Streamliners from Mitteleuropa: Steyr and Steyr Puch

Wandering through the fall concours at the LeMay Museum in Tacoma some years back, I encountered the Glaser-bodied Steyr 220 Sport pictured below.  It was the first Steyr I'd ever seen, despite quite a few years of attending car shows. The Steyr, built in Austria, sometimes gets shoved out of the spotlight by other Mitteleuropean machinery, like the big Austro-Daimlers designed between the wars by Ferdinand Porsche, and the rear-engined Tatras designed by the even more iconoclastic Hans Ledwinka*. The Tatras were generally no bigger than the Steyrs, but it's not easy to ignore a teardrop-shaped car with three headlights and a central dorsal fin.  The charms of the Steyr were a bit more subtle... 

Here was a car with stylistic connections to contemporary work by Graber* in Switzerland, echoing the same restrained approach to streamlining, with none of the chrome-laden excess of the heavier, late-1930s roadsters from Mercedes and Horch... 

The 220 was indeed lighter than those cars, powered by an inline, OHV six of just under 2.3 liters. Front suspension was independent and rear suspension was by swing axles.  The two-passenger Sport Roadster shown was one of six bodied in this style by Glaser in Dresden. There was also a five-passenger cabriolet and a more common sedan. The basic engine made 55 horsepower; the subject car makes 85 with dual carbs and dual exhausts.

Overall, around 5,900 of the 220 series were built.  There was also a 2 liter six called the 120 and a 2.1 liter called the 125, both using the same basic chassis layout.  In addition, there were similar models using four cylinder engines, called (illogically) the 100 and 200.  A 200 series sedan is shown below...

The sedans were not without charm, with fastback lines and center-opening doors without a "B" pillar, as on Lancias from this period. In June 1942, a Steyr 220 sedan was the vehicle used in a harrowing escape from the Auschwitz death camp by four prisoners who had stolen Nazi SS uniforms and weapons. The prisoners had also stolen the Steyr from the camp commandant, and they were never re-captured...

The 220 shown below is a 5-passenger cabriolet; these were somewhat more common than the Sport Roadster.  Various two-tone color schemes were available on all the Steyr models.

In 1934, Steyr merged with Austro-Daimler and Puch. One of the first products to appear after the merger was the 1936 Steyr Type 50, also known as the Baby.  The Baby featured a front-mounted four cylinder boxer engine with thermosiphon water cooling and about 22 hp driving the rear wheels through a 4-speed gearbox. Advantages over the VW prototypes which appeared during this era included hydraulic brakes and greater space efficiency. Production of the Baby, including the Type 55 with longer wheelbase and more power, amounted to about 13,000 units before car fabrication stopped in 1940.  

The Baby proved predictive of the path that Steyr would take after World War 2, when postwar austerity and material shortages emphasized the value of small, economical cars. This led to a Steyr-Daimler-Puch alliance with Fiat and eventually to a successful rear-engined Steyr Puch minicar, but first Steyr tried mounting its own 2 liter engine in bodies made by Fiat for their 1400 and 1900 series cars. These conventional front-engined cars, shown below, have been eclipsed in the public memory by the much more successful Steyr-engined versions of Fiat's Nuova 500 from 1957.

With their version of the rear-engined Fiat 500, Steyr Puch hit upon a successful formula. They saved tooling costs for bodywork by using the Fiat body shells, but replaced the inline two-cylinder air-cooled Fiat engine of 500cc (30 cubic inches) with their own horizontally-opposed, air-cooled twin. It was a much smoother engine, and similar power units were employed in the all-wheel drive Steyr Puch Haflinger off-road vehicles.  As with the Fiat version, the early Steyr Puch 500 had rear-hinged "suicide" doors giving access to four seats... 

A 650cc version of this car won the European Rally Championship in 1966, and other rally successes followed. The little car gained enough of a following that Steyr kept it in production from 1957 to 1975.  Note that the faux grille features Steyr and Puch insignia, and even mentions Fiat in tiny script, but fails to mention Daimler, which was still perhaps associated only with large cars in the minds of middle Europeans...

