One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars

In this survey of unique cars, we have focused on cars that were actually driven on public roads for at least part of their careers, as distinct from cars used only for racing, experimental cars used only for testing, or show cars used only for display.  We've defined "unique" examples as ones with significantly different outward form (and sometimes mechanical elements) than their siblings from the same manufacturer.  And we've defined "car manufacturer" as any concern which made automobiles with (at least) engines of their own design, and offered them to the public.  We didn't disqualify anyone who was bankrupted by the effort, as this would have eliminated too many interesting cars.  Coach builder's names, in parentheses, are preceded by the designer's name where known. 

1.)  Hispano-Suiza H6C Targa Florio "Tulipwood" (Nieuport Astra, 1924)

Apertif king Andre Dubonnet wanted to race in the Targa Florio, Sicily's high-profile, high-hazard road race.  He ordered a big, six-cylinder 8-liter Hispano-Suiza and had French airframe builder Nieuport Astra construct a lightweight body of thin wood strips adhered to a wood subframe with thousands of tiny brass rivets.  The tapered boat tail feature appeared on other cars during the 20s, but the teardrop fender forms anticipated shapes that were to arrive in the mid-30s.  The completed body allegedly weighed around 160 pounds, and the engine in this car made 195 hp.  It finished 6th in the Targa Florio.  Dubonnet used it as his road car for awhile, and today it seems less a forecast of later road racers than a sort of land-bound yacht, with all the beauty and maintenance headaches of a wooden boat.

2.) Hispano-Suiza Xenia (Andreau for Saoutchik,1938)

Dubonnet was also an amateur inventor.  In 1927, he patented a system of independent front suspension which was later used by General Motors and licensed to Alfa Romeo.  Later in life, he nearly went bankrupt financing solar energy experiments.  But in the meantime, he must have noticed that his old Tulipwood Hispano was beginning to look like a used car.  So, in order to showcase his patented suspension and his ideas on aerodynamics, he commissioned Jean Andreau to design a body using his ideas (sliding doors, curved panoramic windows) and had Hispano supply a new chassis.  Jacques Saoutchik's Paris workshops formed the complex curved panels, and Dubonnet named the result after his late wife.  Compared with the tulipwood Hispano, Xenia is another step away from the horseless carriage approach to car design, with teardrop forms flowing around a glassy canopy which anticipated those on jet fighters.  The doors, sliding on cleverly hidden pivoting arms, would appear on minivans in the mid-80s, and the lifted, elongated tail section predicts Le Mans streamliners of the 60s. It seems Dubonnet forgot to patent the panoramic glass, which General Motors borrowed for its own cars in the 1950s.

3.) Alfa Romeo BAT 5, 7 & 9 (Scaglione for Bertone, 1953-55)

Struggling coachbuilder Nuccio Bertone wanted to get Alfa Romeo's attention, so he had Franco Scaglione design a series of experimental cars to test aerodynamic theories (the Berlina Aerodinamica Tecnicas).  Three of the cars were built and tested, and they worked as Bertone had hoped.  BAT 7 had a Cd of 0.19, which means it had unusually low wind resistance even by today's standards.  The wild fins recall manta rays more than bats, and were supposed to increase directional stability.  Just after the series began, Bertone got the contract to build Alfa's breakout mass-market sports coupe, the Giulietta 1300 Sprint. The BATs were later sold and exported to the United States, where #7 performed regular duty hauling kids to high school in LA.  Where else?  The car probably fit right in with a generation that watched "The Jetsons" on TV…

4.) Ferrari 375 MM for Ingrid Bergman (Pininfarina, 1954)

Movie director Roberto Rossellini liked Ferraris, and had raced one in Italy's thousand-mile race, the Mille Miglia.  When his fate collided with that of actress Ingrid Bergman, he decided to give her a similar car, but one with more comforts than a racing car could offer.  He commissioned Pinin Farina to design and build this one-off coupe.  The parabolic coves behind the front wheels were adopted by GM for the 1956-62 Corvettes, while the flat rear window with flanking sail panels appeared on 1966-67 GM intermediates, the 1968-77 Corvette, and on the Jaguar XJS in 1975.  As GM Styling VP Bill Mitchell later suggested in connection with the Cadillac Seville, "If you're going to rob somebody, rob a bank, not a delicatessen."

