Lime Rock Concours 2021: Rain on a Pretty Good Parade

This past autumn's  Historic Festival at Lime Rock, Connecticut welcomed a collection of vintage, classic and just plain oddball cars that was as deep as it was wide. Mother Nature did not smile upon the event, but despite the rain and the ongoing pandemic, there was a surprising turnout of participants.  You're probably beginning to wonder when we're going to tell you something about this mysterious car. It's a 1966 Fitch Phoenix; does that help?  Let's start with John Fitch.  Born in 1917, Captain Fitch flew P51 Mustangs in WW2 for the U.S. Army Air Corps, and was one of the few pilots to shoot down one of the Luftwaffe's Me262 jet fighters. After the war he helped found Lime Rock Park race track, and raced on the HWM* Alta GP team alongside Stirling Moss.  After racing for Cunningham (winning the '53 Sebring 12 Hours with Phil Walters) and Mercedes-Benz, Fitch served as manager and driver for Chevrolet's Corvette SS team at the 1957 Sebring 12 Hours. This led to a good relationship with Zora Arkus Duntov, the head of the Corvette program at GM...

It's easy to forget that Chevy's Corvair prompted lots of interest among car enthusiasts before there was a Ford Mustang, and the 2nd series '65 car with fully independent rear suspension attracted the interest of SCCA racers like John Fitch, who built a series of Corvair Sprints with 4 carburetors and body mods. He then approached GM about supplying engines for a 2 seater GT, and Coby Whitmore designed a body on a shorter 95" wheelbase that anticipated the retro-classic themes of the 70s, with long hood (despite rear engine) and twin front fender spare tire humps, required because the Fitch Phoenix had 2 tire widths, 6" front and 7" rear. Unlike non-Fitch Corvairs, it also had 4 Weber carbs and Girtling front disc brakes. The removable roof panel and recessed rear window also anticipate 70s themes. The original plan was for a fiberglass body, but after Fitch saw the Apollo GT by Intermeccanica, he had Frank Reisner's Italian company body the prototype in steel. Having witnessed the horrific crash at Le Mans in 1955 while racing for Mercedes, Fitch designed the Phoenix with energy-absorbing crash zones. The car weighed 2,150 pounds, had a top speed of 130, and hit 60 in 7.5 seconds. Owing to sales of the front-engined Chevy II, and also to Ralph Nader's success with 1965's Unsafe at Any Speed, Corvair sales slowed greatly after 1966, GM discontinued the Corvair after 1969, and this prototype remains the only Fitch Phoenix.  To read more about the HWM cars raced by Fitch and Moss, please see our post "Forgotten Classic: Racing into Obscurity on Alta & Chevy Power" (11-23-20). The Corvette SS appears in "Forgotten Classic: Chevy's Corvette SS Ran Before the Ban" (7-18-20). And for a history of Intermeccanica, see "The Etceterini Files Part 28:  Intermeccanica" (1-12-22).  Also, a subscriber who knew John Fitch wrote to fill in more detail on the man's accomplishments.  See the Postscript for that...

This Vignale-bodied Cunningham C3, built 1953-'55, was Briggs Cunningham's effort to convince race organizers that his C2, C4R and C5R road racers were related to a production car, and also to generate some funds for his efforts to win Le Mans with an American car.  Cunningham's 10 racers were bodied in Florida, but the C3 road cars (of which there were 19 coupes and 9 convertibles) were on a longer chassis with Italian bodies designed by Michelotti. Excepting a Cadillac-powered C1 and Meyer Drake-powered C6R, all Cunninghams were powered by the Chrysler 331 hemi V8. For more detail on the Cunningham GT and road racing cars with a photo essay, you could see our blog archives for "A Moment Too Soon: The Cars of Briggs Swift Cunningham" (4-15-17).

