Halloween Coffee & Classics Boulder: Top Down Motoring in the Rain

The last Coffee & Classics event of the year was on October 31, coinciding with what was supposed to be a sunny, warm Halloween. I woke up around the 8 AM starting time and noticed the gray skies and persistent, chill drizzle. Deciding that few of the regulars would want to show their prize cars in the rain, I got on my old (and maybe classic) Bianchi cycle to pedal downtown. Halfway there, Paul Schultz passed my bike on Broadway in his Jaguar XK 120 roadster, top down and rooster tails of water shooting off the tires...

The XK120* roadster displays its swashbuckling lines to the hardy crowd that showed up  early.  Roadsters were the first XK120s, appearing in autumn 1948 at the London's Earls Court show, causing a sensation, and joining Britain's postwar export drive the next year.  Soon enough, movie stars were driving them, and Detroit noticed, with Chevrolet launching its Corvette two-seater in 1953, the year of this example, and Ford releasing its Thunderbird for the 1955 model year, the year after Jaguar made the switch from their 120 to the XK140.

The leather-lined cockpit allows little space between the wood steering wheel and the driver. In this case, owner Paul has switched the original wheel for a smaller diameter one with a flat hub, eliminating the bullet shaped hub that he described as "as lance aimed at your chest."  Roadsters have this padded leather sill around the cockpit and side curtains rather than windows.  Fixed-roof and drophead coupes have roll-down windows, along with wood dashes.

Ron Farina made up the other half of the Jaguar contingent with his 1962 Mark II Sedan, here parked next to a Porsche Boxster which, like the XK120, had its top down.

The surprisingly big turnout also featured plenty of older, air-cooled Porsches, including the red 356 coupe below, and the fleet of 911s flanking the chartreuse 914 and the black Ferrari 328GTS we featured in our photos of the July 25 event, posted July 27...

This metallic brown example was the previous model, the 308 GTS.  The 3 liter, 4 cam V8 engine powered the Dino 308 GT4, the 2+2 Bertone-bodied coupe introduced for the 1974 model year; it was joined by the Pininfarina-styled 308 GTB coupe the next year, and the GTS spider for 1977.  Early GTBs featured fiberglass bodies with alloy hoods;  PF switched to steel for model year 1977. The 308 series had a long run, staying in production through 1985, and was the most popular series Ferrari had yet made, with over 12,000 sold.

The damp but diverse field included 2 Citroens, Alfa Romeos including the green Giulia 1600 Super Berlina from the Sixties and the red, turbocharged 4C from the recent past.

Those Citroens included the two cars with hoods open below (no, there was no mechanical trouble), the green DS21 on the right below, and the gray Deux Chevaux on the left...

One repeat visitor we covered in our October 17 post on the September Coffee & Classics was this Citroen DS21 belonging to Kevin Roberts.  We missed showing two features, though.  One feature is the patented hydropneumantic suspension pioneered by Citroen.  The photo below (taken at Boulder's NCAR* campus) shows the adjustable-height, self-leveling suspension at its maximun height...

While this photo shows the directional headlights, with the inner light following the front wheels, and heated glass covers conforming to the fender contours.  This feature was left off US-bound models because of lighting regulations, but this '72 model has the Euro lights above the US-spec. side markers and bright metal trim.  

The CItroen 2 CV (Deux Chevaux, named for its 2 taxable horses), produced from 1948 to 1990, was Pierre Boulanger's idea of a minimal-cost car for everyman, and put French farmers on wheels…the tubular-frame seats could be removed to transport farm animals, and the compliant suspension with its horizontal springs connecting front wheels (the driving ones; it's a Citroen) with the rears, allowed farmers to drive across fields with a basket of eggs without breaking any.  This example was built after the 1960 discontinuation of the original 375 cc flat-twin air-cooled engine; it features a 600 cc twin cylinder making 29 hp. 

The rear view of the 2 CV shows its folding canvas top, sensibly deployed in the closed postion on this rainy Sunday.