5.)  Nardi Lancia Blu Ray II (Michelotti for Vignale, 1958)

Enrico Nardi built race car chassis, modified engines for racing, and most famously built wood and aluminum steering wheels.  The first Blu Ray was built to publicize this business, and used a race-tuned Lancia V6 engine and transaxle under a wild alloy body.  It toured the show circuit and was then sold in the U.S.  Three years later it was joined by Blu Ray II, also with a Lancia drivetrain but this time tuned for road use, and with a steel body. Two-toning was a 50s theme, but usually applied as a sort of afterthought to slab-sided cars and bordered by chrome strips.  Blu Ray is different in that the contrasting colors follow the forms of the air intake and roof, as well as the indented panel on the car's flanks which leads the eye forward to the trim, tapered snout.  Blu Ray II also made its way to America, and in the 70s was sold by a collector to 18 year-old enthusiast Jim Simpson at the exact moment it was in transit from Captivating Used Car to Captive Museum Exhibit.  Jim had been discouraged to discover that minions of Harrah's Museum had arrived on the same day to make an offer.  Still, the owner suggested he take a test drive.  He must have liked the way young Jim handled the car, because he sold it to him for $500 under the asking price, and well under Harrah's offer.  I like to think this guy was betting on his old car giving more enjoyment on the road than as a static museum display.  As it turned out, Jim Simpson restored Blu Ray II and drove it for 16 years, in the meantime tracking down and restoring Blu Ray I as well.  And later on he designed and built a Blu Ray III as a tribute to his first automotive love.

6.)  Alfa Romeo Canguro (Giugiaro for Bertone, 1964)

Bertone's new twenty-something design chief Giorgetto Giugiaro designed this car on the tubular chassis Alfa made for its TZ series of road racing cars. Cutting the door windows into the roof made entry easier, and along with the arc of vents marching down the fender flanks, helped emphasize the pleasingly tactile curvilinear  forms.  It's always seemed a shame there was only one Canguro built.  Alfa's competitors (as in Porsche) must have sighed with relief when Alfa declined to advance the project beyond the prototype stage.  The Canguro (Italian for kangaroo) was later sold, wrecked, and rebuilt, but it still looks like a fresh new idea…

7.) Serenissima Ghia (Tjaarda for Ghia, 1968)

Depending upon whom you believe and how you count, at least 3 and maybe 4 car companies were started by unhappy former customers of Enzo Ferrari: A.T.S., Lamborghini, Iso and Serenissima.  Two of these companies received financing from Count Volpi di Misurata, a customer for Ferrari race cars who offended the big man by financing A.T.S., a competing sports and race car outfit staffed by Ferrari exiles.  After building maybe a dozen cars with bickering partners at A.T.S., the Count decided to build everything for his own team, including chassis and engines.  He also supplied engines for the McLaren Formula One team for awhile, gaining them their first point in GP competition.  The relevance of Serenissima to the history of one-off cars is that they are possibly alone among modern car makers in that they never built even two cars alike.  All of the 7 cars I've been able to track were different.  The Ghia-bodied car was especially unique in that according to Volpi, even its 4-cam engine shared no parts with the other Serenissima V8s...not that even these devices were common; there may have been less than a dozen in all.  American Tom Tjaarda's design resembles a glassy interpretation of the DeTomaso Mangusta (also built by Ghia), with its steeply sloped windshield and strong horizontal crease connecting the wheels, and adds engaging details like an exposed roll bar which appears to have been drilled for lightness.  Ghia attempted to interest Volpi in producing this prototype road car for sale, but he quickly realized that building cars might do to his bottom line what open-ended science experiments had done to Dubonnet's.  So he took the car home after its tour of the auto shows, and used it to drive to the races…

8.)  Maserati Boomerang (Giugiaro for Ital Design, 1972-3)

After graduating from running design at Bertone and then Ghia (where he designed the Mangusta discussed in #7), Giugiaro started his own firm, Ital Design, and his explorations of form moved away from compound curves and parabolic sections to what's commonly called The Wedge, eventually giving us the VW Golf 1, Lotus Esprit, and BMW M1.  Before those cars, however, he launched the Boomerang, a mid-engined V8 show car based on the running gear of his then-current Maserati Bora production car.  Boomerang seemed to harbor references to 2001: Space Odyssey as well as the architecture of the day, with its glass infill between slim metal framing elements.  The overall effect grabbed the attention of potential clients among the bigger car makers as hoped, and brought more attention to the interior design of cars; note that the stationary instruments and switchgear are encircled by the spokes and rim of the steering wheel.  This car was eventually sold, disappeared and was thought lost.  Many years later it resurfaced in Spain, where a wandering car-spotter spied it in a disco parking lot, a perfect place for a well-loved relic of a lost future we thought would involve personal helicopters and supersonic travel for Everyman.  Today it's back on the auto show circuit, where the red carpet rolled out for Maserati's 100-year anniversary.

