Monterey Car Week 2024: Autobahn Oldies and Missing Legends

Thursday afternoon, after checking out the Mecum auction offerings, we wandered over to Legends of the Autobahn in Seaside.  I was looking for my old BMW 3.0 CS, which has been restored by its new owner, who has exhibited cars at the Legends event before.  Though there were all kinds of modern Audi, BMW and Mercedes products on show, it was so easy to drift down memory lane that this writer never quite made it to the newer cars.  First stop was this 1980 BMW M1, a mid-engined, transverse inline six-powered GT developed for Group 5 racing and made in 453 examples from 1978-'81.  Body design was by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Ital Design.

There were so many 60s and 70s BMWs on display that it was a bit like a class in post-midcentury Bimmer history, especially considering the BMW 600s and 700s we'd seen at the Little Car Show in Pacific Grove on Wednesday.   It's easy to forget that BMW was not always a luxury lifestyle accessory in the USA, and that it was really the 2002, as sort of 2-liter factory hot rod version of the trim, light and compact 1600 sedan, that put the make on the map in America, especially after a positive 1968 review in Car & Driver.  There was a definite Corvair influence in the car's lines, but it was shorter, lighter, and in tii form as shown here, more entertaining than the Neue Klasse 4-door sedans that had launched the new SOHC inline four cylinder BMWs in 1962.

The 3-door hatchback Touring body style shown below was added to the line in 1971, but never imported into the United States.  Though it was part of the 2002 line, it was called 2000 Touring because, one guesses, it had more than 2 doors...

Before the 1600 two-door sedans appeared in 1966, BMW contracted with Karmann to build the bodies for a 4-passenger GT coupe powered by a 2 liter version of their SOHC four.  Called the 2000CS, the glassy pillarless coupe found more customers in Europe than the US, where its covered headlight detail was changed to meet regulations, and where it was priced close to Jaguar's E-Type.

The popularity of the CS went up, along with its price, in 1968 when BMW introduced the 2800 CS with inline 2.8 liter six. It used the 4-wheel independent suspension of the other Neue Klasse cars, and the SOHC configuration with an aluminum head on cast iron block.  Braking was by front discs and rear drums. The revised body style by Wilhelm Hofmeister was designated E9 by BMW. Visually, the main improvement came from the 3" increase in wheelbase to fit the new engine, giving more graceful proportions, and the sharper, lower nose design with smaller kidney grille framed by oblong grilles containing the headlights. The E9 was actually a bit lighter than the preceding 2000CS, and more aerodynamic.

Bodies for the revised CS were still made by Karmann...

The 2800CS was replaced by the 3.0CS and fuel-injected CSi during 1971.  In addition to the increase in displacement to 3 liters, rear disc brakes joined the ones at the front.  The car remained in production through 1975.

We were hoping that BMW USA would bring a specimen of their new Vision Neue Klasse as videos of the car are now on their website.  For people who miss the glassy lightness and visual simplicity of classic BMWs, who may not need a truck-like SUV, and who are befuddled by new BMWs with their huge Bucky Beaver grilles (even on electric models, where they admit no air) the spare, simple lines of the new car (shown below) seem to begin a new chapter.  We especially like the trim line crossing the side windows and connecting the hood shut line to the revived Hoffmeister Kink. Too bad BMW wasn't moved to bring one of these new cars to the Legends show...

The car below is a reminder that the BMW design group called BMW Technik took a similar bold leap in the late Eighties. It's a BMW Z1*, and the reason you may not have seen one was that it was never imported Stateside.  The first in the Z-series of two-seaters, it was one of the first BMWs featuring multi-link rear suspension, and was powered by an SOHC inline six of 2.5 liters sending 168 hp to the rear wheels through a Getrag 5-speed gearbox.  8,000 examples were built from March 1989 to June 1991.  There were 66 Alpina RLE* versions with a 2.7 liter, 200 hp six.  Though the car is a bit shorter than the 1st Series Mazda Miata, the wheelbase is longer at 96.3 inches.  Weight is 2,760 lb.  

The body, designed by Harm Lagaay in 1986, is composed of plastic panels over a steel chassis, and the high, reinforced structural sills gave rise to the car's most intriguing detail: doors that retract into those sills after the windows retract into the doors. The car can be driven with the doors open...

...and looks like this with the doors closed.  The Z1 is slowly being discovered by collectors and design fans.