The Alfa Romeo P3 put that company on the map in the racing world and beyond, in the same way the Type 35 had done the trick for Bugatti a few years earlier. The car was Alfa's second monoposto racer, but their first GP single-seater. Introduced midway in the 1932 season, the P3 would eventually win 46 races. Under the hood is the Vittorio Jano-designed dual overhead cam straight eight composed of two 4-cylinder blocks, with twin Roots-type superchargers. Jano steadily improved the car over its life; engine displacement increased from 2.65 liters to 2.9 liters in 1934, and again to just under 3.2 liters in 1935, the year Alfa introduced independent front suspension. Drivers included immortals like Nuvolari, Chiron, Varzi, Campari and Biondetti.  And running the Alfa racing team was a guy you may recall: Enzo Ferrari.  For more on Alfa Romeo in the 1930s, you could have a look at our post on "Alfa Romeo's Genius Bar:  Jano, Anderloni, Figoni & Zagato" (10-3-19).

Albrecht von Goertz designed the 4-passenger BMW 503 along with the more famous 507 two-seater, and both cars went into production in spring of 1956. Goertz gave car the low, lean proportions of contemporary Italian designs, yet reinforced the BMW identity by retaining the traditional vertical twin-kidney grille. That grille is missing on this example because the original owner took it to Ghia Aigle (Ghia's Swiss offshoot) to be remodeled after a front-end collision.  The 503 coupe and cabriolet shared their 3.2 liter V8 with the 507, and stayed in production into 1959. To read more in our posts on the 503 and 507, see "That Other Five Series: BMW's Baroque Angel Led to 503 and 507" (10-20-19).

If the car below were part of a quiz as to its origins, the ostrich-skin interior might have you guessing "French", especially because most upper-crust French cars in the classic era had right hand drive like English cars...

But you'd be wrong; it's a Jaguar SS100, introduced by William Lyons and his SS Cars (that name changed after WW2) in 1936, and made until 1939 in 2.66 liter form (called the 2-1/2 Liter, 191 examples made) and starting in 1938 as a 3.5 liter (116 examples). The sweeping fender line and fold-down windshield make for a dashing profile, and the 3.5 liter offered plenty of performance with a claimed 100 mph at a reasonable price, part of the Lyons formula that would allow Jaguar to take a lion's share of the postwar performance car market.  Inline six cylinder engines were based upon Standard Motor blocks, but with overhead valve Jaguar heads. 

As with many British cars of the era, Lucas headlights play a powerful part in a composition of separate elements including the radiator and its steel braces, the central fog light, and the flowing fenders.  As memorable as it was un-aerodynamic... To read more on the SS100 and predecessor SS90 in our blog series,  see "Forgotten Classic:  Jaguar's SS100 Coupe" (4-19-20).

Iso Rivolta first moved from making refrigerators into making cars with the Isetta bubble car, later licensed to BMW, in the early Fifties.  By 1962 they were offering this Bertone-bodied GT designed by G. Giugiaro. Power was supplied by a Chevy 327, and four-wheel disc brakes and a De Dion rear supsension rounded out a chassis designed by Giotto Bizzarrini.  Nearly 800 of these cars were built before production ended in 1970. To read more of the Iso story, see "Born From Refrigerators:  Iso Rivolta" (10-20-18) 

Two more American-engined Italian designs hunkered down in the rain, both penned, like the Iso, by Giugiaro. The early Sixties Chevy-engined Gordon Keeble GK1 in the foreground was designed for a British concern and bodied by Bertone; the better-known late-Sixties DeTomaso Mangusta behind it was Ford-powered and built by Ghia.  

All of the 100 Gordon-Keebles built from 1964-'67 were equipped with right hand drive.  None were exported to the US back then, but the car has gained a following, because the 1960 GK1 prototype was a trend-setter.  To read more on the Gordon-Keeble, see our post "Forgotten Classic: Gordon Keeble---Sign of the Turtle" (12-6-21) 

Another Italian body design on display was by Pietro Frua, who had bodied various custom and production Maseratis when he cooked up this charmer for Germany's Hans Glas, the father of the Goggomobil. By 1964 Glas had moved upmarket with this GT in 1300 and 1700cc displacements. An innovative toothed fiberglass belt operated a single overhead cam on the inline four. Just over 5,000 Glas fastback coupes were built by 1967; these cabriolets, however, are very scarce.