9.)  Postscript: Dream Makers

This picture shows the Serenissima team between races, gathered in front of their workshops and maybe 75% of their total production; the 6th of 7 or 8 different cars is barely visible on the right. Technology experts have predicted that rapid progress in 3D printers, as well as computer-guided tooling, may make it economically feasible to tailor cars to order again, reviving the era of the one-off. One wonders if they will be self-driving electrics...

Photo credits:

1.)  Wikimedia 

2.)  Front and rear views: Wikimedia; side view: Fabwheelsdigest.com

3.)  Classicdriver.com

4.)  Front view: Stuff.co.nz; rear view: Carbar.no

5.)  Imageshack.com

6.)  Wikimedia

7.)  Serenissima Automobili

8.)  Overhead view: Ital Design Giugiaro; interior: Ototrends.net 

9.)  Serenissima Automobili

Looking Back: When Indy Was Indie

Most Americans think Detroit was always the center of the American car industry, but in the early years there was plenty of competition from car producers in other states (Mercer in New Jersey, Pierce Arrow in upstate New York, Nash in Wisconsin), with Indiana taking a strong second place to Michigan.  A big concentration of independent manufacturing was in Indianapolis, with its history of carriage and bicycle builders.  Prior to about 1909, Indiana was in real contention for the industry hub.  It's probably not mere coincidence that Indiana's clout in the industry waned after that year, because Henry Ford put the Model T in production in October of 1908.  While the Ford juggernaut settled into a pretty successful run up in Detroit (15 million of the cranky but durable T's eventually drove off the assembly lines), Indiana's car makers seemed to shift towards an emphasis on craftsmanship and engineering.  The labor-intensive craft approach died earlier in America than in Europe, and the custom coach builders who had turned out bodies for the likes of Duesenberg, Marmon and Stutz were mostly gone by World War II, along with many of the independent car producers.  But to understand the impact of the independent Indiana car makers, you might want to take a quick look at the Honda, Nissan or Ford sitting in your driveway.  Do you enjoy the responsiveness of that light-alloy V6?  Well, the real credit for that concept goes to Howard Marmon of Indianapolis, who experimented with V4, V6 and V8 engines in the early 1900s and put a successful air-cooled V4 into production in the century's first decade.  Marmon used then-exotic light alloys to minimize weight, and adopted water-cooling (possibly for its noise-reduction aspect) long before he produced his epic, budget-busting V16, in 1931.  Italy's Vincenzo Lancia gets credit for mass-producing the V4, but Marmon's V4 happened first.  Now let's get back to your daily driver.  Maybe it has, instead of a V6, an inline four cylinder with dual overhead cams and four valves per cylinder, perfect for optimizing performance and fuel efficiency while keeping emissions down.  The official history of modern production cars credits the Lotus engine in the Jensen-Healey with this innovation in 1972 (Toyota and Saab would follow with their own interpretations in the early 80s), but it was really the Duesenberg brothers at Auburn Cord Duesenberg who first brought this idea off the race track and onto American highways.  Starting in 1929, the twin cam 4-valve per cylinder design they'd pioneered on racing cars became available on the massive 8-cylinder Duesenberg J.  Fred Duesenberg sketched out a similar cylinder head for Stutz Motors over in Indianapolis, and it powered the Super Bearcat and DV-32 to fame, but sadly not fortune.  All the independent manufacturers were swimming upstream during the Great Depression, and because companies like Marmon, Stutz and A-C-D were places where engineering held more sway than bean-counting, their answers to tough times often involved doubling down on engineering.  Just before his company went bankrupt, Howard Marmon invested his personal fortune in a final attempt to establish a new template for the modern car.  His HCM prototype featured four-wheel independent suspension, a torque tube driveshaft and a light alloy V12 engine.  In a way, Marmon was trying to do for large American cars what Lancia was doing for smaller European ones (it didn't work much better for Lancia, which went bankrupt about 20 years later). Three years later, Cord succeeded in making three thousand of its most futurist effort before the effort bankrupted them. Everyone takes the all-weather traction of front-wheel drive for granted, so it's easy to forget how many early efforts failed or bankrupted their sponsors.  In America, E.L Cord tried it as early as 1929, and France's Andre Citroen improved on the L-29's traction with his unit-body Citroen Traction (for traction avant, or front drive) in 1934.  By the time the revolutionary Cord 810 showed up for the 1936 model year, front-wheel drive was combined with a modern V8 and a pared-down, streamlined form with trademark hidden headlights and horizontal radiator slats replacing the old "radiator grille".  As one admirer claimed, it looked "like it was born and raised on the road" but it was heartbreakingly expensive to build.  While the effort to explore the frontiers of engineering and production possibilities had its financial drawbacks everywhere (France's Citroen had to be taken over by Michelin after putting the Traction into production), it left us with advances we take for granted today.  Indiana's independent car makers often led Detroit (if not Europe) in bringing advanced features into production.  Besides the front-wheel drive, overhead cams, and multivalve engines we've already mentioned, examples of innovations from independents include supercharging (Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg, Studebaker) and disc brakes in mass production along with integrated rollover protection.  The Last Man Standing of Indiana's indie car makers, Studebaker gave us these last two items* before closing the old South Bend carriage works at the end of 1963, along with some features we might like to see return (example: a sliding station wagon roof for tall loads).  Along with their weight saving and performance efforts, they'd also made it easier for drivers to see out of the car (note the glassy cantilevered roof of the '47 Starlight Coupe).  If you've ever been frustrated by the near-horizontal mail slot backlights of modern cars, you might enjoy backing this puppy down your drive.  But maybe the "vision thing" was itself an Indiana tradition.  If you look at the 1911 Marmon Wasp that ran the first Indy 500 over a hundred years ago you'll note the prominent rear-view mirror, often cited as the first, and perhaps evidence of old Howard's confidence that driver Ray Harroun would wind up with a bunch of cars trailing along behind him.  In fact, he won the race.  Who knows?  If Marmon had charged other car makers even a dime every time they replicated this feature, maybe his company would still be building cars today.

