Car Shows on the Streets: Readers Send Photos

Old friends Alfred and Carlyle Seccombe happened upon a car show while on vacation in Italy this spring, and were charmed by this vintage Lancia Ardea.  Built from 1939-'53, it was a little brother to the Aprilia (1937-''49) and shared the larger car's unitized body and V4 engine configuration, but at 903cc, the Ardea was the smallest car yet produced in the V4 layout Lancia had pioneered in the Twenties with the Lambda. The third series Ardea, built from 1948-'53, pioneered use of a 5-speed gearbox in a mass-produced car. The photo below shows the compact 96.1" wheelbase and short overhangs; longer wheelbases were provided for pick-ups, vans and taxis.  The Ardea shared pillarless construction with its bigger brother, so when the front and rear doors open along the car's centerline, there is no post obstructing access.

The Seccombes happened upon the car show while visiting the village of Castellabate, about 900 feet above the beach town of Santa Maria di Castellabate on the Mediterranean, in the Campania region. Apparently there are other attractions to enjoy there besides old Lancias...

For example, there are newer Lancias.  In the late Fifties, Lancia had built its first front-drive car, the Flavia with horizontally-opposed 4-cylinder engine.  With the smaller Fulvia introduced in 1963, Lancia returned to the narrow-angle V4 format, at first with around 12 degrees between cylinder banks.  The whole engine was tilted at 45 degrees to make for equal-length axles to the driven front wheels, and the engine was made in several sizes from 1.1 to 1.6 liters. This glassy and well-proportioned coupe designed by Lancia's Paul Castagnero appeared in 1965, and the Fulvia stayed in production until 1976, though Fiat had taken over Lancia late in 1969.

This well-maintained example appears to be a Series 2 car with the 1.3 S engine option, and looks alert and ready for adventure on its alloy wheels. All Fulvias featured 4-wheel disc brakes; Dunlops on the Series 1 were switched to Girlings with a servo booster on Series 2.

The Seccombes encountered this 1965 Vespa with its happy owner, and it reminded me of the Vespa ridden by Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in "Roman Holiday" a film from 1953...

Earlier this year, longtime contributor George Havelka had spied another Italian machine from the same era as "Roman Holiday", what appears to be a Ferrari 500 Mondial*. Note the right-hand drive, a sign that this car is authentic. So far as we know, nobody has made replica versions of these short-chassis road racers, which in 1953-'54 featured this alloy body designed by Pinin Farina. The 2-liter, DOHC 4-cylinder 500, with head in unit with block casting, received a lower and sleeker Scaglietti body in '55.

A closeup of the spider in California traffic...

Another design from the same era as that first Ferrari Mondial was Studebaker's Starliner,* designed by Bob Bourke for Raymond Loewy Associates.  In addition to the pillarless Starliner hardtop coupe, there was an equally sleek Starlight coupe with pillar behind the door. This coupe seems to be based on the '53 version, but that's a guess because the main visible difference on the '54 was a grid instead of this simple bar grille.  Invisible differences included a more rigid chassis. These cars were photographed at a fall show in Edmonds, Washington by Denée Foti, who also took the shots for one of our first-ever posts, on the "almost famous" OSCA.

We were disappointed that whoever did such a clean job of customizing this Starliner (it's hard to clean up something that's already so clean) decided it needed a fastback roofline rather than the original notchback.  The rear roof area looks too massive, to this designer's eye, anyway, compared with the original….

Jaguars were out in impressive numbers at the Edmonds show.  This XK-120 roadster from the 1949-'54 period is outfitted as a road racer, complete with twin fold-down windscreens.

The maroon XK-120 shows is outfitted for road use, and shows the original v-shaped windscreen with graceful curved supports.  The grill and center trim strip appear to be from an XK-140, though.  The XK-120 grille had thinner, more numerous bars, and the 120 lacked that center trim strip on the bonnet.  This car has the thin XK-120 bumpers, however, and lacks the small circular lights on the lower front fenders that you can see on the XK140 below...