In mid-1967 BMW gobbled up the firm because it needed the production capacity; this move also conveniently eliminated a potential competitor for their Neue Klasse sedans and coupes. This led to a brief period of BMW-badged and engined Glas GT coupes, and a Glas V8-engined BMW 2+2. You can read more about this story  in "Forgotten Classics: Frua Designs for Hans Glas and BMW" (12-2-18).

Below we see one of no more than 7 Bugatti Type 59s built as a GP racing version of the 3.3 liter, twin cam straight eight Type 57.  These were campaigned with little success in 1934 and 1935, because the better-funded efforts from Alfa Romeo and especially Mercedes and Auto Union had eclipsed Bugatti's engineering efforts, mostly with more sophisticated suspension and braking, and early efforts at aerodynamics.  These Bugattis are lovely, though, with their cubist-influenced engine externals showing off sharply defined geometry. The piano-wire wheels were a signature feature, with the non-structural wires employed for centering, and the alloy hubs providing  strength.

A closeup of the famous solid front axle with leaf springs passing through it reminds us that despite some pretty advanced notions about engine design, Ettore Bugatti was reluctant to fully embrace the 20th century in other areas. The Type 59 had mechanical brakes as well as solid axles front and rear.  But many observers would agree that it still has buckets more charm than its 21st century, high technology namesake...

Postscript:  Subscriber Keith Carlson was a friend of the late race driver and inventor John Fitch, and  wrote to mention what an entertaining dinner companion he was, and to note the many patents Fitch held for his safety-related inventions. These included those familiar yellow, sand-filled plastic barrels you've seen at freeway off-ramps known as Fitch Barriers, a displaceable guardrail that would redirect cars along the rail instead of the traffic stream, a compression barrier for oval racetracks, and a driver capsule to prevent neck injuries in races.  Fitch crashed 8 cars into his patented barriers at highway speeds to demonstrate their effectiveness during tests, and also patented a steering system for hot air balloons...

Photo Credit:  All photos were generously supplied by the photographer, LCDR Jonathan D. Asbury, USN.  

Roadside Attraction: Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, and the Taliesin Vehicle Fleet

 

The Great Depression resulted in record unemployment rates among architects as well as across other industries.  In 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright's wife Olgivanna suggested starting an architecture school at Wright's Taliesin compound in Spring Green, Wisconsin.  This proved to be a source of income in terms of tuitions, and also a source of enthusiastic labor for the many ongoing repair and remodeling projects at Taliesin. Members of the Taliesin Fellowship included 25-year old Edgar Kaufmann Jr., who left the Fellowship in 1935.  That same year, Edgar Kaufmann Sr., owner of a Pittsburgh department store, commissioned Wright to design a house at Bear Run, Pennsylvania that Wright named Fallingwater.  And in January of '35, Wright and Olgivanna had taken students to a site in the foothills of Arizona's McDowell Mountains.  With deep snowdrifts and temperatures of 40 below zero in Spring Green, the prospect of a winter in the warm, dry desert must have been seductive. Wright had been visiting the site since working as a design consultant on the Arizona Biltmore in Scottsdale in 1928. The hotel had opened only 8 months before the '29 stock market crash...

In 1937, when Wright received the commission for the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, Wright was able to purchase the land for his desert dreamscape.  By 1938, Fallingwater had been completed, the Johnson Wax Center was under construction, and Wright had appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.  Wright had sketched a plan for a school, architecture studio and living quarters including a music pavilion, with the idea that Taliesin West would serve as the winter headquarters for his architecture practice and school.

Taliesin West's truncated, pyramidal forms echo the mountain slopes, with the local rocks and sand imparting harmonious color to thick "desert concrete" walls. 

Wright echoed the theme of diagonals from his plan sketches in the roof structure of the architecture studio, where triangular supports extend their lines into a forest canopy of wood trusses... 

As Wright's career paralleled the rise of the automobile, the creation of Taliesin West paralleled the rise of Arizona as a tourist destination, and also presaged the explosive growth of suburbs after World War II.  

In the Thirties, the Taliesin team made their road trips in a convoy including small American Bantams, a Packard and a Cord.  The AC 16/80 roadster, shown above in the desert, first appeared in 1936 and might have been a chilly way to make the winter pilgrimage.  In the postwar era, the Taliesin fleet was updated to include Jeeps and Crosleys, including a pickup and two Hotshot roadsters shown in the snow at Spring Green.

