A few days after the crowds and excitement of Car Week had faded, this writer was invited by architect friends of a friend to have a look at their car collection, tucked into a hideaway they'd designed for it. It turned out to be a wide-ranging, eclectic selection of cars, all in fine condition. The Aston Martin DB4 first appeared in autumn of 1958, but the DB4 convertible took another 3 years to appear. And though around 1,100 DB4s in five series would appear before the DB5 took over in fall 1963, Aston Martin Lagonda released only 70 of this convertible model.
The drophead car, like the coupe, had a body designed by Italy's Touring Superleggera, with aluminum panels attached to a tubular steel frame on a platform chassis. During this period, Touring of Milan also made bodies using this system for Maserati and Lancia, but built only the prototypes for Aston Martin Lagonda, including for the related Lagonda Rapide sedan. An intriguing design touch is the way the instrument binnacle echoes the Aston grille shape. The engine was the 3.7 liter twin overhead cam inline six designed for the DB4 by Tadek Marek, and disc brakes were fitted front and rear. Two events that helped AML's balance sheet by 1960 were the release of the DB4 and victory at Le Mans, the Nurburgring, and World Manufacturer's Championship in 1959 by their DBR-1 road racers.
Another thing that would soon help the bottom line even more was the release of the DB5 late in '63, and its appearance with Sean Connery in Goldfinger in 1964. By the time the DB6 showed up in autumn 1965 at the London Motor show, engine size had increased to 4 liters, with power ranging from 282 hp to 325 in the Vantage version.
By 1967, when this DB6 was built, Aston Martin's fame had expanded beyond a small group of sports car enthusiasts, and people like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane had this view (though from the other side).
The DB6 had a longer wheelbase than the DB4 and 5, at 101.7" vs. 98", which resulted in more rear seat legroom, while the revised fastback contour with tail spoiler gave more headroom and trunk space.
At the other end of the size and complexity spectrum was this Mini Moke, a recreational and utility vehicle based on the pioneering BMC Mini, with its transverse 4 cylinder engine sharing its crankcase with the transmission. This bare-bones concept of this car had enough appeal that it stayed in production from 1964 to 1993.
Unlike the Mini Moke, the Aston Martin Vantage Volante below features microchips, driver and passenger air bags, and 4 wheel anti-lock brakes. The prototype appeared in 2003, and credit for the sheer, disciplined design has been claimed by Henrik Fisker and Ian Callum. This 21st century Vantage had a long production life, 2006 to 2018, and was offered in V8 and V12 versions.
The first generation Acura NSX was offered from 1991 to 2005, with mid-mounted 3.0 liter V6 ( 3.2 liters after 1997). The NSX was indirectly the inspiration for Gordon Murray's design for the McLaren F1 road car. Murray used the NSX as his standard for chassis response, and asked Honda for a more powerful version. They refused, but he bought an NSX anyway, and put almost 50,000 miles on it.
Three and a half decades earlier, the benchmark for responsive chassis behavior was the Alfa Romeo Giulietta. The spider version first appeared in 1955, and this example is of that early 750 Series, originally with Alfa's magical 1,290cc DOHC aluminum block four, and the 86.6" wheelbase. The 101 Series that appeared during 1959 had 2" more wheelbase, but similar nippy handling.
One way of telling the 750 Series from the 101 is that the 750 lacks the door vent windows of the 101, and also has the delicate oval tail lights shown below. Alfisti seem to prefer the 750 spider to the 101. The chassis design achieved its great transitional response by simple means, combining a well-located live rear axle with drum brakes. Bodies for the spider were designed and built by Pinin Farina.
The streets and parking lots of Car Week are always a source of fascination for car wonks, and we encountered this Lamborghini Miura S in the parking lot in Seaside outside the Legends of the Autobahn* event. The S, introduced in November 1968, featured added creature comforts compared with the first Miura, 20 more hp, and bright metal trim around the windows and headlights. This Miura S also had a feature of the later SV introduced in '71: headlights lacking the "eyelash" trim of all other versions. Maybe the headlight detail indicated this was a late Miura S. No matter; in the view of this writer it exerted more visual magnetism that anything in the actual Legends show...
The total number of Zagato-bodied Lancia Appia coupes built from 1957 to '62 was 721, so Zagato Appias are even rarer than the Lambo Miura (763 or 764 built including all types). The Appia GTE was the last type Zagato built, in light alloy panels over a steel frame, and the first to be listed as a production model by Lancia. Earlier Appia Zagatos were custom built for privateer racers, like the early Alfa Giulietta Zagatos. The first GTEs were delivered in January 1959, and later versions, like this one, lacked the plastic bubbles over more forward-mounted headlights. GTE production totaled 167. Despite never having more than 60 official hp, Zagato Appias took 1st through 3rd places in their class at the '57 Mille Miglia.
Unlike Zagato Appias from '57 and '58, the GTE lacked Zagato's trademark twin-hump roof, and the earlier cars' arched upper rear fender lines. We happened upon this Appia GTE on a side street in Carmel...
We also found this 1929 Packard Dual Cowl Phaeton there, parked on Ocean Avenue. The orange and chocolate brown color scheme was the original one, popular in this period, and the coachwork was by Dietrich.
The surprisingly narrow driver's compartment features distinctive instrument shapes in a polished wood dash.
Our first impression of the red car below was that it was a Ferrari 625 Testa Rossa from 1957. This had been, Road & Track explained back then, Ferrari's econo-racer for privateers, and traded the 4 and 5-speed transaxles and DeDion rear end of their Monza model for a 4-speed gearbox directly behind the 4-cylinder, DOHC 2.5 liter engine plus a live rear axle...
But no, it was a replica of the original Scaglietti body design in aluminum, powered by a Dino V-6. I talked to the builder, and he was looking for $800,000. No wonder the red carpet; at least there weren't any oil spots on it.
This recent-model Aston Martin Vantage had been subjected to a neo-psychedelic makeover that, like the paint jobs commissioned by BMW decades ago from Alexander Calder for their CSL, managed to not only ignore the form and details of the car, but to work against them.
This Citroen DS21 4-door cabriolet was claimed to be one of two; the coachbuilder was not stated. Available history indicates that all cabriolets on the DS chassis by Henri Chapron were 2-door models. This DS appeared at a number of events, and though we photographed it at the Little Car Show*, it didn't qualify, being not at all little, and having an engine size over the 1.8 liter limit.
Also parked outside the official show was this Lancia Delta Integrale, The turbocharged, all- wheel-drive cars were never imported into the US, but gained fame in the World Rally Championship. The cars were built with transverse inline fours up to 2 liters, in both 8-valve and 16-valve versions.
Lancia, whose HF series cars were so named because they were first offered to their most loyal customers (High Fidelity of a non-audio kind), retired from rally competition after 1991, when their Delta Integrale secured World Rally driver's and manufacturer's championships.
Two specimens of the new Lotus Emira stood outside the Little Car Show in Pacific Grove. The Emira features a supercharged, mid-mounted Toyota V6, along with generous passenger and luggage space, something lacking in prior Lotus two-seaters. Apparently, despite the dire drumbeat of the daily news, human progress occasionally occurs...
*Footnote:
Out post on the Legends of the Autobahn show appeared on Aug. 31, 2024 as "Autobahn Oldies and Missing Legends", and "A Big Show of Little Cars in Pacific Grove" appeared on Aug. 25, 2024.
Photo Credits:
All photos are by the author.
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