This red XK-140 roadster shows off those more protective full-width bumpers, along with that chrome strip running down to the grille. The 140 was introduced in mid-1954, offering roadster, drophead coupe (roll-up windows, thicker padded top) and a fixed-head coupe with expanded space for rear passengers and more glass area, and continued in production until 1957. The XK-140 was the. first sports Jaguar to offer an automatic transmission, though few were so equipped.

The Series 3 Jaguar E-Type, introduced exactly a decade after the Series 1 in April 1971, featured a new 5.3 liter SOHC V12 engine on the 102" wheelbase that first appeared on the E-Type 2+2 coupe, half a foot longer than the 2-seater coupe and roadsters.  The V12 roadster was also on the long wheelbase.  

The news that Ford Motor Company would soon stop offering passenger cars in favor of SUVs and pickup trucks, with the exception of the Mustang and the vaguely-related Mustang Mach E electric "crossover", has caused some raised eyebrows both inside the car industry and out of it.  As if to celebrate the survival of their favorite ride, Mustang owners showed up for a recent show at the Seattle Botanical Gardens, and longtime reader and contributor Veronika Sprinkel caught these photos...

The Mustang was Lee Iacocca's idea of a sporty car to compete with Chevy's Corvair Monza coupes and convertibles.  Ford showed a mid-engined, V4-powered Mustang 1* concept car in 1962, but when the production Mustang showed up  in notchback coupe and convertible forms in spring of 1964 as a "64-1/2" model, it was a front-engined 4-seater based on the compact Falcon platform, offering 6-cylinder and V8 power.  The car above is a 1965; a simplified grille without the vertical and horizontal bars holding up the stallion emblem appeared in 1966.

Two sixes (170 and 200 cubic inches) and two V8s (260 and 289) were offered through the '65 model year, but Ford just offered the 200 and 289 in '66.  Transmission choices, with floor shifts, included 3 and 4-speed manual, and an automatic.

This, as the license plate tells us, is a 1966 fastback.  The fastback style appeared late in 1964 as a 1965. model, and was also called a 2+2.   

Rear headroom was more limited in the fastback, leading to the 2+2 designation.  Carroll Shelby started building his GT-350, with mods aimed at B-production class road racing in the SCCA, based on the fastback body.  It succeeded it taking championship honors in 1965 through '67. This '66 fastback shows the standard interior with the automatic transmission; Shelby versions had a Warner T-10 4-speed and lacked a rear seat.

The Mustang grew in weight and engine size options over the next 2 body style changes, in '67 and '69. The 1970 version of that 1969 body shell, shown below in convertible and fastback coupe form (there was also a notchback coupe) was the  cleaner of the two, and managed to stay close to the original concept of a compact sporty car for the youth market.

Performance versions of the fastback were offered in Boss 302 and 429 versions, and still have collector appeal today.  The 1971-'73 body style grew to a size and weight that departed from the original idea, and was replaced for 1974 by the smaller, Pinto-based Mustang II.  Neither of those iterations seemed much like Mustangs back then, however, and they still don't today...

*Footnote:  For more detail on the Ferrari 500 Mondial, see "1953-54 Ferrari 500 Mondial: Named After a World-Beater", posted here on Feb. 23, 2020.  For the story of the classic Studebaker Starliner, you might want to have a look at "Forgotten Classic: Studebaker Starliner from 1953-'54----Sleeping Beauty from South Bend", posted here on Feb. 20, 2021.  And our post on the mid-engined prototype Mustang, "The First Mustang: Ford's Forgotten Mustang I" , appeared on August 26, 2015.

 
Photo credits: 
Top through 6th from top:  Alfred Seccombe

7th & 8th: George Havelka
9th through 15th:  Denée Foti

16th through bottom:  Veronika Sprinkel

Architecture in Films: Nathaniel Kahn's "My Architect"

Anyone studying architecture in the 1980s or 1990s would know about this, the National Parliament Building of Bangladesh, in Dhaka.  It was designed, along with other structures in the capitol complex, by American architect Louis Kahn, who died nearly 8 years before the building was open to the public in February 1982. The above photo of a child contemplating the building and its reflection captures the wonder and mystery of the story filmed by Nathaniel Kahn, shown with his father below.  Nathaniel began filming in 1999, a quarter century after his father's death.  He'd been only 11 when this happened.