This being basically a Fiat chassis design, there had to be a 2 passenger sports version, and it had a name bigger than the car, as noted on the commemorative Austrian stamp below. It carried a larger version of the trusty Steyr Puch opposed twin, while a 500cc variant won its class at the Nurburgring. That "Imp" business has nothing to do with the British car of the same name.  It refers to the manufacturer who built 21 of these handsome alloy-bodied coupes: Intermeccanica. Really, the car is a Steyr Puch Intermeccanica 700GT, and it qualifies, like Intermeccanica, as a chapter in the etceterini saga involving Americans, Italians and Austrians. But that's a story for another day... 

*Footnotes: Czechoslovakia's Tatra automobiles can be found in our post for November 27, 2016 entitled "Cars & Ethics: A Word or Two on VW", in "Rolling Sculpture at the North Carolina Museum of Art" for December 31, 2016, and in "When Mobile Homes Really Were Mobile" from July 30, 2017.  Bodies by Hermann Graber on Alvis, Duesenberg and Talbot chassis are reviewed in "Forgotten Classic: The Graber Alvis" from January 22, 2016.

Photo Credits:

Top thru 3rd from top: the author

4th thru 7th:  wikimedia

8th:  Steyr Daiimler Puch advertising, reprinted at autoalmanach.ch

9th & 10th:  wikimedia

11th:  onlineshop.post.at

The Etceterini Files Part 17: Bizzarrini 1900GT Europa

The sadly forgotten Bizzarrini Europa qualifies as an etceterini not just because of the suffix to engineer and builder Giotto Bizzarrini's name, but also because it combined parts from a variety of sources to form an appealing, high performance two-seater.  In some cases, the engine was a 1.5 liter Fiat, a standby of the etceterini movement.  For most of the Europas built, though, the engine was a 1.9 liter "cam in head" unit from GM's Opel subsidiary in Germany...thus the 1900GT designation.

The story behind the car is that Bizzarrini, who had designed Lamborghini's V12 engine and then the chassis for the Iso A3C before going off on his own, was seeking a more modestly-priced GT design to produce in larger numbers than the 5300GT Strada, his version of the Iso A3C. The Europa appeared in 1966 with fiberglass body designed by Pietro Vanni, and looked much like a scaled-down version of the Strada GT coupe, with added practical touches like the doors curving into the roof to allow easier access. Note the transparent plexiglass panels in those doors.  The chassis design featured four-wheel independent suspension and four-wheel disc brakes, and persuaded GM, already supplying engines for the 5300GT, to provide the Opel 1.9 liter unit to Bizzarrini.  By the time Opel engines began appearing in completed cars in 1968, Bizzarrini was in financial trouble, and GM was nearly ready to release its own 2 seater GT for Europe and America, the Opel GT with engines up to 1.9 liters.

With the clarity granted by hindsight, many car enthusiasts find the Bizzarrini Europa a more satisfying design than the miniature Corvette theme produced by GM Styling for Opel's GT. The bigger wheels and tires, as well as careful attention to details, complemented the sleek form and made a purposeful impression.  As with many limited production etceterini, however, those details changed from car to car.  Note the difference in front fender vents between the top two photos, the change from the curved door in the car above to the more conventional door with dark filler panel at the roof, shown in the red car below.  The number and shape of tail lights also changed... 

The car below, with doors curved into the roof, and fender vents like the big brother Strada 5300GT, makes a convincing argument that the Europa could've been a winner if produced in sufficient quantities to keep the costs down.  Instead, only 17 Europas were built, 5 with FIat power and 12 with Opel engines, before Bizzarrini faced bankruptcy brought on by an expensive racing program including the ill-fated P538 mid-engined car.  

According to Italian marque experts, as many as 20 additional cars were built after the bankruptcy and reorganization. As with other Italian specialist makers, Bizzarrini was more adept at crafting seductive machinery than he was at record-keeping.  Still, the number of differently detailed survivors which have surfaced at car shows and auctions indicates that there may be as many as two dozen Europas left...