The Mercedes-Benz 300SL was discovered by collectors long ago, and there seemed to be a fleet of concours-condition SL Gullwings and Roadsters everywhere you looked during Car Week.  Vickie Gilmour's '57 example should win an award for a car that actually gets driven frequently.  She's had the car for fifty years, and still enjoys driving it whenever weather and traffic conditions permit.  If there had been a prize for Almost Daily Driver, this SL would've deserved it.  

Another car that would have delighted the Legends audience, as it is a real legend of Formula 1 and racing technology, didn't show up at this free event because it was sitting in a hotel lobby in downtown Monterey.  This Mercedes-Benz W196 Streamliner from 1954 was raced by Juan Manuel Fangio, and along with its open-wheel sister cars helped Fangio win the World Championships in 1954 and 1955.  Design is credited to Alfred Neubauer and Fritz Nallinger.  Features included magnesium alloy bodywork as well as an inline eight cylinder engine of 2.5 liters making 257 hp and featuring desmodromic valves.  Unlike the 3.0 liter sports racing version with block made of exotic light alloy, the experimental M196 engine featured steel cylinder liners welded to steel heads, and sheet steel water jackets welded in place.  This car ran like a legend, still looks like one, and was brought to Car Week as a preview to its offering at auction in October...

*Footnote:   More details on the Z1 and Alpina RLE can be found in "Forgotten Classics: BMW Z1 and Alpina RLE", posted here on Nov. 24, 2018.

Photo Credits:

BMW Vision Neue Klasse:  BMW USA.

Mercedes-Benz W196 Streamliner:  RM Sotheby's Auctions. 

The remainder of the photos are by the author.

Monterey Car Week 2024: Auction Observations

During Car Week in Monterey, the exuberance of the auctioneers' performances nearly matches the bark fests by the California sea lions out at Fisherman's Wharf.  It's one way you can reflect on your location in space and time, whether you're the kind of person who can get excited about an elegant '31 Chrysler Imperial CG roadster (above) or a first-year Maserati Ghibli (below). We checked out the offerings at Mecum early on Thursday, as bidding was in process, and later at RM Sotheby's on Friday night, and mostly have comments on value (engineering, esthetic, historic) as it's easy to get distracted by the auction focus on price alone.

Maserati's Ghibli was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for Ghia in 1966, a productive year which also saw his groundbreaking design for the De Tomaso Mangusta.  Both cars went into production in '67, and were harbingers of the trend toward wedge profiles and creased flanks.  The engineering was fairly conservative, compared to supercar competitors like Lamborghini's transverse mid-engined V12 Miura and Ferrari's transaxle 275 GTB4.  By contrast, the Ghibli offered a 4.7 liter, 4-cam V8 and a live rear axle.  This early production car has a trunk lid that opens just above the bumper, giving a false impression of a low load height, but the actual opening ends at the trailing edge of the deck, as with later cars with simple flat lids. This car was fitted with a 4.9 liter engine during restoration; these became a factory option in 1970.

This 1936 Packard 120 Convertible Sedan is unusual not only for its condition, but because de luxe body styles like the convertible sedan were more common on the bigger 160 and 180 series.  The 120 was the entry-level eight-cylinder Packard; we mention the $50,000 sale price to highlight the fact that bargains often show up at Mecum.

When Albrecht von Goertz designed the 507* for BMW in the mid-Fifties, it was the result of Max Hoffman, their New York distributor, lobbying the company for a stylish roadster he could use to generate showroom traffic. This had worked when he had lobbied Porsche for the Speedster.

The sleek, 3.2 liter V8 powered roadster stunned show crowds when it appeared in 1956, but production complexity and costs limited Series 1 production to 34 units in that year and in early '57. The Series II was designed with detail changes including a relocated fuel tank, and production continued through 1959.  Only 252 examples were built, and BMW lost money on each car.  This '59 Series II was number 242, and negotiations are still going on at this writing, against a background of a $1,500,000 reserve. 

This car pointed out that stories of failure (like BMW's 507) are often as intriguing to historians (and apparently, buyers) as stories of success (like Ford's GT40).  It's one of three Scarab* Formula1 cars built by Lance Reventlow's LA outfit after his success with three Chevrolet-powered Scarabs in SCCA road racing.  For their 1960 design, the Scarab team stayed with the front-engined Indy roadster format, with DOHC engine design by Leo Goossen, who had designed similar inline fours for Offenhauser and Meyer-Drake.  Unlike on those engines, and under the influence of the '54 Mercedes W196, Goossen added desmodromic valves, mechanically opened and closed.  The car was ready for the last year of the 2.5 liter Formula, after Jack Brabham had won the F1 Championship convincingly in '59 with a mid-engined Cooper...