In the documentary that follows, the.younger Kahn seaches for clues to his father's determination to make architectural statements of startllng clarity, at the same time he was concealing the fact that he had started two new families outside his marriage with women working in his office, during the period that included projects like the Richards Medical Center, completed in 1960 on the University of Philadelphis campus...

The younger Kahn interviews medical staff working at the RIchards Center in an attempt to understand his dad's work, and doesn't shrink from revealing that an almost mystical concern with form and light had shortchanged the staff of adequately-sized labs and a responsive climate control system. In a parallel way, Kahn's children by architect Anne Tyng and landscape architect Harriet Pattison (Nathaniel's mother) had to be content with fleeting contacts with their dad on weekends or secretive, late night visits.

The timing of the younger Kahn's documentary allows him to interview architects who worked with Kahn, like Anne Tyng, Moshe Safdie, and Jack MacAllister, and those who watched his career develop, like I.M. Pei, who comments that a career known for 3 or 4 masterpieces is more worthwhile than one credited with 50 or 60 buildings. When Nathaniel interviews his own mother, landscape architect Harriet Pattison reveals what a different world women in architecture faced in the 50s and 60s, and how difficult it was for them to get credit for work that was their own.

During this period when Louis Kahn was living three parallel lives, he was producing some of his most enduring work.  The Salk Institute constructed from 1962-'65  in La Jolla, California, provides ocean views for all its staff offices, as well as more generous lab spaces than the Richards Center.  It's known for its user-friendly spaces as well as its clarity of form. The linear fountain at the center of the court points at the Pacific beyond.  Director Kahn films children exploring his father's work during several sequences, perhaps because it wasn't something he was able to do as a child...

And there's a deft exploration of Kahn's use of light, which is often treated like a building material of its own...

An interview with architectural historian Vincent Scully features a walk through Yale University's Institute for British Art, opened in 1977 and Kahn's final building in the United States, which offers another display of monumental forms in carefully-controlled light.  

Carefully-controlled light was part of the assignment when Kahn received the commission for the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas in 1966.  The building, with its half-ovoid vaulted display spaces, opened in autumn of 1972...

The use of reflecting pools presages Kahn's later work in Bangladesh. 

Inside the vaulted spaces of the Kimbell, glare from natural sunlight is controlled by the use of reflectors below the skylights which repeat the curve of the vault in reverse.  

Kahn's got a chance to deal with the elemental nature of water in a direct way with his design for Robert Boudreau's concert barge, Point Counterpoint II, which was launched after Kahn's death, but in time for the American Bicentennial in 1976...

The campus of the Indian School of Management in Ahmedabad, India was completed to Kahn's design in 1974, while he was also working on the capitol complex for Dhaka, Bangladesh.  The elemental brick forms feature arches and punched openings that shade recessed and often invisible window glazing, in a way predictive of the Dhaka project.

DIrector Kahn interviews Indian architect B.V. Doshi, who worked with Louis Kahn, on the campus. He emphasizes that Kahn thought about light, form and space in a philosophical rather than material way, as part of a kind of mystical quest. 

In the film's final sequence, the film shows images of the Bangladesh capitol complex on the artificial lake in Dhaka.  The cinematography and images reinforce the sense of wonder and mystery that runs through the story, and through Louis Kahn's work. The cylindrical forms of humble brick and circular arches shading inset windows and passageways connect the portions of the capitol complex shown below to the country's past, and the water surrounding the buildings helps to cool them as well as relate them to the climate of seasonal monsoons. The omnipresent water at Dhaka seems a kind of summation to Kahn's lifelong concern with the reflective element as a theme. By this time in the film, Nathaniel Kahn has already revealed it at the Salk Institute and Kimbell Museum, and of course in that eccentric concert boat...