*Footnote:  The efforts of another Italian performance specialist with Opel products is discussed in "The Etceterini Files Part 12" for November 28, 2017, entitled "Virgilio Conrero, Tuner or Hot Rod Maestro?"  The Iso saga is reviewed in "Born From Refrigerators: Iso Rivolta", posted on September 20, 2018.

Photo Credits:  

Top:  Wikimedia

2nd:  flickr.com

3rd:  bringatrailer.com

4th:  speed8classics.com

5th: routevecchie.org

Lost Roadside Attraction: Vintage Racing in Steamboat Springs

Once upon a time, when classic racing cars were younger and cheaper than they are now, somebody thought up the idea of attracting summer visitors to a ski town by closing off a few streets and letting car clubs run races on them for a weekend.  This worked for awhile in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and the heyday of the event was in the decade of the 1980s.

Racing continued well into the 1990s, but towards the end of that decade, after vintage racers had attained more value as collectible art objects than as weekend warriors, development and complaints by neighbors ended a freewheeling era of summertime fun. Back during that golden era, you could see a wide variety of historic racers, from open-wheel single-seaters to SCCA production sports cars to Group 4 and Group 6 racers. These included the Lotus 30 (or perhaps 40; differences were mostly hidden) and early McLaren shown below...

And this Cooper Monaco, which originally came from the factory with a mid-mounted 2.5 liter Coventry Climax twin cam four.

A pair of Shelby AC Cobras, including a road car and a 289 racer, lounge between events…

A Porsche 904 with the 4-cam, mid-mounted 4 cylinder, roller-bearing crankshaft engine…

A pair of Siatas including a 300BC (these often had 750cc Crosley or Fiat 1100 engines) parked in front of a bigger Gran Sport coupe, likely powered by a 1400cc Fiat…

A Morgan Plus 4 Plus, one of only 26 fiberglass-bodied, TR4-engined coupes that the Malvern Link factory built from 1964 to 1967, makes an unlikely vintage racer.  

Participants from several states managed to show a sense of humor on their personalized plates. Here's a Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica* from the early 1950s.  No, it's not a replicar, it's a replica of the car the factory raced at Le Mans...

The owners of this 3.8 liter Series I E-Type Jaguar coupe wanted to share their joy...

The race crew on this E-Type roadster, however, were more circumspect...

And some cars eligible for the races provided entertaining rides home for racegoers.  This 2-cam, short nose Ferrari 275 GTB provided elegant transport for two…

According to Kyle Popejoy at Rocky Mountain Vintage Racing, the group first presented the vintage races at Steamboat Springs in 1984, and continued them as an annual summer event through 1998.  Eventually, complaints from some condominium residents about being trapped within the perimeter of the track, as well as about the high noise levels, spelled the end of the Steamboat Car Weekend.  The photo below shows how close to the action those ski condos were...

The spirit of road racing has not quite left town, however.  Though developers have built a hotel in the middle of the original race course, today Steamboat Springs hosts bicycle stage road races and footraces. They're a lot quieter than those old cars, and the residents probably appreciate that. Rocky Mountain Vintage Racing has gone on to host other events, including the past two years of racing at Snowmass.  Information on RMVR membership and scheduled events can be found at the website, rmvr.com, or by calling Rocky Mountain Vintage Racing, Ltd. at 303-319-3062.

*Footnote:  The Bristol-engined postwar Frazer Nash is featured in the Archives for Feb. 3, 2017, in "Frazer Nash Part 2: When a Replica Is Not a Replica."

Photo credits:  All photos are by the author.

Nineties Concept Cars Part 5: Lamborghini Raptor and Lagonda Vignale

The 1997 Pebble Beach Concours featured an outdoor museum of concept cars, both old and then-new, on the upper lawn.  These included Zagato's Lamborghini Raptor in the foreground below, the Pontiac Ghost Car with transparent plexiglass body from the 1939 World's Fair, and in the distant background, Bertone's Corvair Testudo* from 1962.  The Raptor, essentially a lightweight version of Lambo's all-wheel drive Diablo chassis, combined wraparound glazing with Zagato's signature double-bubble roof contours.  The periscope air intake for the mid-mounted V12 is lodged in the trough between the bubbles...

