RideLust

Back in the ’60s car magnate Renzo Rivolta assembled an Italian automotive superhero team: Ultimate engineer Giotto Bizzarrini, supreme designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, and legendary chassis builder and design house Bertone. The League of Extraordinary Automotive Awesomeness then grabbed one of the most legendary power plants on the planet: The Chevy v8. Iso Rivolta cars had Italian style in spades and American muscle and reliability by the ton. By the early ’70s, however, the company was facing bankruptcy. One of the last cars it made was the Iso Lele, a Gandini-designed 2+2 GT car powered by either a Chevy 327/350 v8 or a Ford 351 Cleveland V8.

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“Ford Mustang” is synonymous with front-engine, rear-drive coupes. But the car originally had a mid-mounted four cylinder. The Ford Mustang I concept was designed and built in 1962 as part of Lee Iacocca‘s initiative to create a radical sports car to compete with the successful Chevrolet Corvair Monza coupe. The team, which included designer John Najjar, engineer Roy Lunn, and designer Gene Bordinat, completed the fully functional concept car in just 100 days. The Mustang I had a steel tube chassis with an all-aluminum body riveted to it for maximum rigidity. It also had fully independent suspension, disc brakes, and a mid-mounted Ford Cardinal 1500cc 60-degree V4 engine good for about 109 horsepower. The car was feather light, wickedly fast, and drop-dead gorgeous. Unfortunately, Ford never put the car into production citing prohibitive production costs. But I can’t be too hard on Ford, considering the Mustang it did produce (and produces today) is kick ass. And, yeah, there’s the original GT40. And the GT. And the SHO. And the Focus RS. Still, who wouldn’t love a lightweight mid-engine sports car wearing the Blue Oval?

In 1980 the Raging Bull was being put out to pasture. Lamborghini went into liquidation and many doubted it would recover. Still, the super car manufacturer dropped a stunner on the 1980 Turin Motor Show, the Athon. Designed by Marc Deschamps of Bertone, the Athon was the epitome of clean, futuristic design. The topless wedge looked like it beamed down from the mothership, complete with multiple vents that seemingly fed a hyperdrive system and forcefield generator. And unlike most concept cars, it was fully functional, built on a Lamborghini Silhouette. The automotive press went wild when they saw it and many believe it drummed up enough interest in Lamborghini to save the company. The Athon currently resides in the Bertone museum in Rome.

You’re looking at the sexiest Nissan ever made. That’s right, this 1964 Silvia represents the pinnacle of Nissan design, and it was made almost 50 years ago. And it was designed by a German. The Silvia was penned by the famous Albrecht von Goertz, who designed the famously seductive BMW 507. You can see bits of the 507 in the Silvia, the telltale long bonnet and forward leaning front end, the large wheels and skinny bumpers. The Silvia is undeniably one hot car. Unfortunately, Nissan only made about 580 of them between 1964 and 1968. Each one had hand-formed body panels and at the time cost $4,390, more than twice as much as a Datsun Bluebird coupe and almost as much as a contemporary Mercedes. Few original Silvias survive today and the ones that escaped the tinworm and time are worth serious bucks. Hit the jump for more pics of this beauty.

Source: Silvia History

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Hot Rod Pinup Girls at El Mirage

Yesterday afternoon I posted a video ad for the new Audi A1, featuring classic cars, pin-up girls, the Audi A1 and the disturbingly androgynous pop band Tokyo Hotel. It was high dollar, for sure, but it just didn’t speak to me. I said it needed 35% less band members, 10% less Audi A1 and 40% more classic cars and pinup girls.

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It was Toyota’s first sports car and is possibly the pinnacle of Japanese automotive design. The diminutive Sports 800 was released in 1965 and was the product of Nissan designer Shozo Sato and Toyota engineer Tatsuo Hasegawa. It was powered by a two-cylinder air-cooled boxer engine that was good for 45 horsepower and 45 miles per gallon. The car weighed just 1,200 pounds. It had the very first targa top, a lift-out aluminum roof panel for wind-in-your #1 Headband motoring. It is thoroughly Japanese, an automobile that could very well have driven out of the ear of Hayao Miyazaki. The low belt line, bubble roofline and bug-eye headlamps make the Sports 800 sleek and playful at the same time. But there’s seriousness in that sinister sweeping nose, a shark-like menace. And there’s good reason for it. Hasegawa was an aeronautical engineer during WWII and that curve mimics the nose of the Kawasaki Ki-61 Hein, one of Japan’s fastest and most powerful fighters.

Only about 3,100 Sports 800s were built and fewer than 300 survive today.

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Porsche 917 Interserie Spyder. Photo: Bonham Auctions

Money may be tight everywhere else, but it was certainly flowing at last weekend’s Bonham Auction at Monterey. A Ferrari California Spyder set a record for long wheel based Spyders, selling for $7.26 million. A Tucker sold for $1.128 million, making it the highest price ever paid for a Tucker automobile sold at auction.

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Photo: Jameslist

Let’s say you had a serious chunk of change to invest: where would you put it? The stock market is a little better than going to Vegas and betting everything on “red”, but not much. Bonds don’t yield much return, precious metals are all over the place and there’s no guarantee that art will appreciate, either. You could blow all of your money on hookers and beer, which would give you some righteous stories to tell, or you could sink your money into an automotive investment.

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Believe it or not, it isn’t easy to comb through dozens of auto-related sites each day trying to find relevant and interesting news to report on. A lot of “leaked” information tends to be disinformation aimed at throwing journalists off the track. When I see a headline about the latest 800 horsepower, biodiesel powered, AWD, mid-engined Corvette I just chuckle and move along. Nothing to see here.

After a few years of doing this, your eyes tend to glaze over when you hit the same sites, with the same uninspired layouts, day after day. Every once in a while you stumble across a site, new or not, that makes you take a step back and say, “Wow, that’s how it should be done.” One of those sites is Hawaii Motorbeat, a labor of love written written by Paul Maddox, a vintage gearhead who remembers the days when “tuning” required hand tools and not laptops. His website / magazine is published monthly, and covers anything related to drag racing, street rodding or road racing in Hawaii.

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There are a whole mess of sweet European rides that us ‘Mericans just plain ignore. Peugeot’s 504 coupe is one of them. It’s like an Italian supermodel crossed with a buxom French burlesque performer. It’s an apt analogy, considering its body was penned by the renowned Pininfarina and its mechanicals are all French. Well, French and Swedish. But we’ll get to that later. The 504 coupe was released in 1969, one year after the 504 sedan hit the streets of Paris. It was originally equipped with a wheezy but efficient 1.8-liter inline four cylinder. In 1974 the coupe received a 136-horsepower 2.7-liter V6. The engine was developed as a joint venture between Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo, and ended up in many European cars. The 504 had fully independent suspension and handled well enough to win the Sahara Rally in 1978. Unfortunately, like most cars of the ’70s, the 504 coupe had no rust protection and tended to dissolve in even mild humidity. Still, there are some floating around the States, just waiting to dance for the right owner.

Source: Ran When Parked