Car Pictures

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Maybach

then

and now

 

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Volkswagen Passat CC BTCC

 

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The first "Corvair" was the Corvette Corvair concept car.

 

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1959 Scagliotti Corvette. A project of Carroll Shelby and Jim Hall, they purchased three '59 Corvette chassis with the 327 FI engine and shipped them to Italy; intent was limited production to homologate them for racing. GM executives were impressed but for some reason the general manager called Shelby in Italy and "chewed my ass out" and killed the project. All three cars still exist, one in the Peterson Museum (red car), the others with private collectors. I think Shelby and Hall went on to make other race cars.

 

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Ford Orion

 

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Citroën BX 4TC Group B

 

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1969 Karmann Ghia with 1986 Porsche engine; recently auctioned for a mere $18k. (I knew someone who did this back in '74 using an early 911 engine, car looked stock other than nice seats and wheels, was quite fast but didn't handle well ...chassis wasn't made for that much power. Similar conversions today install a full roll cage to stiffen the chassis.)

 

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Citroen 2CV, produced from '48-'90; the first ones had a mere 9hp and took 45sec to reach 25mph. Today there is a thriving racing community in the UK, competing on virtually every track in England, Scotland, and Wales; there is an annual 24hr endurance event, usually at Snetterton, but has also been at Anglesey and Mondello. There is even an occasional 24hr event at Spa.

It's even a movie star, appearing in "For Your Eyes Only"

 

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Saleen S7 GT1

 

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Lancia Aurelia

 

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Chevrolet Cruze WTCC
Rob Huff

 

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Lada Niva

 

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Ford Focus WRC
Carlos Sainz / Luis Moya
Rallye Montecarlo 2001
Merry Christmas

 

[Ruttman98]

ca. 1970s AMC Gremlin with a Gen 3 Chrysler Hemi transplant

 

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Go Kart

 

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The supercar of its day, 1914 Stutz Bearcat; powered by a 390ci, 4 valve per cylinder, four cylinder, 60hp engine. A new one cost $2000, at a time a Model T was $200 and a big Dodge was $500. Bearcats won nearly 70% of the races they entered between 1911 and 1922, when the company bankrupted and reorganized as a manufacturer of "safe" sedans, before fading away in 1935.

In 1969 the name was revived for a line of luxury cars designed by Virgil Exner and built by Italian coachmakers on Pontiac Grand Prix chassis (apparently John DeLorean was also involved). A ghastly indulgence (interior trim was gold plated, including the keys), only about a dozen were built between 1969 and 1976 (Elvis Presley bought three of them); in 1978 they were redesigned on the GM B chassis, with a few larger models on Cadillac chassis, about fifty were produced before production ceased in 1982.

This one, recently restored, belonged to Barry White

 

[Ruttman98]

Nice history of the neo(grotesque) Bearcat revival!

Circling back to John Z and the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix, the GP chassis moved from the GM B-body platform to the G-body which was essentially an A-body four-door sedan chassis (4-inches longer than the coupe) with the addition of very long fender overhangs. Delorean wanted classic long hood-short deck proportions and took it to extremes with the GP. Using the Lincoln Continental as his bench(Mark), he dictated to his designers to make the hood an inch longer than the Mk (not sure if the reference was a Mk II or spy-provided info about the Mk III which was also came out in 1969.)

All that length up front is evident when popping the hood of a 1969-1972 Grand Prix as the fan shroud looks like it was sourced from the upper half of a 55-gallon drum! Like most good things at General Motors, PMD had to share its creatively packaged coupe as the Chevrolet Monte Carlo would bow in 1970 and cannibalize GP sales. Olds and Buick would later adopt the G-body and various Cutlasses would top U.S. car sales for a decade.

True to its 1930s personal luxury coupe inspiration, the Grand Prix featured a prominent upright chrome prow of a grille with the front end bracketed with indicator/cornering lights which, to my eyes, harken back to coachlamps of the era.

Along with its styling ethos, the GP also borrowed from American icon Duesenberg for its J and SJ trim designations. And in keeping with the impressive 100-mph cruise speeds of the Duesenberg, a 400 CID 4-BBL with gobs of torque was standard, while 428 CID (displacedment increased to 455 CID for 1970-72) was an option with up to 370 gross HP. Additionally, all engines were available with a 4-speed manual transmission, but these were rarely ordered

Just as the original Deusies included two halo SSJ roadsters built/driven (the extra S standing for "supercharged") built for and driven by movie stars Gary Cooper and Clark Gable, there were also a few dozens of specialty GP SSJ accessorized by Hurst Performance. GTO godfather Jim Wangers added Hurst badging--and on most examples--a de rigeur for the period padded vinyl partial roof treatment which could be combined with an electric sliding sunroof, along with signature Hurst Firefrost Gold two-toning to white or black exteriors (dark green, burgundy, and dark blue examples were also built).

Page from the 1970 Hurst SSJ brochure:

Gold-painted Pontiac Rally II wheels or gold-tone American Racing S-200 "daisy spoke" alumium wheels mounted raised white letter sidewall tires. While forced induction was not a available, Pontiac's distinctive hood tach could be fitted and the Hurst T-shifter was mounted to manual cars with dual gate shifters providing a bit of shift control for automatic equipped cars. Another interesting option was a "performance computer" which could provide 0-60 and 1/4-mile times.


The Grand Prix took on more 1930s styling cues with single head lights paired with an attractively shaped trunk which approximated some boattail speedster lines which the 1973 Buick Riviera would bring to ultimate expression.

To this day, I still am irritated by misguided markets efforts to cynically cash in on the cache of the GP by offering 4-door models begiining in 1989 until its demise as a nameplate. Insult to injurty--the four-door GP would outlive the two-door as the US automakers abandoned the 2-door personal luxury segment to the foriegn OEMs.)

Pontiac was GM's styling leader and the industry's mid-priced makes copied PMD offerings (the late Geoffrey Godshall remarked the Dodge designers coveted Pontiac's split grille which found its wsy onto Monacos, Darts, and Chargers). That was until Pontiac seemingly ran out of ideas and relied on glue-on body side cladding that debutted with the attractive 1985 Grand Am (which shrunk PMD's split grolle motif and aped BMW) and increasingly totured fascias. Ironically, Oldsmobiles boasted cleaner styling when GM sent that proud marque to the dustbin.
The Holden-derived GTO and G8 were too little to late (alas, Holden is also dead and car manufacture of any scale has exited Australia.) Even the G6 was daring, and the Solstice (and Saturn Sky/Vauxhall/Opel siblings) was typical GM--introduce something truly special and kill it off because it didn't set the world on fire with sales volume.

And why is it that such large proportion of a stalled cars tend to be '80s and '90s Pontiacs? The answer could lie in fairly healthy sales, but I proffer it comes down to Pontiac no longer building excitement but a tired, stifled yawn.

 

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Nissan Skyline R34 Super GT

 

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1967 Lancia Fulvia Zagato

 

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.....
And why is it that such large proportion of a stalled cars tend to be '80s and '90s Pontiacs? The answer could lie in fairly healthy sales, but I proffer it comes down to Pontiac no longer building excitement but a tired, stifled yawn.

For me the Grand Prix joins the LTD and Monte Carlo as exemplars of seventies American land barges. It is amusing today to watch the old detective shows of the era where it seems everyone drove one of those (where all sounded like Ferraris and couldn't accelerate or brake without massive tire screeching ...on dirt roads). But they were bulletproof; you could have two cylinders not firing, three others with low compression, a slipping transmission, tapping valves, and fouled plugs and still put another 30k miles on one.