The repeated form of the arch is also an inescapable theme at Dhaka, and in the cylindrical structures above, the circle of bricks above the half-moon arches continues below them and across the face of the cylinder, conveying a sense of primordial, symbolic intent echoed again by the powerful, cryptic cutouts in the Assembly Building below.  Earlier in the film, Jack MacAllister, supervising architect of the Salk Institute project, notes that Kahn often adopted a given inconvenience of a project (like those monsoons) and made it an asset (as in this artificial lake).  Another example of this is the necessity of many small concrete pours because the walls were poured in small batches delivered by hand.  Kahn decided to create recesses between the poured areas, and insert marble in these reveals; the resulting grid pattern is visible in the shots below.

These buildings almost seem like monuments made by a more advanced civilization on a parallel earth. During the Bangladesh war of independence lasting from March to December of 1971, Pakistani pilots never bombed Kahn's Dhaka complex, then under construction, because from their aerial vantage points it looked like a series of ancient ruins. Director Kahn's filming of this sequence makes it easy to understand that.

Touring the interior of the Assembly Building with director Kahn, Bangladeshi architect Shamsul Wares, who had worked with Louis Kahn on the building, is disappointed to learn that the complex will only occupy 10 minutes of time in the film. He makes it clear that these are more than buildings to him and to his fellow citizens, and that in designing these buildings, Kahn was making a gift of democracy to a young nation.

Shamsul notes that he is aware that in his obsession with bringing these and other buildings to life, Kahn had shortchanged his son and other loved ones of attention, and notes with sadness that society may have gained what the family lost.   During the Dhaka sequence, we see some of society's gain in an interview with workers exercising in the plaza near the Assembly building.  Because this film was completed over two decades ago, we do not learn that security concerns have recently caused the government to restrict public access to the Assembly and the spaces around it...

In an era when democracy seems threatened on all continents, viewing these monumental works of architecture constructed in the same way they were designed, by hand, over 23 years, creates a powerful picture of what people will do to achieve a dream.  That, in itself, can foster a sense of hope.  "My Architect" is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Image Credits

All images are from "My Architect", released in 2003 and subject to copyright by Louis Kahn Project, Inc.

Sunday Morning Dog Show with Cars: A Sequel

 

There were so many dogs at the newly expanded Boulder Coffee and Classics, the 2nd of the spring season on May 18, that even with all the added cars extending along Pearl Street from the original 8th Street lineup, it sometimes felt like a dog show with cars as an added attraction. These pooches showed up with their guardian on 8th where it tees into Pearl...

Just around the corner in front of Lolita's Grocery, they had a chance to sniff out one ot the stars of the show.  Alfa Romeo's Giulietta Sprint Speciale, designed by Franco Scaglione and bodied by Bertone, first appeared in the autumn 1957 Turin Show, three years after Bertone's Giulietta Sprint, the "standard" Giulietta coupe, also designed by Scaglione.  The first 101 cars, built to satisfy FIA production rules requiring 100, had a lower nose, and some had all-alloy bodies to go with the already-famous aluminum Giulietta 1300 engine.  Some of the alloy cars lacked bumpers; the originals featured a drag coefficient of 0.28, which was not bettered for over 2 decades.  Later production cars had the higher air intake shown here, with more protective bumpers, and steel bodies with aluminum doors, hood and deck lids.

The cabin displays instruments and controls focused on the task of driving, along with comfortable seats for the driver and 1 passenger.  The padded space behind the front seats was best left for luggage owing to limited leg room.

This car's owner noted that the 1290cc engine has been rebuilt and expanded to 1700cc, and noted that there doesn't seem to be a straight line on the car.  The design featured Scaglione's signature tapered contours, and even the door windows were curved in plan.  A production 1600cc Giulia version appeared in 1963. A total of 1,366 Giulietta Sprint Speciales were built, and another 1,400 of the Giulia version.

The Aston Martin DB4 GT below, one of 75 short-chassis cars with the twin-plug DOHC six aimed at road racing, also featured a body designed in Italy, in this case by Touring Superleggera.  Also on the same 93" wheelbase, Zagato bodied 19 of 25 chassis allocated for them, using the same twin-plug Vantage engine.  All these cars are highly prized today...