The photo below shows the Raptor's odd up-and-over wraparound rear window, as well as that center air intake.  In order to save weight compared with the "standard" Diablo, the Zagato team deleted the anti-lock braking system as well as the traction control, and deployed carbon fiber in the bodywork.  

Partnering with Alain Wicki, Zagato endeavored to make a production-ready prototype, in the hope that it would be adopted as Lamborghini's successor to the Diablo.  Perhaps for that reason, the designers loaded the car with ideas that sometimes seemed to compete with each other.  For example, that twin-hump roof was part of the canopy that lifted in a single unit (oddly like Bertone's Testudo) to provide access to the cockpit...

...and then the bubbled portion could be removed to create a an open roadster with fixed windows surrounding the occupants, as shown below.  It's not clear whether the fighter plane style canopy would have met safety standards in the Eurozone or Lamborghini's export markets.

As it turned out, the car's fresh, distinctive form failed to convince Lamborghini to adopt it as their next production car.  This was possibly due to practicality issues, though the previous success of the Miura and then the Countach would seem to indicate that Lamborghini's customers were not obsessed with practicality.  In the coming years, Aston Martin would turn out to be more easily persuaded by Zagato's ideas, and Italian ideas in general...

For a brief time in the mid to late Nineties, it looked like Aston Martin was all set to produce a Vignale concept to replace their aging, very angular Lagonda sedan.  The decidedly non-angular prototype can be glimpsed above, opened up to reveal a sumptuously detailed interior, and got as much attention from show goers as any of the supercars on display.

A good look at the design, one of two built by Ghia (like Vignale, then owned by Ford) to Moray Callum's 1993 design, shows why.  The form avoids straight lines or flat planes, using rounded, subtle contours to create visual interest. The way the front fender surface is extended to fade into the rear door is especially deft.  While Callum and Vignale aimed this production prototype at Aston Martin Lagonda (also owned by Ford back then), the first two prototypes were built on Lincoln Town Car chassis, and powered by Ford's 4.6 liter SOHC V8.

The smoothly tapered rear integrates the tail lights in to the shut line for the deck lid, and carries more than a hint of 1950s Jaguar flavor…Jaguar was also owned by Ford during this period. Unlike the Raptor, the VIgnale captured the attention of its target audience, and Aston Martin built a third prototype at Newport Pagnell.  This car incorporated a V12 engine, and independent rear suspension. Two cars still exist; all three prototypes feature the Art Deco cocoon interior sketched out by David Wilkie.  These cars are still fresh-looking today, especially compared with many of today's designs, with their multiple computer-generated folds and creases screaming for attention. Sometimes less really is more...

*Footnote:  Giorgetto Giugiaro's design for the Corvair Testudo was featured in our post entitled "Getting Over the Corvair, Part 2" and can be found in the archives for March 18, 2016.  The Lincoln Sentinel was featured in "Nineties Concept Cars Part 4", from Jan. 17, 2019.

Photo Credits:  

Top & 2nd:  the author

3rd & 4th:  woiweb.com 

5th & 7th:  the author

6th & 8th:  Astom Martin Heritage Trust

Nineties Concept Cars Part 4: Lincoln Sentinel and Mercury MC4

The Lincoln Mercury Division of Ford Motor Company was looking for a shot of magic in the 1990s. After the best "suicide door" Continentals* in 1963. and the last ones in 1968, body design became more timid and conformist.  The Town Cars of the 80s and 90s were especially heavy-handed visually, with none of the simplicity or mastery of proportion and detail shown in Elwood Engel's Continentals.  Compared to the first Continentals of the 1940-41 range, they had no distinction at all.  By the mid-1990s, the first and second generation Ford Taurus (and related Mercury Sable) had saved Ford, and given their design staff the confidence to pursue new directions.  Teaming up with Ford-owned Italian coach builder Ghia, they launched the Lincoln Sentinel concept car as an example of their New Edge design direction.

