Roadside Attraction: Used Car Culture, Café Racers and a Real Café at Alice's Restaurant

If you want to drive from Monterey Bay to San Francisco Bay, you have a couple of scenic choices. You could take Highway 1 north from Santa Cruz past Pescadero and through Half Moon Bay, and visit a lighthouse or two.  But then you'd miss the culinary and mechanical charms of Alice's Restaurant.  Named after Arlo Guthrie's song about another restaurant, and also after owner Alice Taylor in the late 60s, Alice's Restaurant in Woodside, CA has been a gathering place for gear heads for decades.  So choose Highway 9 instead, and wind your way north through the shady, majestic silence of the Henry Cowell Redwoods, through Felton and Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek, changing to Route 35 (Skyline Boulevard) in Castle Rock State Park after 20.2 miles.  Alice's awaits, at the corner of scenic, tree-lined Skyline Boulevard and Route 84, after another 10 miles.  

For a good while,  Porsche 911s peacefully coexisted at Alice's with artifacts of the Bay Area's flower child past: VW Microbuses in psychedelic colors, Norton Commandos and Triumph 650s. A few years back, a classic car rally called the California Targa stopped at Alice's.  Behind the mid-Sixties vintage BMW 2000 Ti in the foreground is a rare Iso Grifo coupe. That hood scoop, which looks a bit like a parking garage for Dinky Toys, signals the 7 liter engine option, in this case a 427 Chevy.  Superbikes and café racers showed up at Alice's too.

As Silicon Valley prospered and new zillionaires looked for scenic routes to test exotic machinery, supercars began to show up in eye-popping variety.  This is a McLaren Senna...

But this past winter, a couple of experienced Italians provided a bit of relief from the monotonous parade of showroom-fresh McLarens, Lamborghinis and Paganis. This Maserati 3500GT seemed to be calling for a revival of Used Car Culture. The 3500GT was the company's first real production car, and and this one looks like it's been in daily use since the day it was built. Superleggera Touring began building the 3500GT coupes in 1957; this example likely dates from '59-'61 because it has vent windows at the front of the doors, and lacks the movable vents at the rear of the doors that showed up in 1962 on the Lucas fuel-injected 3500 GTI.  The California Melee sticker is in keeping with the relaxed presentation of this car: the Melee is an unpretentious alternative to the California Mille, offering a three-day, 850-mile run through Northern California's scenic wonders the weekend after Labor Day, and "on the cheap", according to the organizers.

The alloy Touring bodies were built according to their Superleggera system, with panels mounted on a network of lightweight steel tubes. Touring built 1,981 of their coupe design before Maserati replaced the 3500GT, overlapping the new Mistral in '63-'64. Vignale built a spider design, but in only 242 examples.  Both cars featured the new twin-plug aluminum block twin-cam six.  Building over 2,200 copies of this chassis was a real change in direction for Maserati, whose previous "production" cars had been the A6G (16 built) and A6G /2000 (59 built).

It's possible that Aston Martin was encouraged to ask Touring to design their new car by the successful launch of the Maserati the previous year.  This same badge appeared on Aston's DB4...

This tarnished grille is a reminder of my one Maserati experience (other than driving friend Walt's magical used Mistral, a $4,000 purchase in 1973), which was looking for a grille surround for a 1960 3500GT I co-owned with Richard Wiles back in the late Eighties.  We'd bought it because it had a rebuilt engine, a whole car at a price lower than the cost of an engine rebuild. And we thought that because it was a production car, trim parts would be easy to find, and we could easily finish the car.  After some brake work and cleaning out the gas tank (no idea why this didn't precede an engine rebuild), all we needed were bumpers and a grille surround. Well, these may have been production cars, but they were hand-built, and the grille surround turned out to be a real challenge.  So we hope the owner of this one keeps all those trim bits attached...

Alfa Romeo built quite a few more of these Sprint GTs, starting in 1963.  Unlike the previous Scaglione-designed, Bertone-built Sprint coupes, Giugiaro's  design for Bertone was built at Alfa's factory in Arese, so the cars were badged disegno di Bertone.  For the '67 model year the name was changed to GT Veloce, which signaled a slight hp increase due to a redesigned intake manifold, and trim changes, including a grille with 3 horizontal bars (shown in the Alfa ad) instead of the original lattice shown on this red car.