Those engines were the weak point of the Scarab F1 effort, as the team faced trouble including fuel as well as oil starvation, bearing failure, and valve failure.  It is thus amazing that this car has an intact desmodromic-valve Scarab engine.  Despite the cautionary tale of Scarab's Formula 1 woes, the car sold without difficulty.  One wonders if the new owner plans to race it in vintage events... 

This '51 Ferrari 212 Inter was one of four 4-passenger coupes built with alloy coachwork by Ghia. Unlike with their bodies for the 2-seat coupes raced by Ernie McAfee in the Carrera Panamericana, Ghia seemed to have trouble with the proportions of the 4-seat format, though the car is cleanly detailed...

The body's bulk seems to overwhelm the Inter chassis, with the wheels far inset from its flanks.  With a $400,000 offer, the car remains unsold against a stated $525,000 reserve and $600k to $800k estimate. Wait a minute, you might ask, doesn't revealing a reserve undermine its function as a reserve?  A good question, in the view of this writer, who has only sold one car in an online auction, and is thus not an expert on auction procedures.

Amazingly, this 1969 Lamborghini Miura S has appeared on this blog on three previous occasions, and we encountered it at the Concorso Italiano in 2018.  It's kind of noticeable in that color scheme, which is a thumb in the eye of the current vogue for military gray sports cars, often in matte finish, which makes them look like full-scale plastic replicas of themselves... 

Not the case here. The effect of lime yellow (someone called it green) over blue is like something straight out of Josef Albers' Interaction of Color.  The rest of it is "standard" Miura S, with transverse 3.9 liter 4-cam V12, with the engine sharing oil with the 5-speed transaxle because engineer Dallara's project was inspired by the BMC Mini (a story^ told elsewhere in this blog). The last 98 SV versions got rid of the troublesome shared oil feature, and many Miuras have this "baffle" mod.  No mention of it in the Mecum summary, though, and negotiations are still going on regarding sale... 

Porsches outnumber pickups and Toyotas at so many Car Week venues that one experienced auction visitor commented gleefully on this Just Another Porsche syndrome. This car, however, is anything but just another Porsche.  It's a Type 718, or RSK, which first appeared in mid-1957 as a replacement for the 550A/1500RS, using the same tubular chassis design with a more aerodynamic, lower profile body. The flat four engine was the same 4-cam design with roller-bearing crankshaft, mid-mounted as on the 550 and sending power to the rear wheels through a 5-speed transaxle.

This '59 example, though, is one of a half dozen central (single) seat RSKs built (our of a total of 34 cars); the central seat series began with a car built for driver Jean Behra to compete in Formula 2.  Porsche fans may be reminded by this Formula 2 special of Porsche's only Formula 1 victory.  That was scored in 1962 with a 1.5 liter car, but Dan Gurney's French GP ride was powered by a 1.5 liter flat eight.  Someone was impressed with the historicity of this car, but not enough to fork over $3 million, so discussions are ongoing...

There were Cobras aplenty; here a 427 and a 289 once owned by actor Steve McQueen flank a rare, lightweight Ford GT40...  

Part of what one observer noted as a numbing surplus of Mercedes 300SLs heads a lineup of Detroit iron, or fiberglass, in the case of the '63 Stingray coupe. 

Only 99 copies of Ferrari's 330GTS were built from 1966-'68, compared with nearly 600 of the GTC coupe version; both cars featured 5-speed transaxles like the red 275 GTB4 adjacent.  If the latter car has the SOHC V12 engine claimed in the catalog, it's somehow gotten the wrong power plant, maybe during restoration.  The "4" in GTB4 refers to the 3.3 liter, 4-cam engine that replaced the SOHC V12 in the first 275GTB; that '67 date is a clue, as GTB4 production started in 1966.

This Ford GT40 lightweight from 1969 is a machine that you're even less likely to encounter at your local cars & coffee.  One of 10 lightweights, if you don't count one or two GT40 roadsters built with an aluminum honeycomb chassis (most GT40s had steel honeycombs), this one features lighter aluminum in the roof section, and still has its original engine and chassis.  Unlike the later Mk. IV, which was an all-American effort, chassis and bodies for the GT40 Marks I through III were built at Ford Advanced Vehicles in Slough, England.