A fully-functioning prototype was built on a modified Jaguar chassis (Ford had purchased Jaguar and Aston Martin). Massing and proportions ditched the leaden look of recent efforts, emphasizing large-diameter wheels and shorter overhangs.  At the front, twin air intakes with vertical bars recalled the grilles of Edsel Ford's 1940 Continental.

Bright metal trim outlined the edges of the sheer, undecorated flanks, as on the 1961 Continental. The rear-hinged rear doors, "suicide doors" to Lincoln fans, also echoed the 1961-68 cars.

The tapering tail lent and minimal trim lent a purposeful air from the rear.  At least two cars were built in 1996, this fully functioning one and a silver gray display car.  Unfortunately, Ford decided on a different direction for Lincoln, and in 1997 introduced the Navigator SUV, a "badge-engineered" version of the Ford Expedition.  By 1998 the Mark VIII coupe would have an SOHC V8, 4 wheel independent suspension and disc brakes shared with the Thunderbird, but no New Edge.

Over at Mercury, designers were brainstorming a follow-up to the successful (up until the 1996 restyle) Sable, perhaps something with more sporting character than the last couple generations of the Mercury Cougar, which had turned out to be Thunderbirds with squared-off rooflines.  They took the 1997 Thunderbird chassis and got their metalworkers working on something that very much predicted the "4-door coupes" produced by German manufacturers a decade later...

As with the Sentinel, the four doors opened at the center of the cars flanks, but there was no center post, and the front doors needed to open before the rears, with an electronic fob. There were no external handles.  

The luggage compartment featured these gullwing doors, opening along a central structural spine.  The design traded a high rear lift-over sill for better side access; more important, it attracted attention. The front door armrest is a clever detail, with an extension of the dash surface outlined in bright metal forming an "X" with the lower armrest.  

The view with the doors closed underlines how well the MC4 concept anticipated the later German 4-door coupes.  Instead of expanding upon their idea of a high-performance 4-door T-Bird, perhaps with differentiating features like all-wheel drive, Ford decided that future Mercury cars would be nothing more than Fords with fancier trim.  The last Mercury rolled off the assembly line in January 2011.

Photo Credits:  All photos are by the author, except for the last one, which is from the website carsofinterest.com.

*Footnote:  Elwood Engel's groundbreaking design for the 1961 Lincoln Continental is featured in our post "When the Sixties Really Began" from November 18, 2015.

Nineties Concept Cars Part 3: Chrysler Phaetons and Thunderbolts

One thing you can do when you give up trying to photograph the vintage Bugattis and Bentleys normally surrounded by swarms of fans "on the lawn" at the Pebble Beach Concours is climb to the upper display area, which has a lawn usually reserved for display of recent concept and show cars by manufacturers and coachbuilders (or did, back when we had coachbuilders). Back in 1997, you could take a break from the comprehensive collection of historic steam cars and micro cars and have a look at this Chrysler Phaeton, parked in front of a preview of Chrysler's upcoming "cab forward" LHX.

Tom Gale was head of Chrysler Styling at this point, having moved over from Engineering.  This position allowed him to popularize two design trends of the 1990s:  the short hood, transverse-engine with front wheel drive Cab Forward look, and Retro Design, which drew inspiration from classic cars of the golden era.  The golden era the designers had in mind was often the 1930s, but any period was fair game.  When the first Mazda Miata appeared for the 1990 model year, it was pretty clear the designers had been thinking about the mid-60s Lotus Elan.  The prow of the Phaeton shows off a grille and teardrop headlight surrounds that could have been sourced in the 1940s.