Taliesin students were usually assigned to Crosleys on the long road trip, but Frank and Olgivanna seemed to enjoy them as well.  Below, a '49 Hotshot... 

After Wright designed the Park Avenue car showroom for Max Hoffman* in New York, Hoffman gave him a Mercedes 300 sedan and 300SL coupe as part of his architectural fee.  The 300SL was an early production Gullwing, and dates from 1954.  Both cars featured Wright's signature Cherokee red paint.

Taliesin West's diagonal wood beams and canvas-paneled roof surfaces echo the angles in plan and in the wood trusses, and the canvas reflects the material used on the original desert encampments built by students... 

When the structures at Taliesin West were completed, the place felt like an isolated oasis in the wilds of the desert. But when postwar development brought suburban sprawl and traffic, Wright complained to authorities (to no avail) that overhead power lines were impeding the scenic views, and asked for them to be placed underground.  In a way, Wright should've been the last person to be surprised by the explosive growth of suburbia.  He had never liked cities himself, and his Broadacre City proposal involved an acre of land for each house, but the Broadacre renderings produced at Taliesin showed much more lush greenery than would ever be supported by Arizona's scant rainfall...

The houses that sprouted in the desert across from Taliesin West were not to Wright's liking either.  After all, they had not been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright...

Taliesin West has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  And the street name has changed since the early days of tents in the desert; it's now called Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard.

Late in January of 2020, the School of Architecture at Taliesin ceased its operations after talks between the school's board of governors and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation deadlocked.  The buildings at Taliesin West are still open for walking tours, which need to be arranged in advance by contacting the tour department at 480-627-5375.

*Footnote:  We took a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style work on Forest Avenue in Oak Park, Illinois, including notable houses and the nearby Unity Temple, in our post for November 2, 2017. The 1940 Lincoln Continental modified to Wright's design was pictured with his unbuilt Road Machine proposal in "Architect-Designed Cars: Part 2", posted May 21, 2017. Wright's showroom for Max Hoffman was pictured in "Max Hoffman: An Eye for Cars and the Studebaker Porsche", posted on May 1, 2016.

Photo Credits:  

All color photos:  the author

Monochrome photos: 

Arizona Biltmore:  franklloydwright.org

Plan drawing: archinect.com

Studio interior, Taliesin vehicle fleet, AC & Crosley roadsters:  Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

Wright with Mercedes:  carthrottle.com

Aerial view:  Google Earth

The Etceterini Files Part 28: Intermeccanica, Sometimes Forgotten, Still in Business

If you're a fan of the diverse, delightful and often tiny Italian sports cars nicknamed etceterini, you've probably guessed the red coupe below is one of the handful of Zagato-bodied Fiat Abarth 500 GT coupes built starting in 1957, shortly after Fiat introduced its first air-cooled car. That would be a good guess, but wrong, even though the chassis of our mystery car was based, like that of Zagato's coupe, on the Fiat 500 floor pan. The rear-mounted engine, however, was from Austria's Stey-Daimler-Puch* combine, and its 2 cylinders were horizontally opposed rather than in line as on the Fiat. It was the brainchild of Hungarian enthusiast Frank Reisner, who had moved to Italy from Canada, and founded a company called Intermeccanica to make performance accessories. To Reisner, SDP's version of the Nuova 500 sedan, built under Fiat license but with Austrian-designed engines, may have seemed a better candidate for a high-performance variant. He christened the result the Steyr Puch IMP 700 GT coupe, and launched it in 1959.  

The body design, built in alloy by Corna in Italy, closely followed the rounded forms of the Zagato, down to the the wraparound rear window.  The engine made 40 hp from its 643 cc, and this put it into a different performance league than the 23 hp Abarth 500 Zagato, and approached the power of the Fiat Abarth 750.  Carlo Abarth didn't appreciate the competition from across the border in his native country, and perhaps for this reason only 21 of the  diminutive IMP 700 GTs were assembled by Intermeccanica by 1962.