These  GTVs, along with the alloy-bodied GTAs, still featured the slight indent forward of the hood opening that gained them the nickname "stepnose"...  

This ad from 1967 extolls the 5 speed gearbox, 4-wheel disc brakes and twin overhead cam, all aluminum engine, features that were uncommon or unknown on Detroit iron in that era, and were pretty uncommon anywhere for $4,200.  This was a popular car, with over 21,500 of the Sprint GT built from '63 through '66, and another 1,000 of the Touring-bodied GTC convertible version.

The grille and headlights were revised for the 1968 model below, eliminating the "stepnose" feature. The '68 model was not imported into the US as Alfa sought ways to comply with emissions regulations. The Spica fuel injection system, adopted to meet those regulations, was featured on US-spec.1750 GTVs (and all US Alfa imports) in 1969 and '71; Alfa also missed the 1970 model year in the US.  Despite this, the GTV and its GT Sprint and GT Junior (1300 and late 1600 engines) were a great success, with over 212,000 built before the last 1300 Junior went out of the Arese factory in 1977...

Ford's landmark 1949-'51 design was built in even bigger numbers...over 150,000 of this Club Coupe style (this one's a '50) for 1949 out of a total of over 1,118,000 Fords.  It was the sales leader that year, and was thought by many to have saved the company.  You'd think, then, that we'd know who designed it.  But each of the men on the team, including George Walker (later of '55 T-Bird and Design VP fame), Richard Caleal, Bob Bourke (who later designed the '53 Studebaker Starliner* for Loewy), and Bob Koto, claimed responsibility. Bob Koto was actually working for Loewy and moonlighting for Ford when the car was created.  At least one story is that the Ford was created from a rejected design for the '47 Studebaker, the first modern postwar car and one that saved Studebaker, at least for awhile.  That points to Koto, and is probably the story that intrigues you, so we'll leave it there...

..but not before having a look at the engine.  The stock 239 cubic inch flathead V8 made 100 hp in my Dad's black Club Coupe, but his engine never looked like this. The special Offenhauser heads and twin carbs make more horsepower.  The final Mercury versions of this engine (255 cubes) made 125.  This car has obviously been treated to a good life...

It all makes you wonder if the next generation of motorists will form similar emotional attachments to the electrics that are poised to take over from messy, noisy, climate-subverting internal combustion, and to the self-driving cars that Silicon Valley tells us are are just over the horizon.  As a Bay Area artist suggested over half a century ago, you should probably go ask Alice; I guess she'll know...

Color Photo Credits:  

All color photos except for the McLaren Senna (from reddit.com) were generously supplied by George Havelka, a longtime reader and even longer-time friend (well, since 3rd grade anyway), who was reportedly a tight fit in the Austin-Healey Sprite Bugeye above. 

Monochrome Photo Credits:

Porsches: rennlist.com

Motorcycles:  thesixfifty.com

California Targa cars:  The St. Clair Insurance Agency

1967 Alfa Romeo Ad:  Alfa Romeo SpA

Alfa 1750 GTV:  classicdriver.com

*Footnote:  We posted a photo essay on Superleggera Touring's bodywork on cars of the Thirties through Fifties (including the Maserati 3500GT, Alfa Romeo 2500 and 1900, Ferrari 166 and Pegaso) on Sept. 30, 2020 entitled "Superleggera Touring:  The Italian Line Travels Light."  Bob Bourke's immortal design for the '53 Studebaker Starliner is given the attention it deserves in "Sleeping Beauty from South Bend", posted Feb. 20, 2021.  And the song referenced in the last paragraph is Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", penned by Grace Slick.  

Jet Cars Part 5 (and Electric Surprises) at the Colorado Concours

A mysterious object from a past vision of the future (or maybe from space) hovered over the lawn at the June 5 Colorado Concours, its landing gear nearly hidden in the shadows. Curious bystanders stared at the open engine bay.  What were they seeing?  

Well, they were seeing this, an AiResearch turbine engine neatly installed around 5 decades after Ghia's Gilda Streamline X show car made its debut at the 1954 Turin show...