At the rear, the shape formed into the deck lid harks back to the Twenties and Thirties boat-tail speedsters, as does the dual-cowl layout of the passenger cabin. One car the designers may have had in mind was the 1952 Chrysler Imperial Parade Phaeton shown below. In sheer size the cars are similar, and the Imperial also features the strong horizontal rib formed into the flanks of the car (on the newer Phaeton it's an indent).  The '52 Phaeton was a mixture of then-current features (Imperial grille and bumpers) with fender shapes and full wheel openings predictive of Virgil Exner's 1955 Forward Look...

Three Imperial Parade Phaetons were made on stretched, 147 inch wheelbase chassis. In 1955, the cars were returned to Chrysler for restyling which incorporated most of the forms and details from the 1956 Chrysler line, including prominent tail fins. Among the things on the '56 Chryslers that the Phaetons lacked were side windows, external door handles, and full convertible tops. There was, however, a sort of pup tent for the rear passengers... 

But maybe the 1997 Phaeton show car derived some its swoopy curvaceousness from the Chrysler Newport show cars of 1940 and '41. These were designed by Ralph Roberts  at Chrysler and were built by the revered coachbuilding firm of LeBaron.  Built like the later parade cars on a 147 inch wheelbase, the vast Newports (five were built) were Chrysler's first-ever show cars. Once you get past the dual cowls, a feature then disappearing from production cars, the features you notice call to mind smaller, sportier cars of the 1950s. The way the front fender tops angle down to meet the teardrop rear fender, and the flush sides without running boards predict the Jaguar XK120 of nine years later, though these shapes could also be seen on BMW's Mille Miglia racers of 1940.*

The rear view gives a better sense of the flowing fender lines, and looks forward to the envelope bodies of the 1950s, when fenders were subsumed into the overall body form.  The general lack of applied decoration is striking.  The headlights are hidden behind doors, as they were on Gordon Buehrig's Cord design from 1936.  Here only the doors move, and the lights stay put...

In 1993 Gale's crew at Chrysler unveiled the Thunderbolt show car.  Chrysler was committed to the Cab Forward look at this time, which can be credited, like Gale's less adventurous K-cars from the early 1980s, with saving the company from bankruptcy another time. Along with unadorned, compound-curved  surfaces, the Thunderbolt showcases a long-wheelbase, short-overhangs design, with the large wheel diameters that were then taking hold...

From the overhead rear view, however, the Thunderbolt appears to be trying to do too many things at once.  The vast goggle of the rear window is indented along the centerline, hinting at Zagato's famous "double bubble" competition coupes for no apparent reason. When combined with the wrap-around, visor-like shape of the windshield and side windows, the windows erode the roof form, and prevent a coherent shape from emerging.  It looks as if the design team were told to use up all their ideas in one place, because this would be their last-ever show car.

On the first Thunderbolt, built by LeBaron in 1941 to a design by Alex Tremulis, you encounter a variety of ideas, but they have a more coherent impact. Tremulis had added the external exhaust pipes to the 1937 Cord, and carried the hidden headlight idea into the Thunderbolt, along with a simplified version of the Newport's flush sides, here with the skirted front and rear wheels which had appeared on Joseph Figoni's Talbots and Delahayes a few years earlier... 

The knockout feature, though, was this electrically-operated hardtop which dropped into a huge well forward of the trunk. The Thunderbolt was built on a 127" wheelbase, so it took up a lot of ground for a two-passenger car.  Five were built, each in a different color scheme and with minor trim variations, like the brass trim on the car below.  Looking at the Thunderbolt in this view, it's easy to see that it might have had some influence on postwar Hudsons.  By the early 1950s, LeBaron was out of the coachbuilding business, and the Chrysler design team would delegate the task of crafting their show cars to Ghia. That, however, is a story for another day.

Photo Credits:

Top & 2nd:  the author
3rd:  imcdb.org (the Internet Movie Car Data Base)
4th:  wikimedia
5th:  Chrysler Corporation
6th:  wikimedia (photo by ZInc)
7th thru 9th:  Chrysler Corporation
10th:  the author
11th:  wikimedia 

*Footnotes:  The BMW Mille Miglia car and XK120 roadster are discussed in "Game Changer", our post for July 16, 2017.