The GT40 story highlights different views of efficiency that prevailed at Ford and Porsche.  In 1969, the model year of this car, Ford won the Le Mans 24 hours with the exact same car that they'd used in 1968.  Ford was second to Porsche in the FIA International Championship for Makes in 1969, when Porsche used over 4 dozen cars (selling most off after rebuilding) to secure the title.  The previous year, Ford had won the FIA Championship using only 4 cars.  While it's true that Porsche amortized some of its high racing costs by selling off rebuilt cars, it seems that team manager John Wyer ran a tighter ship at Ford.  Today, however, someone at Ford may be regretting the decision not to hold on to this historic car.  It sold at auction for $7,865,000.

This 1936 Delahaye* Type 135 Competition Court (for short chassis) was, like the GT40, a sort of homologation special, based on the firm's 3.5 liter OHV inline six.  The short chassis was never listed in Delahaye's factory literature (mais non; she was encore plus confidentielle), but just over 2 dozen were built to qualify for road races that included Le Mans, where Delahaye won in 1938, with two other Delahayes coming in 2nd and 4th. Six of the short-chassis cars were bodied in this teardrop style by Figoni* and Falaschi in 1936; eleven torpedo roadsters were also built to Joseph Figoni's design.

All Figoni's designs included teardrop fenders with skirted rear wheels (and front wheels as well on the torpedo roadsters), while the coupe's graceful fastback with central fin underlined the streamlined theme and distracted from the somewhat stubby proportions.  Right hand drive was common on upper crust French cars into the Fifties; the lever left of the wheel is the control offering 4 speeds for the Cotal electromagnetic preselector shift.  A floor-mounted lever allows selection of forward, neutral and reverse. The Type 135 thus has 4 speeds forward, and 4 in reverse...

We could go on about the importance of Figoni's teardrop designs in the genesis of Jaguar's XK120 coupe (and have, in other posts), especially the sleeker Talbot-Lagos with their concealed headlights and oval side windows, but thought this car was pretty convincing as an artifact of a lost era.  With rarity and Delahaye's racing history behind it, this Figoni teardrop looked like a safe bet to attract interest, and it did.  Negotiations are still going on regarding the price, though.

I decided to leave the mobile phone at the hotel when wandering off to RM Sotheby's auction on Friday night with a car enthusiast friend, so I could be unencumbered doing something people once called "having an experience". Thus I missed taking shots of the 1940 Packard Custom Super Eight 180 Darrin above, one of 9 survivors Sotheby's claims of eleven built.  This bracingly clean Darrin* design (low-slung for 1940, no trace of running boards) was, considering its rarity, as much of deal as the $50k 120 4-door convertible at Mecum.  The car sold for $240,800 while we watched, a pile of money, but less than the $275k-$325k auction house guesstimate. The spectacular Ghia-bodied Fiat 8V Supersonic below from 1953, however, didn't sell, despite a similar car selling last year at RM for a sum that would buy all 9 surviving Packard 180 Darrin Convertible Sedans.  So the present owner gets to spend some more time with this Fifties Futurist creation, one of 14 Fiats with this body style, which Ghia also applied to an Aston Martin, a Jaguar, and a Conrero Alfa.  The 2 liter 70-degree Fiat V8 (Fiat called it 8V because they thought Ford owned rights to "V8") is known as an engine with design flaws leading to fragility, but the Supersonic is a work of art. A 25% decline of what the Wall Street Journal considers top-shelf classics is only seen by some as a crisis in an increasingly financialized economy, where private equity firms buy up troves of housing units, and we see investment funds devoted solely to the cars WSJ might recommend. Our post-auction walk to the Sandbar & Grill, at Municipal Wharf 2, was interrupted by a delightful interlude watching a colony of sea lions bark at each other, and maybe at us. What, I wondered, would these wild creatures tell us about their world, if they could? After 3 days of almost nothing but cars, it seemed like something worth considering...