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*In 1949, another independent, Crosley Motors, first standardized modern caliper disc brakes on all their cars.  These were aircraft-type Goodyear-Hawleys; corrosion proved to be a problem and Crosley reverted to drums a year later.  Chrysler standardized disc brakes on the Crown Imperial in the same year, but these were not the modern caliper type, and didn't stay in the product line.  And while Studebaker successfully brought the caliper type into mass-production first in America, Citroen and Triumph offered them in 1956.

Photos and credits:
1.)  1911 Marmon Wasp (Hemmings Motor News)
2.)  1932-34 Stutz DV-32 Monte Carlo (Google + User Content)
3.)  1932 Marmon V12 prototype (RM-Sotheby's Auctions)
4.)  1937 Cord 812 Beverly (Barrett-Jackson Auction Company)
5.)  1947 Studebaker Commander Starlight Coupe (Studebaker Corporation)
6.)  1963 Studebaker Avanti (Studebaker Corporation)

What Defines a Production Car, and Why Would Anybody Pay $3 Million For One?

At Mecum's Monterey auction two weekends ago, someone bought a 1970 Plymouth Hemi Cuda convertible for $2,250,000.  At last year's Monterey auction, a similar car from 1971 brought a jaw-dropping $3.5 million.  The Plymouth Barracuda was a production car by any reasonable definition; production in 1970 missed 55,500 by one car; 2,785 of those were convertibles.  Only 14 convertibles, though, were ordered with the tire-shredding 426 Hemi engine (named for its hemispherical combustion chambers), because it added about 35% to the cost of the car.  So scarcity, along with a reputation for blazing speed (at least in a straight line) mean that today a car which was a hard sell when new is avidly sought by collectors who dream of finding one in a barn somewhere.  Their odds of being hit by lightning are probably better…Chrysler wasn't the only outfit offering expensive performance options in this era; Ford offered the Shelby Mustangs and Chevy actually offered an aluminum racing engine, the 7 liter ZL-1, in the Camaro.  It had the distinction of being more expensive than the car, adding roughly $4,200 to the Camaro's $2.800 tag, so it took around $7k to drive this Chevy off the showroom floor. Amazingly, some people did this, and GM built 69 ZL-1 Camaros for 1969.  One of my high school classmates bought one (I'm sure he's wondering where it is now).  All right then, production cars are made in the thousands from standardized parts, but some can be tailored with exotic options.  Does that make them works of art?  Well, at your local high-zoot hotel, let's say the dessert menu offers an ice cream sundae with a Courvoisier topping option to go with the usual standard components (plain vanilla ice cream, nuts, cherries, whipped cream).  The option costs twice as much as the basic sundae. If you check that cognac box, are you getting the equivalent of something tailored by a three-star Michelin chef?  Well, no.  What you are getting is an unforgettably powerful ice cream sundae...

