consumer testing, and also before a series of Rover-BRM turbine-powered Le Mans racers. That Le Mans effort is another forgotten episode of the turbine car saga, one we'll save for Jet Cars Part 5...

*Footnote:  "Jet Cars Part 1: Real & Not So Real", appeared in these posts on May 21, 2016. "Jet Cars Part 2: Chrysler Turbine Car" reviewed the history of the only turbine-powered car ever released for testing by the public, also on May 21, 2016.  "Jet Cars Part 3: Chrysler Turbine Epilogue" reviewed the reasons Chrysler discontinued its Turbine Car program, and appeared May 25, 2016. 

Photo Credits:
Top:  Photo by the author; postcard courtesy of Doug Pletcher

2nd + 3rd & 4th (side-by-side):  alternathistory.com

5th & 6th:  Wikimedia

7th (GM Firebirds):  General Motors, featured on carnewscafe.com  

8th & 9th: Chrysler Corporation

10th:  Wikimedia