*Footnote: 

The following posts contain more material on some of the cars featured at these auctions; titles and dates are in parentheses:

BMW 507 ("That Other Five Series", Oct. 20, 2019)

Scarab ("Timing is Everything", June 2, 2017)

Lamborghini Miura ("Mini Cooper's 2nd Cousin, Twice Removed", July 11, 2017)

Delahaye ("Golden Days of Delahayes", June 30, 2018)

Figoni & Falaschi ("The French Line Part 5", June 7, 2020)

Darrin's Packard Designs ("Hollywood Stars", Aug. 4, 2020)

Photo Credits:

All photos of the Mecum offerings, including the bad shots, are by the author.  The RM Sotheby's car photos (Packard 180 Darrin Convertible Sedan & Fiat 8V Supersonic) are from RM Sotheby's.

Monterey Car Week 2024: A Big Show of Little Cars in Pacific Grove

To kick off Car Week 2024 in Monterey County, the town of Pacific Grove hosted a free, unpretentious Little Car Show on Wednesday, August 14. But despite modest expectations, it turned out to be, as Ed Sullivan said when introducing the Beatles six decades ago, a Really Big Show, including this classic dirt track racer serving as a signpost. 

  

The DAF 600 van was made in more numbers as a sedan (1959-'63), and overlapped a 750cc version made until 1967 with the same 4-cycle, horizontally-opposed twin. Both shared the first continuouisly variable transmission (CVT) in a production car. As the cheerful owner explained, this gave the cars the same ratios backward as forward, and led to entertaining backwards races in the car's native Netherlands.

Fiat's Nuova 500 also had a air-cooled twin, but rear-mounted and inline, when it appeared in 1957, replacing a front-engined rear-driver.  That means the current 500, still available Stateside as an electric, is the second New 500 for Fiat.  Compared to this little beauty, though, it's kinda big...

The 1930 Austin Seven above featured an engine just under a 750cc tax limit, and led to licensed versions by American Bantam, the BMW Dixi (their first car), and the Rosengart in France. It also led to road racing versions like the 1934 Ulster boat tail below.  Austin also made cars with cheery names like Nippy and Chummy...

This Singer Nine sports roadster was also made in 1934, and featured an overhead cam on its inline four of just under one liter size.  The cars were popular in their native England, and led to Singer-engined road racers and hill-climb cars from HRG.

This Lancia Fulvia Coupe is the Series 3 version of the Fulvia, which was manufactured from 1963 to 1976 with six different displacements (ranging from 1.1 liters to 1.6) for the narrow-angle V4 driving the front wheels.  The owner of this excellent specimen bought it to replace one lost in the catastrophic fire that destroyed Paradise, Califorinia in 2018.

The Honda Beat (1991-96) was a mid-engined sports roadster meeting the limits set for Japan's kei tax category.  A 656cc inline 3-cyiinder drove the rear wheels through a 5-speed manual transaxle.  The tight little package was wrapped in bodywork styled by Pavel Husek at Pininfarina.

Robert Opron's bodywork for Citroen's Ami 6 (1961-'78) was, ahem, a bit less successful.  The 600cc air-cooled front-drive twin was essentially a restyled Deux Chevaux, and despite a glossy brochure produced for American car shows, the relentlessly eccentric little car found no market in the USA.  Opron would go on to well-deserved fame as the body designer for the Citroen SM and GS models introduced in 1970.

Humor was not in short supply at the Little Car Show, and the owner of this 1961 MGA got into the spirit of things with a sculptured hound rendering judgment on his red roadster...

The Lotus Elan below met 2 requirements set by the Little Car Show organizers; it was little and its Ford-based engine with twin-cam Cosworth head was under the limit of 1.8 liters. Elans were introduced in 1962 with a 1.5 liter four, but this soon grew to 1.6 liters.  Series 1 gave way to Series 2 in 1964, and in mid-1966 the Series 3 roadsters adopted the fixed steel window frames of the fixed-head coupe, which cluttered up the clean visuals of the Series 1 and 2 roadsters.

Pinin Farina gave us this design for the Fiat 1200 sports roadsters in 1959, back before he combined his first and last names for the company ID. This clean body design on this black example was also applied to the OSCA-engined, twin-cam 1500 and 1600 roadsters and hardtop coupes. 

Peugeot introduced the cabriolet version of its 404 sedan in 1962, and followed it with a coupe in '63. Pininfarina's lines continue themes and details established on the smaller Fiat project above, and the car found success, at least in its native France.

This big-bumper Porsche 911 would have exceeded the 1.8 liter limit in original form, but its conversion to electric power got it into the show under the "of special interest" category. 