No, that's not a Porsche Type 904 below.  Only around 112 were built in 1964 and '65, and that, along with their success on the racetrack, makes them more expensive today than some real estate, even here in pricey Boulder...

It's a Beck 904 replica built in 2017, here flanked by two Porsche 993 coupes which represent the last of the air-cooled Porsches. Together the 904 and those late 911s represent the cleanest and most coherent examples of Porsche body design (Note to irate readers; please use Comment line to disagree).

The Beck 904 has two features in common with Porsche's original; these are a fiberglass body and an air-cooled flat six.  Wait, you say, wasn't the 904 a four?  Well, most of them featured Dr. Fuhrmann's well-proven but complex 4-cam in 2-liter form, but Porsche built 7 with the then-new, SOHC Type 901 engine from the 911, which was also new at the time.  This Beck 904 has a 3.2 liter engine, so it's a real hot rod.  The other feature was the fiberglass body; the original 904 with its fiberglass body bonded to the chassis was the first fiberglass-bodied Porsche offered for sale.

Alfa's Giulia Super Berlina (sedan) was a favorite of police and also of a few people who wanted to escape the police, along with rally drivers.  Introduced in 1962 and restyled 6 years later for the 1750 Berlina, the upright design hid the potential of the well-proven, aluminum twin-cam Alfa engine, and made the car into a kind of sleeper.

Speaking of sleepers, the 1995 AMG Mercedes C36 qualifies as one, and also as a competitor to the BMW M3. 

The C36 features a 3.6 liter twin-cam inline six with four valves per cylinder, and makes about 280 horsepower.  The W202 body style was made from 1993-2000.

At least one or two BMC Minis show up every month; our October Mini was a 1988 model imported to the US from Japan, with a 997 cc version of the transverse four.  Minis appeared in 1959, and were engineer Alec Issigonis' idea of a minimal urban car, and an interesting contrast to the larger Citroen 2CV, also a front-drive minimalist concept  "Original" Minis would be made until October 2000, when the last car, a red Mini Cooper, rolled off the line after an over 40-year run, almost matching the 42-year run of the 2CV.

All the drivers who surprised us by driving to the event with their tops down would wind up leaving the event that way as well.  They included the driver of this Triumph TR-6.  As more than one spectator pointed out after an unusually dry October in Boulder, this hoped-for moisture provided weather that probably felt like home to the English cars. I'll need to remember that if it ever rains here again.  Maybe I'll even have new weatherstripping on my English car by the time Coffee & Classics Boulder resumes next May...

*Footnote:  *Footnote:  Jaguar's XK120 was featured in "Colorado English Motoring Conclave Part 2:  Production Cars and Fast Plastic", posted November 6, 2021, and in "Game Changer: Jaguar XK120", posted July 16, 2017. We featured a photo essay on architect  I.M. Pei's National Center for Atmospheric Research on May 26, 2019.

Photo Credits:  All photos are by the author.

Coffee & Classics future events:  Check online @fuelfedboulder for next season's schedule.

 

Epic Traffic Jam or the End of Civilization in Godard's "Weekend" (Either Way, a Car Spotter's Dream)

In 1967, Jean-Luc Godard made a film called "Weekend." It seemed to anticipate the student demonstrations that would begin in May 1968, launching social disruption that would spread across France as labor unions launched strikes in sympathy. Before the story begins, Godard conveys uncertainty about how seriously we should take his film, with captions noting on the one hand that this is a film "adrift in the cosmos" and a bit later that the film was "found in a dump."

Meeting Godard's protagonists doesn't give us much better grounding. Early on, we see Corinne (Mireille Darc) and Roland (Jean Yanne), a married couple, plotting with their respective lovers to do each other in after seizing the assets of Corinne's ailing father; their plans for the old guy are not wholesome. These are not people with whom we will identify as we follow their plot and the subplots that lurch into view around them...

These subplots soon include an explosion of road rage in the parking lot below their Paris apartment, when drivers of a blue Mini and a red Matra 530 get into a fight over a fender-bender. Godard seems on top of automotive fashion in the French middle class; the Mini was a chic city car and the mid-engined Matra represented the latest automotive trends in 1967...