Giovanni Savonuzzi's design, inspired by jet aircraft and named after a character played on film by Rita Hayworth, was originally intended to be powered by a jet turbine. Ghia had already built several show cars for Chrysler, which showed its first automotive turbine in 1954, but that unit might not have fit under the hood or deck on the Gilda.  Ghia repainted the car in red and silver, and switched to boomerang tail lights shown below, and in that form the car sat at the Henry Ford Museum from 1955 to '69, although it wound up influencing Exner's Forward Look, especially the Dart show car and the '57 Chrysler lineup.  Meanwhile, Chrysler would build 55 identical versions of its Turbine Car for testing by consumers in 1963-64.  The appeal of a car that would run on a wide variety of fuels (including peanut oil or tequila) was widespread, but fuel consumption and potential tooling costs derailed the program.

The car moved to Bill Harrah's collection after its stay at the Ford Museum, and remained there until being sold to the Blackhawk Museum in 1985.  Nearly two decades later, collector and Mercedes restorer Scott Grundfor bought the car and figured out how to make a such a tidy installation of the single stage turbine engine behind the cabin that it looked like it had always been there.  One thing he didn't change, however, is the simple floor mounted hand control for moving and stopping the car. What looks like a shift lever actually moves the car forward when moved that way, backwards when it passes through a reverse lockout to reverse, and stops the car when moved all the way back. This is in keeping with the aircraft theme, but might be confusing to your average driver in an emergency...  

Videos of the fully operational (except for headlights: the driver's side headlight flap is actually the fuel filler) Gilda Streamline X have been posted by the Blackhawk  Museum.  It's a large car, at 207" long just over an inch shorter than a new Mercedes S580, and the fully skirted wheels make for a large turning circle.  Still, the car is an intriguing look in the review mirror at yesterday's dreams of the future.  Below, we see an attempt to bring a vision from the past into line with expectations of a future shadowed by higher fuel costs and global warming...

It's a 1966 Porsche 912, and it was converted to electric power* by an outfit called Farland Cars. The electric motor is a Hyper 9; the conversion system was suppled by ElectricGT...

The Tesla battery is good for 25 kWh. Farland didn't supply information on the weight distribution, but we'd guess that with the big battery pack up front, it's more user-friendly than the original 912. Acceleration is probably way more lively than the gasoline-fueled 1.6 liter four.

Along with the conversion to electric power, Farland restored the rest of the car, and made some interior upgrades including a smaller-diameter Momo steering wheel and those seats, which count as an upgrade if you like plaid with your comfort...

The rest of the Porsche lineup included 2 specimens of the Carrera GT in the foreground (yellow car not pictured), a mid-engined, rear-drive targa made in 1,270 examples from 2003 to mid-2006, and powered by a 5.7 liter, 603 hp V10 that was unique to this model, and developed from a shelved Le Mans prototype. 

Parked adjacent to the Carrera GT was this tastefully restored and lightly modified 911T from 1970 in what looks like an original color offering, Mexico Blue.  

Owner Mike Fuchs lists the condition on the sign as "durn good." The car sits a bit lower on its suspension than a showroom original example, and this, along with bumpers having the chrome trim and front overriders removed, offers a clean look, like an RS. Steve McQueen drove a similar car before the race in the film "Le Mans"*, except maybe it was an S version.

The photo below shows rear views of the 911T with non-standard vented plate panel and the Carrera GT, with non-standard (and certainly unnecessary) go-fast stripes...

The Lotus lineup was like a capsule history lesson, with the Evora produced from 2010-2021 parked next to an Elise (1996-2021) and then a barely visible Esprit (1976-2004). The Evora continued the practice of using Toyota engines which began with the Series 2 Elise in 2001.  In the Elise it was a 1.6 or 1.8 liter inline four, while the Evora shown it was a 3.5 liter V6.  Supercharged versions offered 416 hp.

The mystery car below probably offers less power, but plenty of fun. We think it's a careful replica of a Scaglietti (usually Ferrari) or Fantuzzi (often Maserati) body style from late Fifties Italian road racers. The egg crate grille and what appears to be a 4-cam Dino V6 in the engine bay signal we're in Ferrari territory, but the 4-cam, 65 degree Dino appeared after the mid-Sixties.  Readers, please solve the mystery if you got close enough to this car.  