Dante Giacosa's design for the Fiat 600 Multipla offered a space-efficient van version of Fiat's 600 in the same way that VW had spun its Beetle into a Microbus.  Multiplas were bult from 1956 t0 1967. 

Though the overhead-cam, 750cc sedans and wagons built by Crosley Corporation, headquartered in Cincinnati, from 1947 through '52, have been forgotten by the non-car wonk public, they appeared in force at the Little Car Show.  This 1949 wagon with surfboard rack is a reminder that the wagon was the most popular Crosley.

The convertible version below was also from 1949, and was essentially a version of the sedan with full-length sunroof, a theme echoed on the 1950 Rambler convertibles. 

Besides the convertibles, sedans and wagons, Crosley made nearly 2,500 Hotshots and Super Sports roadsters between 1949 and '52.  Super Sports models had doors; headlight details on both presaged the Austin Healey Bugeye.

This Stebbins Special is a reminder that the SOHC Crosley enigne formed the basis for plenty of specials in the SCCA world of amateur racing in the 50s and 60s. Some were etceterini powered by the Italian Bandini version of the Crosley, with twin cam heads. The owner dates the Stebbins to 1948, and it has an Italmeccanica version of the Crosley four.

The Formosa 120 GR was one of only two we've seen, with fiberglass bodywork made in England placed on a Triumph Herald chassis with swing-axle rear (like the Spitfire), but with a 1.6 liter Triumph six (see Vitesse in last 2 photos) replacing the Herald four.

The Ford Escort Twin Cam, offered from 1968-'71, was less familiar to Americans than its bigger brother, the Lotus Cortina.  Both shared the Cosworth-designed, dual overhead cam aluminum head on the Ford 105 series engline block. 

The Subaru 360 (1958-'71) was the company's first mass-produced car, and featured a rear-mounted 360cc two-cycle inline aircooled inline twin.  Offered as a sedan or "cabrio coach" with full sunroof as well as a van-like wagon, it didn't find much success in the US when introduced in the late Sixties, owing to its tiny size, low power and un-Subarulike fragility.

Renault's Turbo and Turbo 2 (shown) were rally homologation specials with mid-mounted turbocharged fours of 1.4 or 1.5 liters driving the rear wheels through a 5-speed transaxle. Bodywork was taken from the front-drive Renault 5 (Le Car in the US), with mods and interiors by Bertone, and the mechanicals were stuffed into that little car's rear seating area.  

BMW's 700 was built in sedan, coupe and cabriolet form with unit body (a company first) developed from sketches by Giovanni Michelotti. The coupe version is shown below; engine was a 700cc twin derived from the R67 used in motorcycles and the 600 Limousine.

To give that Limousine designation perspective, we present a 600 variation on the Isetta bubble car made by BMW from 1957-59.  It doubles the number of passengers the Isetta offered to 4, and the number of doors to 2 (one at the front, one at the right side).   Compared with the Isetta bubble car, it perhaps seemed like a limousine...

BMC's trend-setting transverse-engined Mini, introduced way back in 1959, showed up in multiple versions.  Ten feet long and riding on 10" diameter wheels, it's perfect for a Little Car Show.

The Lotus 7, introduced in 1957, checks all the boxes for exhibiting at the Little Car Show.  It's small, lightweight, spindly, kind of uncomfortable, and quick...

Fiat's mid-engined X1/9 spider was based upon the transverse inline OHC four and 4-speed transaxle of  their front-drive 128.  Built by Fiat from 1972-'82 and by Bertone from '82-'89, the car was initially offered as a 1.3 liter.  When the 1.5 liter cam along in 1978, so did a 5-speed transaxle.

Morris Minors showed up, with this wood-bodied Traveller wagon in non-standard stain colors getting plenty of attention.  The Minor appeared in 1948, and the last Traveller rolled off the line in April 1971, 5 months after the last saloon.

Another car competing for Unfamiliar to Americans honors with the DAF and Ami 6 was this Triumph Sports Six, called the Vitesse in England.  Essentially a factory hot rod, it offered a 1.6 liter or 2.0 liter inline 6 crammed into the engine bay of the Michelotti-styled Triumph Herald, which originally went with a 1.2 liter four.  Despite the lack of fame Stateside, over 51,000 found homes (mostly in the UK and Europe) from 1962 to '71. 

Photo Credits:

All photos are by the author.