Unlike Roland's 1960 Facel Vega Facellia cabriolet, a car with an engine so trouble-prone that it bankrupted the company. Godard seems to be spoofing the pretensions of his characters (and their class) with this pretty but fickle car.  When a small boy accosts Roland for backing into his mom's Renault, he teases the man for driving "a crap Facel." Their argument escalates, of course, and soon the boy's mom comes out to remonstrate (above). Then Roland attacks her car with a paint gun while the boy's dad shows up with a real gun (below) and fires warning shots. This conflict is presented as farce, not far from the tone of American situation comedies.

This tongue-in-cheek tone continues when Roland and Corinne finally make it onto the road, only to confront an epic traffic jam filmed in one long take over nearly a mile. In droll scenes reminsicent of the animated British film Automania 2000* from 4 years earlier, most motorists seem resigned to their fate. Roland ignores the rules of the two-lane road, making his own lane as he tries without success to cut in line.  Meanwhile, stranded motorists play card games as the minutes pile up into hours... 

Others play chess, seemingly oblivious to evidence of other kinds of pile-ups.

Still others pass soccer balls to pass the time.

While patient, imperturbable workhorses do what horses must do...

Images of caged monkeys, a caged llama, and caged lions may be Godard's deadpan way of asking who is really trapped here, and why...

Meanwhile, Roland and Corinne are getting nowhere...

…along with everyone else, whether they've stayed in their lane or not.

Below, our protagonists attempt to slip their Facellia behind a red late-Fifties Panhard Dyna Cabriolet Grand Standing (almost a movie title in itself) while a Renault Dauphine hugs a tree.

Godard shows us more abandoned roadside wrecks being towed away, yet we see no evidence of anyone coming to the aid of victims laid out along the roadside. The tone is morbidly satirical, and maybe a reminder that the term "black humor" was invented by French critics to describe stories by Jonathan Swift. The humor works because it's based on exaggeration of things we could see in society and out on the road in 1967, and the traffic jam gives Godard a way to show how people use their cars as projections of themselves, as well as symbolizing materialism.   

This traffic jam occupies around a fifth of the film's running time, and while it's a car spotter's dream, it's a nightmare for humanists.  Godard offers title cards announcing episodes, and "The Class Struggle" begins when Roland and Corinne, having just escaped the traffic jam, witness a collision between a Triumph and a farm tractor.  In a sharp and witty argument, the privileged passenger of the roadster (her boyfriend having expired at the wheel) and the farmer exchange insults that expose their prejudices.  This accident scene, like the others, is notable for the liberal splattering of ketchup on the victims, which is ironic because the French normally disdain using that condiment anywhere else...

Roland and Corinne decline to wait for the police to bear witness to the accident, instead driving on in the rain toward the country house of her parents. They stop to pick up a female hitchhiker, only to be carjacked by the woman's gun-toting boyfriend, who's been hiding behind a wreck. He informs them that he's here to launch the flamboyant era of film-making, and proves he's a magician by prompting Corinne to pull a rabbit from the glovebox.  This isn't the first or last time Godard reminds us we're watching a film...  

After escaping the carjackers, Roland and Corinne encounter Emily Bronte and Tom Thumb, and Roland wonders why they are trapped in a film with crazy people.  Emily Bronte delivers a poetic speech about the cosmos.

The protagonists run a cyclist off the road, and then crash their Facel into a multi-car pileup; showing the car used as an actual weapon is another way of satirizing "normal" aggression behind the wheel. Now Roland and Corinne are on foot, still fixated on reaching that country house, and we are reminded that one title that Godard considered for "Weekend" was "The Odyssey".  

Roland and Corinne escape on foot from more flaming catastrophes after some failed efforts at getting help, eventually hitching a ride with piano movers... 