The mystery of what appears to be a Bugatti Type 37 was easier to solve. It has all the right Bugatti clues from their heyday in the Twenties through early Thirties, when the 8 cylinder, 2.3 liter Type 35 and the 1.5 liter, 4 cylinder T37 racked up one race win after another.  But this car signals that it's a replica with some odd details like brakes smaller than original diameter...

...and a wood steering wheel of small diameter mostly aimed at modern drivers. 

It's under the hood, though, that we find something very 21st century.  Instead of the blocky, cubist sculpture of the SOHC Bugatti four, we find...an equally blocky electric motor.  Is this some kind of sacrilege?  

Well, no.  Actually, it may be more in keeping with Bugatti's origins than the 1,500 hp, 4 million dollar lifestyle accessory offered to 21st century zillionaires by VW as a Bugatti. While  his  light, spindly racers were setting records,  Ettore Bugatti (in light suit below) decided to offer a half-scale Type 35 replica for kids.  Made in 500 examples from 1927 to '36, it was called Type 52, it was one of the most popular Bugattis ever, and it was powered by an electric motor...

Along with the Ghia jet and the electrified surprises, there were lots of American cars on display, including the '57 Lincoln Premiere convertible below.  It's pictured above a flame-red C8, the production version of the long-rumored mid-engined Corvette that finally appeared for the 2020 model year.

Like the Lincoln, the new Corvette proves that diagonal slashing lines are a recurring theme in car design. In April, GM announced that it plans to release a hybrid electric version of the C8. That means Chevy's Corvette will soon have something in common with the electrified Porsche and Bugatti at this show.  It appears that styling trends like fins may come and go, but the incentives, and rewards, of electrification will continue...

We hope the Colorado Concours will continue too.  It benefits Ability Connection Colorado, which offers educational, employment and related support for individuals with disabilities.  This year's show was a big success, and we plan to visit next June when it returns.

*Footnote:  The Jet Cars series has, like this blog, somehow gone on for years; here's the lineup:

"Jet Cars Part 1: Real & Not So Real" + "Jet Cars Part 2: Chrysler Turbine Car" (both 5-21-16).

"Jet Cars Part 3: Chrysler Turbine Epilogue" (5-25-16).

"Jet Cars Part 4" (turbines from Socema, GM, Chrysler & Rover) appeared 9-6-21.

And the trend of converting classic cars to electric power was outlined in "Classic Cars Go Electric" (7-31-21).

Steve McQueen's "Le Mans" was reviewed here on 3-5-21.

Color Photo Credits:

All color photos were generously provided by Mike Fuchs, except for the interior of the Ghia Gilda  jet car, (from Barrett-Jackson Auctions) and the replica Bugatti's electric motor (from the Colorado Concours).

Monochrome Photo Credits:

Monochrome photos of the Gilda from Ghia Studios were featured in a Blackhawk Museum video on youtube.com.  The Bugatti Type 52 photo is from Wikimedia.

Forgotten Classic: Bucciali...Sometimes a Good Notion

Nowadays, a mind-numbing ninety years after its brief moment of fame, the Bucciali is the sort of car that shares concours lawns with the likes of rarities like the Alfa Romeo BATs in the background above.  Paul-Albert Bucciali, who had survived a bullet in the neck while flying reconnaissance missions for France, came back from the Great War to found a car-building operation with his brother Angelo. Their first efforts, spindly cycle cars powered by twin cylinder engines, appeared in 1922 under the Buc name.  By 1928 the brothers had set their sights on selling larger vehicles, and they exhibited the TAV 6 at the Paris Salon. Six years before Citroen's first front-drive car, their TAV (Traction Avant) featured a 2.4 liter Continental six driving the front wheels by means of a transversely-mounted transmission.  The brothers offered the Sensaud de Lavaud continuously variable automatic as well as their own 4-speed transverse manual gearbox, and showed off what would today be called a concept car at each year's Paris Salon, culminating with the crowd-pleasing Saoutchik*-bodied TAV8-32 shown above at the 1932 show. Unlike earlier Buccialis, the TAV 8-32 attracted a buyer as well as gawkers, and he wanted something more exotic under the hood than the American Continental inline 8.  So Bucciali sourced a sleeve-valve, 4.9 liter V12 from another aviator turned car builder, Gabriel Voisin*. The chrome stork decoration on the engine bay was an insignia from Bucciali's Air Corps squadron.  

