As car guy moments go, spending three hours at the GM Heritage Center with Jaguar’s Chief Designer Ian Callum is about as good as it gets. In fact, I thought I had taken twice as many pictures as I had. Check back later for a full write-up of my interview with Ian, in which we learn (among many other things) that the designer of such vehicles as the Aston Martin DB7 is surprisingly obsessed with classic American cars.
Imagine, for a moment, how different this Curbside Classic would be if Honda actually built this little electric neo-600.
Photos from the Fairfield County Concourse, courtesy James Gribbon. Can’t get enough Packard? Check out the recent 1951 Packard Curbside Classic.
Another day, another meticulously-crafted yet completely bastardized retro-mod, conceived but not realized by a designer working for a major car company, finished via the patronage of California collector Ron Kellogg. This time ’round, Big Ron’s looking to de-acquisition an Aerodyne Streamliner Coupe penned by Nissan Design’s California model shop manager John Toom. The quote marks denote deconstruction. Toom’s fantasy whip sits on a 1956 Jaguar XK140 frame, powered by a rebuilt 3.8-liter XKE engine. Et voila! A Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantique knock-off! Whatever it isn’t, the Jag-based whip’s got bespoke door handles, gauges, dashboard, the works. Unlike Kellogg’s cod-Bug, the sales bumph for the made-up Jag doesn’t include a list of concours events which have welcomed the car. Take that as you will. Referring to Kellogg’s car photo website, we can speculate that the collector’s willingness to do the wild thang with a Jag connects to his first car: a XK120 coupe. More than this, I do not know, and the Internets will not reveal. Suffice it to say, if I were a mainstream manufacturer’s car designer with a hankering to reinvent a classic car, I’d think twice before risking the Curse of The RestoMod Motors.
Our friends at JamesList present a 1937 Bugatti Type 57/59 Roadster Supersport. GM’s ex-Director of Design penned the restomod’s basic shape and details in 1982, imagining a sports car that Jean Bugatti might have offered to the American market. You know; if he had. Clicking over to Deansgarage.com reveals that the realization of Dave Holls’ alternative universe owes its existence to deep-pocketed California collector Ron Kellogg. Aside from a slightly widened replica T59 frame, Palmer Coachworks built l’homage de Bug‘s major bits using genuine GM— I mean Bugatti parts, including a T57 powerplant (with an added blower and dry sump) and a 73C gearbox (no.6) with synchromesh. Even so, one wonders if Bugatti purists would be amused. That’s not an original thought. “The Kellogg project required climbing special challenges,” Deansgarage reports, using the adjective favored by people for whom “handicapped” is too pointed. “Not the least of which was getting the approval of the Bugatti Trust for permission to go ahead with the program. So the Kellogg Bugatti has a legitimate historical production chassis number. This is no small accomplishment. [It was] assigned the number #128, year 1937.” Needless to say, the new seller agrees: provenance is no biggie. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they . . .
Ask a gearhead about Chinese auto styling, and the adjective most likely to come up is “derivative.” Or at least “crude.” Cars like the Rolls-aping Hongqi HQD helped build these unflattering associations, but this picture proves that they aren’t always true. This HQE, the chosen chariot for Hu Jintao’s National Day parade appearance [via Gasgoo], reaches back to FAW-Hongqi’s own heritage (rather than, say, the Robb Report) for inspiration. That’s a good trend for an industry that was fast becoming a car blog punchline.
How about a backers for an independent British sportscar marque? Kuwait’s national Investment Dar, which paid $925m for a 51 percent stake in Aston Martin two and a half years ago, has secured a claims freeze from creditors, reports The Guardian. This, nearly seven months after the fund got into trouble and offered its Aston stake up for biding, and our Aston-buyer-rumor-meter is still registering a fat goose egg. $393m of Dar’s stake was financed with a Shariah-compliant loan, and the Dar has been forced to publicly ask its creditors to chill. The finance guys will come to some kind of musawamah, but it’s Aston I’m worried about. McLaren is making a less indulgently heritage-dependent bid to be come the British sportscar firm, while Aston is… languishing on the market, firing workers, being turned down by celebs, rebadging Toyotas and generally cheapening the brand. Where do you go from there?
Economics professors Burton Abrams and George Parsons sum up the Cash for Clunkers tragedy wonderfully in their essay Is CARS a Clunker? [PDF available here]. “Concentrated benefits create vocal advocates, while diffused costs produce silent, apathetic opponents,” they conclude after showing that the costs of crushing clunkers outweighed the benefits by about $2,000 per vehicle. But reality is even worse. As economists, Abrams and Parsons break everything into dollars and cents. That’s their job. But one look at the CARS.gov list [PDF] of vehicles “traded in” shows that, for car aficionados anyway, the true cost of Cash for Clunkers is almost impossible to boil down to mere money. Did you know some fool “traded in” an Aston DB7 Volante? An M3? A TVR? A grip of Ur-Quattros? Three Laforzas? I didn’t even know what a Laforza is. Now I don’t want to get all Hemmings on you, but this stuff is more than just heritage: these vehicles are wonderfully bad decisions waiting to happen. Literally thousands of young men are currently trolling their local Craigslist for out-of-reach vehicles at prices that would make anyone who knew better run away screaming. Thanks to Cash for Clunkers they’ll never understand the agony and the ecstasy of trying to keep an Aston running on elbow grease, generic parts and a Nietzschian will to awesome. And that’s the real tragedy.
James Gribbon captures the stars of Lime Rock’s Vintage Festival, including a 1939 Mercedes Grand Prix Car on track for the first time since the 1930s.
The Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance is the most prestigious collectors and special interest automobile show east of the Mississippi. Started in 1979 by Don Sommer, a Detroit area collector and restorer, the concours is held on the grounds of Meadow Brook Hall, the 110 room, 88,000 sq ft Tudor mansion built in the 1920s by Matilda Dodge Wilson, in Rochester, Michigan, about 15 miles north of the city. Yeah, that Dodge. John’s widow, Horace’s sister in law. The mansion and the rest of Matilda’s estate are now the campus of Oakland University.
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