After a grand piano is unloaded at a working farm, Godard treats us to Mozart's Piano Sonata No.18 in D Major, and the pianist delivers a lecture on the harmonic virtues of Mozart, noting echoes in modern pop (he mentions the Beatles), decrying modern "serious" music, to which he claims nobody listens...

For a moment it seems we are, for the first time in this film, in real civilization, and Godard lets us linger there for awhile.  He shows us a farm family and workers enthralled by the music, and his camera makes a couple of slow 360-degree circles around the farmyard, pondering the simple geometry and workmanlike order of the buildings and farm machines.

Maybe this is a comment on the value of art, and maybe it's here to remind us how order and harmony look and sound.  

Our protagonists are still determined to get to that country house.  While attempting to thumb a ride, they are rejected by motorists after they fail a quiz: Do they prefer Mao or Johnson?  Are they in a film? A crew on a garbage truck picks them up, and then delivers a lecture on colonialism and capitalism. These scenes don't work as well as the epic traffic jam or the piano session, perhaps because the humor of exaggeration doesn't apply.  Roland and Corinne eventually get to her father's country house to discover that he has died, and contend with her mother over his fortune. This episode doesn't end well, but by this point in the film we expect nothing will...

"Weekend" begins with an epic traffic jam, but it ends with something that looks a whole lot like the collapse of civilization. The easy satire of exaggerating human aggression and greed gives way to scenes of  armed revolutionaries invading a picnic, taking hostages including Roland and Corinne, slaughtering farm animals, killing Roland, and indulging in cannibalism (well, it appears to be a piece of chicken; this is not a film for vegans). Several critics thought this was a masterwork back in 1968. Today this approach to satire no longer works; showing motorists engaged in armed conflict after a fender-bender wouldn't be such a case of exaggeration now. In an era of mass shootings in supermarkets and schools, Godard's 1967 vision of armed assault on innocent bystanders is showing us what we already know. "Weekend", like the society it depicts, falls apart at the end.  We can look at it and say, "We've seen this movie before."

*Footnote:  We took a look at Godard's first film, a groundbreaker that also featured a lot of cars (mostly stolen), in December 27, 2020, with "Stolen Cars and Stolen Kisses in Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless'."  A review of the British animated film "Automania 2000" which in 1963 predicted traffic jams lasting years (along with the collapse of civilization) was posted here along with a review of the museum catalog for MoMA's current Automania exhibit on October 12, 2021. And classic cars featured in classic thrillers are pictured in "Speeding Into Darkness: The Cars of Film Noir", posted March 21, 2020.

Photo Credits:  All images are from "Weekend", copyright 1967 by Films Copernic.

Colorado English Motoring Conclave Part 2: Production Cars and Fast Plastic

We covered antiques and rarities in Part 1 of this year's Colorado Conclave survey, and the idea for Part 2 was to cover production cars.  But "production" can be a slippery term when you're talking about England's specialist car makers.  For example, Aston Martin's DB 2/4 was that firm's most popular version of the DB 2...maybe because the "/4" indicated extra seating in the fastback coupe, which Aston optimistically called a saloon. 764 copies of the DB 2/4 found buyers, and 565 were the Mark I version shown.  But of those, only 73 were drophead coupés like this one; the rest were the then-novel hatchback.  So during Mark I production from 1953 through '55; Aston Martin Lagonda built about 2 dozen of these convertibles every year… 

They were nicely turned out, with alloy-paneled coachwork by Tickford, and the 125 hp from the 2.6 liter DOHC Lagonda inline six (140 hp in the 2.9 liter Mk. II) gave the 2,700 pound car lively (but not Jaguar level) performance.  Then again, the point of the Aston was its handbuilt exclusivity, and the drophead delivered that...

You probably wouldn't expect to encounter a Citroen from a French crime thriller at an English car show, unless you knew that Citroen operated an assembly plant at Slough, 20 miles west of London, starting in 1926.  This catered to a stong British market for CItroen's early rear-drive cars (over 20,000 sold in Britain by 1923) and naturally continued when Andre Citroen launched the pioneering front-drive Traction Avant series in 1934. This one, a "barn-find" Traction Avant* Light 15 model from 1954, features a 1.9 liter inline 4. The Big 15 model featured a 2.9 liter six.