In autumn of that year Intermeccanica had another project in the pages of the car mags. This was the Apollo GT, which had its origins in a friendship between engineer Milt Brown and stylist Ron Plescia, then a recent grad of the Art Center College in Pasadena.  Their idea was to build a European style GT around a mass-produced American engine. Brown designed a conventional chassis with drum brakes and a live rear axle; the most modern feature was the lightweight Buick 215 cubic inch V8 with its aluminum block.  Plescia drew a svelte coupe body with Italian design cues, and this was translated into an alloy Apollo 3500GT prototype by Corna in Italy. Franco Scaglione* added rear quarter windows to the fastback, sketched a convertible, and switched the divided air intake for a Ferrari-like oval before Intermeccanica began production of bodies in steel...

These were then shipped to International Motor Co. in Oakland, California for installation on the Apollo chassis.  IMC reported plenty of orders, and the automotive press generally liked the car, but the company soon realized they were losing money on each car they completed, with the price set at around $6,000.  Perhaps Brown and his partners had not checked out the history of previous international projects like Nash Healey and the Dual Ghia.  By 1965 the original enterprise had foundered for lack of financing, and then a Texas operation took over production of the same car in 1966 under the name Vetta Ventura. Those cars featured a cast iron Buick of 300 cubic inches, as fitted to the last Apollo 5000GTs.  By this time GM had discontinued the alloy V8 and sold the rights to Rover.

Tail lights appeared to be production units turned 90 degrees.  We'd thought maybe Lucas units for BMC, but we were wrong.  These Italian lights are identical to the ones on the Ferrari California from the same era, and they cost over $2,000 a set today.  The metal work around the recess shows careful craftsmanship...

The total production of these cars is usually quoted as 76 fastback coupes, 11 convertibles, and one prototype 2+2. The Apollo failed to generate profits for International Motor Company, but it gave Intermeccanica a foothold in the world of small-volume specialists in Europe.

In 1966 Jack Griffith, a Long Island car dealer who had been mounting Ford V8 engines in the fiberglass-bodied English TVR chassis, was looking someone to build steel bodies for his new GT project.  Styling of the prototype was handled by Robert Cumberford, later the design editor of Automobile Magazine, and Intermeccanica used its recent experience with the Apollo to get the new car ready for the '66 New York Auto Show. On a 101.5" wheelbase, it was in a different world than the stubby,  crude-looking TVR-based Grifiths..

Cumberford's design begins with a simple curved bumper surmounting a shallow air intake, with tight fender curves setting off the wheels.  Chassis design was of square steel tubing, with a live rear exle borrowed from Ford's Mustang, while Griffith's engine choice was the 235 hp 273 V8 offered in Plymouth's Barracuda; disc brakes like those on Shelby's Cobra rounded out the package.  The car attracted favorable attention, but Griffith was only able to deliver 14 cars to customers before exhausting his funds in 1967.

Engineer and automotive writer Steve Wilder then persuaded Holman and Moody, who had prepared NASCAR and GT40 Mk.II racers for Ford, to get involved with the Griffith project. Switching to Ford power and the Omega nameplate, with light styling changes (twin front bumpers, open headlights), Holman & Moody assembled another 33 of the Intermeccanica- bodied cars as the Omega GT.  The familiar pattern of specialist builders exhausting their funds struck again, and then Intermeccanica found funding to build the complete cars in Italy, adopting the US-certified Ford 302 in spring of 1968, and offering cars through a distributor in New Jersey, first under the Torino name, and then when Ford protested (they were making a glorified Fairlane called Torino) under the Italia nameplate.  By the end of production in 1972 around 400 cars had been built.

In 1965, Robert Cumberford, the Griffith / Omega / Torino / Italia designer, schemed out a Mustang sport wagon with friends at J. Walter Thompson ad agency, and sent a Mustang notchback to Intermeccanica for transformation from his drawings into the real thing.  When completed, the car showed careful attention to details, with a backlight retracting into the tailgate, and tail lights split to accommodate the gate's opening.  Cumberford and partners showed the car to Ford executives, but Ford was having trouble keeping up with demand for its existing Mustang lineup in 1966, so the car remained a one-off...