Earlier, Bucciali had exhibited a TAV 16 Double Huit at the Paris Salon. The Saoutchik cabriolet body featured the same low-mounted Grebel headlights and stork emblem, along with a hood line level with the fender tops.  But here the hood concealed a mockup of a 16-cylinder engine using two Continental eights on a common crankcase.  The engine remained a mockup, and never received its moving parts.  

In 2012, a collector mounted a replica of this 1930 Saoutchik cabriolet body on an American Cord L-29 chassis, with the Cord's Lycoming straight eight powering the front wheels.  As original Bucciali chassis were unavailable, and as the Bucciali brothers had used American Continental engines, this doesn't seem too crazy.  As we'll see shortly, the brothers had ambitions of attracting an American manufacturer to build their designs under license, and actually came close.  And what happened to the Double Huit chassis?  In 1991 I encountered it on display at the the Schlumpf collection in Alsace Lorraine.  This vast collection is now the National Automobile Museum of France.

The display of this TAV 16 chassis near the museum entrance, along with the row of Mercedes-Benz GP cars, convinced me that the museum must indeed have one of everything, because experts had disputed the existence of any Double Huits, and here one was... 

One undisputed fact is that the Bucciali brothers had always viewed their firm mostly as a launching pad for ideas to be patented and then sold to larger manufacturers.  Also not in doubt is that by the end of 1929, Paul-Albert's wife was tiring of funding his car projects, and the brothers were seeking other sources of revenue.  So they  took an 8-cylinder car (the second chassis built) on a tour of American auto manufacturers starting in December 1929. These included Willys, Chrysler, Studebaker, GM, Peerless and others. The photo below shows the prototype, called La Marie, at the Peerless factory in Cleveland, which is where the brothers (wearing matching glasses) finally signed a deal...

The deal with Peerless called for Bucciali to sell Peerless cars in Paris, while the Ohio company readied a production car using the Bucciali front-drive system to enter licensed series production in Cleveland.  The drawings below relate to the granting of a patent by the US Patent Office in 1931.  

But the Great Depression was already thinning the ranks of American car manufacturers, and Peerless had just completed development of a V16 project; unlike the Bucciali sixteen, the engine in theirs ran but the stillborn project used up critical funds.   Peerless discontinued car production in 1931, and that was the end of their deal with Bucciali.  The appearance of the TAV8-32 at the 1932 Salon was the Bucciali brothers' last fling in the car industry.

La Marie has survived, and has been restored with Saoutchik bodywork donated by a Mercedes 680S (pictured in our Saoutchik* essay).  The cast alloy wheels match the other Bucciali show cars, and the flathead Continental 8 has the chrome fittings designed to disguise its humble origins.  Paul-Albert died in 1981, and claimed to have built three dozen cars.  Marque expert Christian Huet puts the number of chassis at 17, while other historians have been able to trace no more than 6.

And so after a handful or two of oft-rebodied chassis, and the failed attempt to link up with American industry, the Bucciali brothers ended their experiment in innovation.  For awhile the TAV8-32 lent its body to a Bugatti Type 46 that its owner (perhaps mistakenly) thought would be more reliable, but was reunited with its front-drive chassis and rare Voisin V12 engine in time to be displayed at Pebble Beach in 2006, where it stopped onlookers in their tracks, just as it had at the Paris Salon of 1932.

 

*Footnote:  For a brief history of body designs by Jacques Saoutchik, you may want to check out "The French Line Part 4:  Jacques Saoutchik----A Talent for Overstatement", posted on March 8, 2020.  Voisin's automobile designs are explored in "Architect-Designed Cars Part 3: Avions Voisin---Dreams From the Sky", posted  April 26, 2020.

Photo Credits:  

Top:  flickr.com
2nd:  Wikimedia
3rd:  classicdriver.com 

4th & 5th:  Wikimedia

6th:   prewarcar.com

7th:   A.P. Bucciali, from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

8th:  Wikimedia

Bottom:  Wikimedia