 

So now, having defined "production car" in a somewhat shambling manner, we move on to the more arcane task of defining real works of art, those dessert offerings which are somehow more than just plain vanilla ice cream with something special on top.  Here are the Dodge Fire Arrows III and IV. The photo shows 50% of the total stock of Fire Arrows built by Ghia for Chrysler in 1953-'54.

The Fire Arrows were part of a series of show cars created by Chrysler design chief Virgil Exner and Italian coach builder Ghia's Luigi Segre to perk up Chrysler's stodgy image.  The hemi V8 engine was also part of that effort, and the smaller but related Red Ram is under the tapered hood.  There were 2 roadsters (weather protection zero to minimal), one coupe (Fire Arrow III, background) and the convertible IV in the foreground (wind-up windows, radio, folding top).  Both the roadsters were different in detail, so all four Fire Arrows are pretty special.  Fire Arrow III, in perfect condition, was sold at auction in 2011 for $852,500.  Some people thought that was a crazy price.  Take another look at the stock Barracuda convertible in the color shot above it, repeat the phrase "2 to 3 million dollars", and then tell me if you think so.  Here's how Fire Arrow III looks now, just in case you can't decide which you'd rather have.

The Fire Arrow story, like most stories, runs parallel with its era.  Postwar optimism pacing an economic boom, allied with technical progress (and cheap gas) that led to new V8s at GM, Chrysler, Ford and even little Studebaker, coincided with the demise of some European carriage trade marques like Bugatti, Delahaye, Delage,  and Talbot.  This in turn left coach builders who'd been supplying bodies to those old firms searching for more modern chassis with cheaper power, and led to experiments with American power in European chassis.  In Italy, Siata tried Chrysler, Ford and even the 4 cylinder Crosley.  In France, Facel used a Ford V8 in its Comete and then graduated to the Chrysler hemi for its Facel Vega.  The Ghia Chryslers hit the show circuit right before that Facel Vega, and showed that you might save time (and francs or lira) by adopting an entire American chassis, not just the engine.  Maybe you could undercut Ferrrari and Aston Martin by adapting something reasonably simple, strong and powerful; possibly a Dodge convertible...

This Dual-Ghia resulted from that thinking, and it happened when Chrysler, in a close (and probably wrong) call, decided not to put the Fire Arrow into production.  By 1955, frustrated Dodge and Chrysler-Plymouth dealers watched as Ford sold over sixteen thousand new Thunderbirds. Paul Farrago, Ghia's ambassador to Motown, and Eugene Casaroll of Dual Motors (military vehicles and car transporters) decided to develop the Fire Arrow into their idea of a production car. Their first pass, the Firebomb (this was way before the War on Terror) added real bumpers.  On their second try they added embryonic fins, interior space and headroom, and wisely ditched the Firebomb moniker.  This is the car you see above.  Their goal was to build 150 cars a year to test the market, possibly based on the example of Aston Martin, then building that number of cars, as well as Ferrari and Maserati, both introducing their first production GTs in 1957. The price was set at $7,750…about a thousand dollars more than Imperial's posh convertible, but a couple thousand dollars less than Lincoln's Continental Mk. II.  Lacking a budget for advertising, they released the first cars in a slow trickle to Hollywood celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Dean Martin. At the time, a gossip columnist commented that stars unable to get on the waiting list for a Ghia "would just have to settle for a Rolls-Royce."  But Ghia's small workshops weren't suited to anything like series production (one reason VW had offloaded production of Ghia's VW prototype to Karmann, resulting in the Karmann-Ghia), and the intensive hand labor and expense of sending each chassis on an Italian vacation meant that Dual Motors lost money on every car.  Total production for 1957 and '58 was only 117 cars, which makes the D-G not quite a production car. Customers, though, were generally happy, and a high percentage of the cars survived because of the easy maintenance and parts supply for the Dodge chassis and running gear.  Ronald Reagan eventually lost his Ghia in a poker game to President Lyndon Johnson, which might have made a good headline if anybody had leaked it, and proved that, while these guys couldn't agree on the need for a big, powerful Federal government, they agreed that big, powerful cars were still in the cards.  Happy clients encouraged Dual Motors and Ghia to try again, this time with the glassy and elegant Ghia L6.4, from 1961 to '63.  By this time, production and transport costs resulted in an eye-watering $13,500 price tag, which was in Maserati territory.  Dual Motors drifted away from the project while Farrago and Ghia soldiered on, selling only 26 cars, mostly to repeat Hollywood Rat Pack clients and affluent swingers.  The classic car market has been slow to catch up with these cars, but finally has embraced them. The red convertible recently brought $412,000 at auction, and the black L6.4 coupe below rolled off the stage for $297,000.  Paul Farrago and Eugene Casaroll might be happy to know that their brainchild is finally earning money.