Taking a more expansive view of the sport wagon idea, New York's Murena Motors commissioned Intermeccanica to build a 4-seat luxury wagon on a 118" wheelbase chassis with a live rear axle, but with a disc brake at each corner…a good thing about those brakes as the engine was a 429 Ford.  Performance was respectable, but the price was $15,000, and by 1969, when the Murena appeared, there was plenty of competition in the luxo GT class, though luxury SUVs had yet to appear.

The Murena's rear window sill departs from the straight fender line for no reason, and the thick C-pillar and tall, deeply-recessed backlight do not integrate well with the rest of the form. Overall, the Murena seemed too big and heavy to put much "sport" in sport wagon, and prospective customers apparently agreed.  Murena Motors folded in 1970 after selling under a dozen cars.. 

Not long after the Murena appeared, when General Motors Europe chief Bob Lutz met Frank Reisner at the Turin Show, the two discussed a project to spruce up Opel's offerings, which lacked anything like the Mercedes SL or the BMW CS series. Opel had recently introduced the Opel GT as an affordable 2-seater, and Lutz was looking for what would today be called a "halo car" to raise Opel's profile and generate showroom traffic. The resulting Indra, a collaboration between GM's Opel and Reisner's Intermeccanica, went into limited production in 1971.

Franco Scaglione* did the styling for the 3 models offered, which included the convertible above, the blue notchback below, and a fastback 2+2.  Reisner convinced Lutz and Opel to go with a new chassis specific to the Indra, and it featured 4-wheel ventilated disc brakes, a De Dion rear suspension from Opel's Diplomat sedan, ZF power steering, and engine choices including the 2.8 liter Opel inline 6 and the Chevy V8 in 327 and 350 versions.  The Indra was offered through Opel dealers in Europe, but not in the US.

Scaglione, an adherent of rounded forms and parabolic arcs, had never seemed to warm to the wedges popular in the Seventies.  While the rigid angularity of his notchback coupe seems unconvincing, his fastback 2+2 version of the Indra offers more continuity of form to go with the extra interior space.  It's the rarest of Indras, with just 27 built before GM pulled the plug on the program, shortly after Bob Lutz GM left for BMW.  There were also 60 convertibles and 40 notchback coupes.  Indra production ended in mid-1974.

Shortly after the Indra adventure, Frank Reisner schemed out a replica of the 1954-'58 Porsche Speedster, which had already become a sought-after collectible when the Intermeccanica version appeared in 1976.  It made clever use of a shortened VW Beetle platform and fiberglass bodywork to convincingly replicate what had been, after all, a very simple car.  Eventually, Intermeccanica would sell over 500 Speedster replicas, and inspire others like Beck to make replicas of Porsches.

By 2017 Intermeccanica was offering an all-electric version of its Convertible D replica.  Trim details make it hard to distinguish the fiberglass Intermeccanica from its steel-bodied Porsche forebears. Though purists lamented the lack of originality compared to Intermeccanica products of half a century earlier, the Reisner family credited the Porsche replicas with saving Intermeccanica.  In the crowded and competitive specialist car market, perhaps the most original idea is not always the winning hand to play...

*Footnote & Errata:  Puch and  Steyr cars were the subject of a retrospective in "Streamliners from Mitteleuropa: Steyr and Steyr Puch", which appeared on February 16, 2019.  Other designs from Franco Scaglione got the retrospective treatment in "Unsung Genius Franco Scaglione: The Arc of Success", posted December 20, 2017.  In our first version of this post we noted that Bob Lutz left GM for Ford. Though he did take a management job with Ford eventually, he spent a few years at BMW first, working on the 3 Series.  

Photo Credits:  

Top:  flickr.com 

2nd:  onlineshoppost.at

3rd thru 5th:  the author

6th & 7th:  Intermeccanica

8th & 9th:  Wikimedia

10th: Intermeccanica

11th:  en.wheelsage.org

12th:  reddit.com

13th & 15th:  Intermeccanica

14th:  bringatrailer.com

16th:  Wikimedia

17th & 18th:  Intermeccanica