Mystery car pix

chuck1959

It's a UK Ford Focus Cabroliet. Something that SHOULD be offered here!

fintail

From some of the "projects" I see in UK magazines, the car in that photo would be considered to be a nice clean original.

Mr_Shiftright

Well of course in the UK they change rocker panels like we change wiper blades. I'm sure there's a "Jiffy Weld" on every corner over there :P

fintail

You're probably not far off. I have noticed in some of these mags when they take an old car for inspection and it fails because it needs "welding", they don't seem too put off by it, almost like it is just deferred maintenance.

andys120

Ford Focus Cabroliet

Yep.

bumpy

before looking upon this monstrosity:

andys120

Is that a Cavalier with a bad case of the Mumps?

texases

Hmm - ugly, European, must be a Zagato - even has the Z on the hubcaps. Which one, I don't know...

andys120

This un's almost as ugly as that Zagato/Cavalier thing, and it was once a lot more common.>

british_rover

Isn't that an Dodge Dart?

Like 1960-61ish in year.

lokki

THESE always reminded me of THOSE

Although they really don't look that much alike when I see them together, either one is ugly enough to choke a goat....so maybe that's it.

You have to ask: Why?, WHY?, WHY? :confuse: What were they thinking? America had suddenly gone blind or something? :surprise:

british_rover

double post

bumpy

One of the hideous early-60s Chryslers. '61 Dodge Polara?

Oh, the 'Z' on the hubcaps of #9254 pulls double duty.

andys120

the Dodge is a '62 Dart. The more compact Dart followed in '63 IIRC.

Lokki's black car is a Stutz Bearcat revival that came along in the mid or late 60s. I sort of liked it but I'm a sucker for a split-Vee windshield.

andre1969

is a 1962 standard-sized Dodge. Dunno if it's a Dart or Polara, though. They were ugly to be sure, but an excellent lesson in space efficiency. Chrysler downsized their full-sized Plymouths and Dodges for 1962, in mistaken anticipation for shrunken GM cars. But what they thought were going to be shrunken full-sized cars turned out to be the new intermediates, like the '64 Chevelle/Tempest/etc.

These shrunken '62's were about 3" shorter in wheelbase and probably 7-8" shorter overall than a comparable '62 Chevy or Ford, but they gave up very little in terms of interior space. And the light weight made them excellent performers. Chrysler stuck just about every engine under the sun in these cars, from the 225 slant six on up to the 413 wedge. If they just made them look better, they probably would have upstaged the GTO's dominance in the musclecar market.

british_rover

Ahh I was close I knew it was a Dart just got the year wrong.

texases

The '62 Dart was my family's car from '62 - '68, when we got a Valiant (and we still have a '63 Polara with a 383/4 bbl we bought new, so we're a Mopar family I guess). If you think it's ugly, how about spending $20,000 to restore one? Read all about it:
$20K Dart

Mr_Shiftright

Jethro, get me my baseball bat!

Dear lord, that "Stutz" is in the worst taste imaginable. It is SO wrong in every dimension.

Looks like it was designed in a prison cell.

You'd think they would have looked at the harmony and clean lines of the original Bearcat and got a clue.

Typical case of the inferiority complex of the arrivistes coming through. If you have nothing to say, talk LOUDER!

andre1969

is they were essentially taking a domestic personal luxury coupe and using it as an attempt to pay homage to what was basically a 1914 racecar. Two totally different categories.

Although, when you figure that the T-birds of the 60's showed there was a market for pimpiness, and that became the de rigeur or whatever you want to call it, of the 70's, I guess for the time the Stutz Bearcat revival kinda made sense.

Mr_Shiftright

True the T-Birds are all pimped out but at least their styling is "rational" within itself...it has limits and it has a goal. This "bearcat" is just a hodgepodge of anything some lunatic could throw at a clay model.

it's like a model car built from three different boxes of parts from three different decades. It's a bad joke. I think Herman Munster has better taste.

lemko

Wasn't that modern Stutz designed by none other than Virgil Exner himself? I heard he also did revivals of a Mercer and a Duesenberg that never made production. There was a one-off of the Mercer utilizing as many copper pieces as possible as a promotion for some copper fabrication company back in the 1960s.

kyfdx

Like Johnny Cash sings: "I built it one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime... "

Mr_Shiftright

Well if it was Exner that explains everything to me.

Mr. Design Chaos. They fired his butt by the way.

If he did the '55 Chrysler, congratulations, but it sure went downhill from there, bit by bit. Probably '57 is the last year of Exner I can tolerate.

Yep, if Johnny Cash designed a car, it would look like the Bearcat--LOL!

andre1969

but I heard that Exner was actually scapegoated. When the Chrysler brass heard rumors of GM downsizing their cars, he ordered Exner to come up with downsized '62 models. He wasn't too happy about that, saying that the styling would look too ugly on the smaller cars.

Well those smaller '62's sold poorly, and the Chrysler brass pinned it all on Exner, and canned him. They did let him stay on in a consulting position though, so that he could work until 1955 and collect a pension.

As for his stroke, I thought he had it a few years later, but supposedly he had it in 1956, while the 1961 cars were being designed.