Photo credits:  Top: Mecum Auction Company (catalog).  

2nd from top:  Chrysler Corporation.

3rd from top: RM Sotheby's Auctions (catalog)  

4th from top:  Russo and Steele Auctions (catalog).  

Bottom:  RM Sotheby's Auctions (catalog).

The First Mustang: Ford's Forgotten Mustang I

Looking at today's blog title, you're likely wondering how anybody could forget the first Mustang. You drift into a pleasant reverie, possibly one built on taking your first love to a drive-in, or maybe racing against your neighbor's Corvair on a deserted farm road, strictly under the radar, except that this was before the local cops used radar...  Then you take a glance at the photo below.  Wait a minute here; this car blog guy has clearly been listening to some alien vinyl.  That's not my Mustang.  And indeed it's not.  It is, however, the original Ford Mustang, the one that level-headed engineers and wild-eyed road racing fans at Ford intended us to have.

Some fairly surprising developments were beginning to come to light at conservative old FoMoCo in the early 1960s.  Before departing for the Kennedy Administration, Robert McNamara approved a downsized, International Style Lincoln Continental which echoed the era's minimalist steel and glass architecture.  Ford of England started selling engine blocks to Lotus for their groundbreaking Elan sports car, and this later tied into a "Total Performance" marketing strategy involving nippy Lotus Ford Cortina sedans and Falcon V8s, to participation in international rallies, and by 1965 to Jimmy Clark winning the Indy 500 with a Ford-powered Lotus.  First though, Ford's top brass green-lighted the Cardinal for Ford of Germany, an innovative little front-driver with four cylinders arranged in a vee, an engine design seen only on Italy's avant garde Lancia up until then.  So the stage was already set, in a way, when GM's Chevrolet Division began to sell lots of sporty Corvair Monzas (rear engine, 4 speed floor shift, bucket seats) to Ford's target youth market.  Ford's engineers responded by wondering how they might adapt the Cardinal's front-drive engine and transaxle package to a sporty, mid-engined car.  While the mid-engine layout had just become dominant in Formula One racing cars, nobody had yet released a production car with it.  When Ford's designers delivered their sketches to the prototyping shop, they also included aluminum bodywork with seats as part of the structure, so that it was only the pedals and wheel which adjusted (a feature which took a decade to appear on Maserati's Bora), and side-mounted radiators (which would show up on race cars in the 70s and road going Ferraris in the 80s).  Topping it off were a structural rollover bar (like those on then-new Ferrari sports racers), disc brakes*, and "wobbly web" alloy wheels which look like Ford yanked them off one of Clark's Lotus racers.