Products of Citroen's Slough Works included a Deux Chevaux truck supplied to the Royal Navy, and ID 19s sent to Connaught Cars*, which having sold off its GP racers, was modifying these IDs with bucket seats and DS instrument panels as the British market-only D-GT, and doing a brisk business.  Citroen's Slough branch became a sales and service operation after 1965...

The Slough-built Citroens, like the "slow-built" early Jaguars, featured wood interior trim and leather seating (unlike their French sisters) along with the requisite righthand drive. The Jaguar Mark V below, from 1951, was built just as Jaguar was phasing out the Standard-based six cylinder pushrod engines with Jaguar-designed OHV heads, to the new twin-cam XK series. These were among the first Jaguars that Max Hoffman imported into the car-hungry postwar US.  Like the Citroen, they are good examples of Thirties body design that survived into the Fifties. The Citroen's unit construction and front-drive, however, were more predictive of future design trends...

A trio of Jaguar XK 120s lines up for spectators.  The Conclave invites all visitors to vote on their favorite cars in each category, and as Britain had dozens of manufacturers during the decades covered, there can be a lot of categories.  And with nearly 500 vehicles (including motorcycles) expected, there were plenty of choices. The red XK120* below is a roadster (or  open top sports) with side curtains instead of the roll-down windows on the blue drophead coupé.  The XK120 dropheads and fixed-head coupés added wood dash panels and door caps. Wire wheels were an option throughout the production which began in 1949 with the roadster; the   fixed-roof arrived for 1951, and the drophead for 1953.  Ordering the knock-off wire wheels meant deleting the rear wheel spats shown on the roadster.  

The XK series of Jaguars had performance to match their sensational looks, and that sold them to Americans.  In its first version, the 3.4 liter (210 cubic inch) inline six made 160 hp, as much as the then-new Cadillac V8. Later SE versions offered 180 hp, and by 1953 the C-Type head offered by US Jaguar dealers meant 210 hp, which was near what the Chrysler Hemi offered.  All XKs featured aluminum heads with inclined valves operated by chain-driven dual overhead cams.  The XK 120 gave way to the more practical XK 140 during 1954, and by 1957 the 140 would be the first production car with 4-wheel disc brakes.

Ironically, Jaguar chief William Lyons had originally planned to offer this engine first in a luxury sedan called the Mk VII, and had stylist Malcolm Sayer dream up a two-seat roadster as a sort of rolling display stand for that engine while engineers readied the big sedan.  When it showed up at the Earls Court auto show in autumn of 1948, though, it attracted so many deposits that Jaguar found itself in the sports car business.  When the big sedan appeared, it featured a mix of traditional and modern features, with smooth curves enclosing a leather-lined interior complete with wood dash and seatback picnic tables, all fronted by a traditional radiator.

This one is a Mk IX; both the Mk VIII and Mk IX differ from the Mk VII in having the swoop of chrome trim running from the upper front to the lower rear fenders.  This was used as a color separation line on two-tone cars.  Jaguar was unable to resist two-toning in the 1950s, but unlike Mercedes they never caved in to tail fins...  

A British racing green 3.8 Mk II lounges in the sun; it shares the leather interior, wood trim and picnic tables with the bigger Mark IX and contemporary Mark X.  You're probably wondering how a Mark II followed a Mark V by a decade; you'd need to know that the 3.8 liter sedan appearing in 1959 was Version 2.0 (bigger windows, bigger engine) of the 3.4 and 2.4 liter sedans that Jaguar introduced in 1956…these, however, were known only in retrospect as Mark I.  Jaguar nomenclature has never been a study in linear logic.  No matter, the compact, powerful, disc-braked sedans were a hit with police (and gangsters) and with Britain's equivalent of stock car racers...