That could very well be why 1961 is widely regarded as Chrysler's "1959".

andys120

lemko

I've seen pictures of the Plymouths and Dodges had they been kept on the old full-size platforms and they actually were quite attractive. I've also seen pictures of Chryslers, DeSotos, and Imperials on the downsized platform. Thank God, they didn't make production. Dodge at least had a stopgap solution in place using the 1962 Chrysler Newport body and the 1961 Dodge front-end clip to produce the 880. Plymouth had to soldier on until 1965 on the downsized platform.

lokki

Not to excuse Exner completely, but there's some truth in the "Johnny Cash" view of the final car.

Exner's designs for these cars were originally drawing for a magazine article- basically doodles about what the old classic names would look like if they were brought into the future. His drawings were done in 1963 and as drawings in context they weren't so bad. They're pretty conservative compared to the GM Futurama designs

I remember the buzz that these drawings generated... there were even model car kits of these designs. People LIKED them at the time I know my Granddad did. He bought me a couple of the model kits.

Look at the Stutz and then recall the 66 Buick Rivera. Remember Continental kits were only a couple years in the past and think of the original Bearcat's spare. The Stutz in the drawing works, I think.

Stutz


Packard


View the Duesenburg in comparison to the Lincoln Continental and Chrysler Imperial of the day and it starts to make more sense, I think.

Duesenburg



These drawings, if accurately prototyped wouldn't look too bad on the same stage with the '63 Corvette, I think.

As usual, the trouble started when somebody who didn't know anything about cars decided to really build them, and then the compromises started tacking themselves on until you could barely see the dream underneath. The production cars look like high-school shop projects

andre1969

looks like it could have had a strong influence on the 1967 T-bird. I always looked at the '67 T-bird as the year they traded sportiness for pimpy opulence, although I'm sure many others would say it was the '64-66, or even the '58-60 that started that trend.

The Duesenberg revival doesn't look too bad, in those drawings. But in reality, the prototype wasn't quite as graceful:


It did predict that trend towards more central-themed front-ends that was big in the 70's...cars with pretentious, stand-up grilles, those creases down the center of the hood that fanned out as they stretched back towards the windshield, etc. Pontiac really took that look and ran with it on cars like the Grand Prix and, off-and-on, with the big cars.

Mr_Shiftright

Hideous, grotesque, every one of them. It's hard to pick out the worst. The designs are senseless, wasteful, the acts of desperate confused people trying to claw their way out of disaster.

(didn't work---disaster occurred anyway).

Probably the only unsung heroes of those times are the few, the brave, that starting taking pieces OFF these metal birthday cakes in an attempt to come to some level of sanity about them in production cars. Obviously, a few designers broke through to at least keep the worst stuff from getting built. Good for them---it's not progress, but it might have saved American civilization in Detroit.

BUT WE DIGRESS---back to MYSTERY CARS!

(well these cars are a mystery to me, so maybe we're okay).

boomchek

wanted to have a Stutz when I grew up!!! :P :P

Browsing on the Stutz collectors website:

The quote under the photo is:
"Oooops, that's definitely not a Stutz, it's a fake!!! "

LOL Funniest thing I've heard in a long time. A fake Stutz.

To keep on topic here's some more mystery machines

andys120

fintail

ROFL at that truck. Wow.

lokki

Mr_Shiftright

I recognize the Borgward emblem but that's about it.

andys120

Borgward Hansa 2400, ca. 1955?

lokki

A 1952 Borward it is

Mr_Shiftright

Live and learn. Never saw that car before. About as homely as all Borgwards but they were well-made cars for their price.

andys120

Mr_Shiftright

I'll disqualify myself since a redhead tried to run me down in one of these recently....unintentionally I'm sure.

kyfdx

Maserati GT?

bumpy

Our uggo is a 1989 Autech Stelvio. Body by Zagato, drivetrain from a 300ZX turbo. Those bulges on the hood are aero for the fender mirrors.

It doesn't look any better from the back.

andys120

Maserati GT?

There have been a lot of Maserati GTs, for their new 2008 model they spell it out thusly: Maserati Gran Turismo.

boomchek

I'm guessing the Blue Mystery is some kind of TVR.

lokki

...since a redhead tried to run me down in one of these recently....

Somehow this brings back memories the lyrics of my favorite Princetm song Little Red Corvette

"Well, I guess I shoulda known
By the way you parked your car ..."

Girls like that are a blessing until they're a curse....

A LOT like most Italian cars, to get us back on subject here.... :shades:

tmart

I'm guessing a Ka Sport.

Mr_Shiftright

Well I was on a bicycle and it was in Marin county, so she has a legal right to kill me I think.

Nice looking car that GT, in real life, and very nice engine note (which I got to hear quite intimately).

andys120

No it's not a TVR or a Ka Sport, although those are both good guesses. It's a MY 2000 Jensen SV 8.

andys120

lokki

Nothing personal, but PLEASE :lemon: YUGO :lemon: away now....

Impossible to guess the year (for me anyhow)

bumpy

Buy a little freedom... from reliability and quality.