When the prototypes were first shown in October 1962, they seemed to herald a stunning turnaround for a company which had only a couple years earlier given up on its misbegotten Edsel.  Car enthusiasts, especially those who wrote for magazines like Road & Track, went wild. Dan Gurney turned in some test lap times which were close to those of contemporary Formula One racers (which also happened to have engines limited to 1.5 liters, the size of the Mustang's V4).  Ford was serious enough about its little auto show star that it released a brochure to underline the point.  The car's fate, however, was not left in the hands of its engineers.  Marketing studies showed that the Mustang would appeal only to a narrow segment of the target youth market, mostly people who read magazines like Road & Track, attended races and rallies as spectators or even participants, and hung out with beatniks in coffee houses (hippies, like mid-engined production cars, were half a decade away).  So the bracingly unconventional prototypes were retired to Ford's orphan garage, while Lee Iacocca directed the engineers to cook up something based upon stock Falcon parts.  As you know, this turned out to be good for the bottom line.  Stateside, the guys (and gals) with the string-back driving gloves would never even get the clever little Cardinal, and would wait 8 years for the built-down-to-price Pinto.  You know how that turned out as well.  Around a year after Mustang One went into forced retirement, though, Ford showed racing fans a prototype which, with its mid-engined layout, tapered snout and prominent air intakes, seemed to echo the spare, focused approach of the original Mustang. It was called the GT40, but it's a completely different story…

*Front discs sourced from English Fords were featured, while the rear initially had drums (perhaps the only conservative engineering feature).  Tubular space frame and aluminum bodywork were built by Troutman and Barnes, and the operational prototype was produced in only 3 months, ready for laps at Watkins Glen.

Photo and drawing credits:  Ford Motor Company

A Review of the Monterey Auction Weekend, August 14-16, 2015

A Review of the Monterey Auction Weekend, August 14-16, 2015
(Used Car Culture vs. the International Art Market)

If any of you were disappointed to hear that this year's receipts at the much-anticipated Monterey classic car auctions were below those from 2014, you may be reassured to learn that this result was largely because the weekend's top earner, a $17+ million dollar Ferrari 250LM, was around $20 million cheaper than last year's trophy Ferrari.  As with last year, the preponderance of the take went to the top 10% of the cars on offer (a bit like the distribution of wealth in modern America).  Surveying the results at the High Art auction houses like RM Sotheby's, Gooding and Bonhams might convey the impression that all the great cars have been vacuumed up by hedge fund managers and Silicon Valley software moguls (many of them have) but there were some bargains to be had this year at Monterey, and at least one timeless classic went for the new-car equivalent of entry-level Lexus money.  Shifting our attention away from the purveyors of taste and tone is a bit like switching from The Fashion Channel to The Fishing Channel, but moving over to Mecum, for example, or Russo and Steele, will tell us what car enthusiasts without Swiss bank accounts might be able to find.

First of all, the bad news.  If you've finally awakened to the fact that pre-DeTomaso Maseratis and pre-Fiat Lancias were nicely engineered, tastefully styled underdogs in the world of arty used cars, your train has already left the station.  The Maserati Ghibli, which summed up the late 60s Jet Set esthetic as well as anything on wheels, is now priced at five to ten times what it brought five years ago, if the coupe which sold for over $300k is an indication.  And a Lancia Aurelia Spider, which Pinin Farina seems to have designed for the Jet Set before there was one, went for over $1,900,000.  These prices reflect the expansion of the classic car market beyond the old LA to London circuit to include newly-minted zillionaires in Mumbai and Shanghai.  Will the bubble burst now that the Chinese economy has slowed and the stock market has deflated a bit?  There are signs that we are in a bubble, but it may take more than a decline in the stock market to burst it. After the crash of 1987, values of antiques, art, and old cars actually went up.  Now, on to the good news, as embodied by a few Honest Used Cars…

Once you come down the spiral staircase from the penthouse suite occupied by the seven-figure vintage racers and eight-figure Figoni-bodied one-offs, the big story in the classic car boom is the ascendency of production cars (vehicles made in the thousands) to the price levels formerly occupied by genuinely rare cars.  For example, a nice (but not perfectly original) '57 Chevy Nomad (a jazzy 2 door wagon that first gave us Sport without any of that dreary Utility) went for over $50k, and an Austin Healey 100-6 (in lovely condition, but not the racier 100-4 or the posh 3000) brought nearly that.  Bathtub Porsche 356 cabriolets have ascended to $200k and beyond (remember, they made around 70,000 bathtub Porsches, most with VW-derived pushrod engines) and Series One E-type Jaguar roadsters now bring $200k to nearly $400k depending how perfect they are (and despite their undeniable beauty, "perfection" is not often a word immediately summoned by "Jaguar.")  By the way, if you look at the overall production of E-types, you find they nearly match the figure for bathtub Porsches.  So, as with the Porsche 356, we have a mechanical and industrial design artifact which is charming, but not all that rare.  (Full disclosure; I've owned the same '67 E-type coupe for 42 years, and it's been a good car, but I'd never consider displaying it in my living room.  Too many oil leaks, for one thing).