Likewise, while Jaguar made C, D, and also E-Types like these specimens lined up on the lawn below, there were never any A or B-Types. Illogical, no? Well, when Jaguar introduced their two-time Le Mans-winning road racer in 1951, it was originally called the XK120C (competition) in order to convince race organizers that this was just a version of their production car.  Eventually, Jaguar would build 50 or so or what they finally called the C-Type.  It was followed in '54 by the D-Type (a 3-time Le Mans winner) logically enough, and when in 1961 the company decided to capitalize on the resemblance of their new production sports car to the D-Type racers, they called it the E-Type. This photo shows all three flavors of Series 1 E-Type*, with OTS (open two seater, often called roadster) in red on the left, 2+2 coupe in center with 2 added seats, 6" more wheelbase and taller roof, introduced for the '66 model year, and the original 2-passenger fixed-head coupe on the right. The 2+2 chassis would eventually form the basis of the Series 3 V12 in 1971; all Series 3 cars had the 102" wheelbase, not for a longer engine (it wasn't) but for more cabin space.

The E-Type, with its 4-wheel independent suspension joining all-disc brakes and stressed-skin body construction, looked like a revolution as the Sixties were just beginning, but at the end of the Fifties, British Motor Company's senior engineer Alec Issigonis (later Sir Alexander) launched what would be a more far-reaching revolution with his Minis, transverse-engined front-drive urban runabouts with surprising room for four within an 80" wheelbase and 120" overall length. The 850cc cars were sold by Austin as the Austin 7 and Morris Mini Minor. Mini* became a separate make in 1969, and BMW retained the Mini brand after purchasing Rover Group in 1994. The transverse engine, front-drive scheme became a space-saving template for later cars like the Fiat 128 and VW Golf.  BMW launched a larger, modern Mini in 2001.  It retained the front-drive tranverse engine layout, but engines and transmissions were no longer forced to share the same oil...

The original Mini Countryman wagon had authentic wood on the exterior, along with 4.2" more wheelbase and 9" more overall length. In addition to the Countryman, de luxe "badge-engineered" versions were built with extended trunks (think of the later VW Jetta vs. Golf) and traditional RIley or Wolseley radiator grilles. But the Mini that really became a fashion statement in Swinging Sixties London was the Mini Cooper S, a performance version originally launched by John Cooper's race car outfit (whose mid-engined racers won Formula 1 driver and manufacturer titles in '59 and '60) and adopted by BMC in much the way they'd adopted Donald Healey's Hundred to become the Austin Healey 100-4.  Especially after Paddy Hopkirk won the '64 Monte Carlo Rally (Minis would go on to win 4 rally titles), the Mini was the car for rock stars, pop singers and aspiring actors to drive around London.  BMC launched the Mini Moke, an elemental front-drive utility vehicle, in the same year, and would continue production into 1993...

The Italians got into the Mini act as well, with Innocenti* building a version which became popular on Europe's crowded city streets.  It offered the same drivetrain as the BMC versions (this one's a Cooper-spec. 1000) and the added refinement of roll-down door windows with the triangular vent panes that also appeared on some Australian versions of the Mini.  This one also has flared wheel arches over wider wheels.

A couple years before the first Mini, Colin Chapman attempted a revolution in roadgoing sports cars with the Lotus Elite. This green Elite participated in the Colorado Grand* rally, and headed up a line of Lotus cars spanning decades, each one an example of extracting lots of performance out of relatively small engines by minimizing weight and optimizing aerodynamics. All the cars in this row are bodied in fiberglass, and they were all fast enough to make car enthusiasts want them, despite the Lotus reputation for fragility and high maintenance demands... 

The Elite (Type 14) at the right below appeared in 1957, and was Colin Chapman's first attempt at a series (if not mass) produced, dual-purpose sports car that could be raced on weekends and driven to the office on workdays. A 1.2 liter, single overhead cam Coventry Climax four featured aluminum block and heads, and was based on that firm's fire pump engine.  To its left, a red Elan drophead with 1.6 liter Ford-based four and Cosworth-designed twin-cam head.  Then, in white, a mid-engined Esprit Series 3 with Lotus-designed 16 valve twin-cam 2.2 liter four and Citroen 5-speed transmission, which outlived the Citroen Maserati in Lotus products (Citroen sneaks into our all-English show yet again).  Barely visible beyond it, a 21st century, green Lotus Elise with  mid-mounted Toyota power...