…like this 4.25 Liter Bentley from 1939, one of 100 MR series cars with overdrive, Marles light steering, and an upgraded central lubrication system, out of the 1,234 Bentley 4.25 Liters built from 1936-39.  The bodywork on this open sports tourer is in a style by Vanden Plas, but the actual coachbuilder was not noted.

My dog Watson seemed to enjoy the attention he got from passers-by, and also the distinctive aromas offered by some of the cars.

He also enjoyed meeting a new friend named Lupo.

This blue Alfa GTV was one of our favorites; tasteful mods from stock include deleting bumpers and horizontal grille bar, updated alloy wheels, as well as fine mesh flanking the shield-shaped Alfa grille in an opening with smaller lights inboard of the headlights that was featured on 105 Series GTVs in 1969 and 1970.  These were the first available with the 1750 (actually 1779cc) engine, but we don't know which version powers this car...

The Alfa Romeo below was part of a series of rear-transaxle cars built from 1972-84, a chassis design shared by the fastback Alfetta GT and later GTV6.  Marketed in the US from 1975-77 as the Alfetta Sedan and until '79 as the Sport Sedan, it offered 50/50 weight distribution with resulting sharp handling as well as 4-wheel disc brakes that must have been appreciated by the Italian police that used it in this period.  The message at the base of the rear window tells you to call 112 for an "Instant Intervention."  

The Alfa GTV below also featured the bumper delete, alloy wheels, and a tasty striping job that, according to the license plate inscription, are intended to remind us of the aluminum-bodied, twin spark plug GTA version...

The north side of Pearl St. between 8th and 9th was taken over by British machinery, including the Metropolitan at the head of the lineup. These cars were sold in the US by Nash, but built by BMC with Austin 4-cylinder engines, in 1,200cc form from 1954-56, and in 1500 form with snazzy two-tone color schemes from mid-year 1956 until mid-1960, though sales continued into '62.  After '57 the cars were badged AMC rather than Nash.  A Lotus 7 is adjacent, then a Triumph TR6 and an original Mini that's been hot-rodded with Honda power.  All have appeared in previous posts...

The show was a convenient place for pooches to catch up on treats offered by car lovers, who also seem to be dog lovers.

We decided not to crop this photo of a Morris Mini Cooper because the space around the lonesome little car underlines its tiny size; the 10 foot overall length on an 80 inch wheelbase was part of the design brief for engineer Alec Issigonis when BMC handed him the project in the late Fifties. The first Mini saw the light of day in 1959, and by the middle of the Sixties the cars were a success on the international rally circuit and a symbol of Swinging London.

The owner of this Mini Cooper has spent some rally time behind the wheel, and apparently feels the way most of us do about the year 2020. 

The new expanded lineup along Pearl Street included this Porsche 914 and Triumph Spitfire, and various 911s across the street from that Carabinieri Alfa.

Across Pearl from that gold 914, a late Eighties Ferrari Testarossa shows off its 4.9 liter, 380 hp flat-12 mounted ahead of a 5-speed transaxle. The Testarossa was one of the most popular of the big-engined Ferraris, with over 9,900 produced from 1984-1996, counting the F512 and 512M variants that were built starting in 1992.

As we continued our ramble down Pearl towards 9th, we discovered this immaculately restored XK150, a Jaguar offering from 1957 until April of 1961, when the E-Type was introduced.  Beyond it, three specimens of Lotus were parked in a row, including a Sprint (called Eclat in Europe) from the mid-70s to early 80s, a brown mid-engined Europa (1967-72), this one a Series 2 with twin-cam engine, and a yellow Elan +2 (1967-74)...

Not the kind of thing you'd ever encounter in your average supermarket parking lot.

Then again, there wasn't much on display at the May Coffee and Classics that you'd encounter in the average supermarket lot, and with mild weather, refreshments available at Spruce Confections, and a friendly crowd of people and their pooches, there wasn't anything not to enjoy either. 

Event schedule note: 

For more info on Boulder Coffee & Classics, you might contact Mike Burroughs by way of fuelfedboulder@gmail.com.

Photo Credits:  

All photos are by the author.