Scrolling through the sales, however, I found four cars which tell us something about the transitory border between cars as art and cars as used commodities.  We begin with a '67 E-type Jaguar two passenger coupe, tastefully restored in dark blue with gray interior.  E-type coupes have always trailed the open roadsters in price, but have caught up a bit in the current boom. This car, a rare "Series 1-1/4" (still with 3 SU carbs, knock-off hubs and toggle switchgear as on the Series 1, but no glass covers over the headlights) failed to make Mecum's $100k to $125k estimate and sold for $80,000. This may be because people always expect the covered lights on a '67, or the more usual BRG over black color scheme (I think blue over gray is perfect).  If the driving experience matches the appearance and the boom market continues, this car may look like a bargain by next summer.

Next to catch my eye at Mecum was a 1964 Imperial convertible, Elwood Engel's clever restyling of Virgil Exner's 1957 Imperial.  Starting with the old windshield / cowl assembly and ample frame, Engel transformed Exner's finned wonder into a riff on his own brilliant design for the 1961-63 Lincoln Continental convertible, but without that car's 4 doors or fiendishly complex top mechanism.  The Imperial already had curved side glass in '57, so this feature also matches the Lincoln, as do the blade-like fender planes outlined in chrome. Unlike his Lincoln design, Engel slanted the fenders upward and outward from stern to prow, perhaps a nod to Exner's Forward Look.  The wide whitewalls are an anachronism (they were largely gone by '62) but give the car presence, and the condition doesn't disappoint. For $42k someone got a truly rare car.  Chrysler built just 922 Imperial ragtops in 1964 (just over 1/4 of that year's Lincoln tally), and from '57 through '66 (my favorite years) convertible production only got beyond three digits once, in the boom year of 1957. Like the letter-series Chrysler 300 convertible which can sell for 3 to 4 times this price, the Imperial has bags of torque and horsepower, and you'll never see yourself coming down the road.

BMWs don't appear in classic auctions nearly as often as Porsches or Jags, so it was a pleasure to see this 1973 BMW 3.0 CS coupe on offer.  Rebuilt as a sort of "resto-mod" (all right, a hot rod), the car was uprated with a 5 speed transmission, bigger and punchier inline six, bigger wheels, and tasteful but non-standard blue paint.  Despite, or perhaps (given the current "originality" vogue) because of these revisions, the glassy, graceful coupe failed to make Mecum's estimate of $35k to $50k, and went out the door for $32,500.  This is below what you'd pay for a new, entry-level BMW, and edging towards used car territory.  If this machine runs as happily as it looks, it's a bargain, especially as all the hard-to-find interior and exterior trim pieces seem to be there.  Full disclosure again: I happen to own one of these, and know how hard some of the pieces are to find.  If the new owner wants to go "original" he or she can find the original style wheels with matching tires, and just keep quiet about the extra hundred horses under the hood.

Possibly saving the best for last, we stop to check out a car which has been rated by engineers, designers and car collectors as a classic from the moment it first appeared in 1936.  Originally designed by Gordon Buehrig as a sort of baby Duesenberg, the front-drive Cord 810 and supercharged 812 series is one of the most significant cars ever.  The Cord was one of the cars exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art in its landmark 1951 show, Eight Automobiles (the curators picked a sedan like this one). Remarkably, the 812 on offer at Mecum's auction stand had the correct Lycoming V8, as well as the electric pre-selector gearbox featured on the original. The car looked spotless and correct inside and out, with none of the "improvements" some owners were tempted to add.  And while the closed models usually sell for less than the convertibles, the sedan's smoothly curved roof encloses a private, cozy cabin with its own unique character…all fronted by possibly the most memorable instrument panel design of any car.  This piece, ready for the gallery or a road tour, rolled out the door on period-correct wheels and tires for $42k, quite a bit less than some of the vintage Toyota Land Cruisers offered at this year's auctions.  High art at a used-car price, and my pick for the best deal of the entire auction series.

All photos are from the Mecum's auction catalog, and copyright by Mecum's Auction Company.