For that pioneering Elite, Peter Kirwan-Taylor designed an elegantly simple aerodynamic body that was, after the tiny Berkeley (see end of this essay) the first unitized fiberglass body-chassis to reach production. It featured a steel subframe for the front-mounted engine, with a reinforcing roll hoop around the winshield, to which the door hinges attached. Weight was only 1,455 pounds, and this meant that the most highly tuned Climax engines (95 or 105 hp) offered startling performance to go with razor-sharp handling.  Even with the base 75 hp engine, England's Motor magazine reached just under 112 mph, and 0-60 in 11.4 seconds in 1960. This came at a price; that year the P.O.E. price in the USA was $4,108 for that base Elite, only $400 less than a Jaguar XK150 with nearly 3 times the power.

The flat tail with recessed panel was unique in 1957, and predictive of Sixties GT designs. Sound transmission into the cockpit was a problem, especially from the rear suspension towers. Because of the deep interior door recesses, the compound-curved side windows needed to be removed and stowed for real ventilation, an all-or-nothing proposition.  Despite these impracticalities and its high price, the Elite managed to qualify as a production car in racing classes, and more importantly to put Lotus on the map as a car maker.  Before giving way to the more practical, steel backbone chassis Elan after 1963, Lotus claimed that they'd built 988 Elites. It's not certain that all these body / chassis units turned into finished cars, however, as some Elites were sold in England as kits to help lower the price.  

One surprise visitor to the show was this Berkeley, a minimalist 2-seater more in the spirit of the original Lotus 7 than the Elite, though it featured, like the Elite, a unitized fiberglass body-chassis (here reinforced with alloy) in 1956, a year before the first Elite, just in time to respond to the minicar boom prompted the Suez crisis and resulting fuel shortages. It was a product of designer Laurie Bond's proposal to Berkeley Coachworks' Charles Panter; Berkeley Ltd. had gained experience with fiberglass as England's leading builder of travel trailers but was looking for something that would offer steadier cash flow than the seasonal caravan business. The original front-drive Berkeley, offered in 4 or 3 wheel form (another tax-saving option, like those Elite kits) was powered by 2-stroke, 2 cylinder engines. This example, like the 1958 Road & Track test car, originally had a 328 cc Excelsior twin, making about 18 hp.  Their test weight for the 70" wheelbase car was 850 lb., and it reached 50 mph in a leisurely 28 seconds, topping out at 58 mph (65 with the top up). There was also a 3-cylinder, 492 cc version, and in one, Lorenzo Bandini won the 750 class at the '58 Monza 12-hour race.  

This example, however, has been retrofitted with a Honda motorcycle engine making around 3 times the horsepower of that old 2-stroke.  Fast plastic indeed... 

*Footnote:  Previous posts in this blog referencing some of the subject cars follow.  Dates are in parentheses:

Aston Martin DB2/4: "Rescued from Obscurity: Aston Martin in the 50s & 60s (5-11-20).

Citroen Traction + BMC Mini: "First Modern Car: Round Up the Usual Suspects (9-26-20).

Connaught:"Celtic Rainmaker: Connaught Broke the Longest Drought in GP Racing"(7-24-16).

Jaguar XK120: "Game Changer: Jaguar XK120" (7-16-17).

Jaguar E-Type: "Racing Improves the Breed" (8-13-17). 

Innocenti sports and GT cars: "The Etceterini Files, Part 4:  Innocenti 186 GT" (2-3-16).

This year's Colorado Grand Rally was pictured in "Summertime Dream" (9-26-21).

Photo Credits:  All photos are by the author, except for the shot of the 3 Jaguar E-Types in a row (14th from the top) which was posted online by members of the Rocky Mountain Triumph Club.