And if you’ll feast your eyes on the Mangusta prototype, with its front bumper so low it’s positioned to shatter every knee on impact, you’ll perhaps conclude that even in spite of its comically bad weight distribution of 32/68 and its tendency for instant decomposition, the Mangusta was serious business.

I will not even mention the gullwinged engine bay:

Photo Credit: Daniel Große

Despite disagreement over what kind of plane yesterday's F100 was trying to emulate, it still flew off with a 74% Nice Price salute. Going from the eulogistic to the sensationalizing, today we have a Malaise-era Maserati that's fun for the whole family.

Unlike Ferrari, Maserati has not exclusively built sports/GT cars, having constructed their fair share of sedans over the years. Much like the BMW or Mercedes range-toppers, these massive four-doors - imaginatively named Quattroporte - share engines and a high level of performance with their GT brethren, but also provide copious room so you can take a few friends along for the ride.

This 1980 Quattroporte III has an asking price of $6,750, and is one of about total 2,200 built over a 14-year run. The third iteration (the Citroën SM-based Quattroporte II seeing only seven cars sold) comes from the De Tomaso era of Maserati. Alejandro bought Maser from Citroën, and exorcised all the hydraulic sun visors, swiveling headlamps and bass-akwards V6 engines from the Quattroporte's portfolio. De Tomaso wanted a car that was competitive with the Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, and hence the Quattroporte sported only the choice of Maser's 4.9 or 4.2 litre V8 engine from the Bora and Kyalami.

The seller doesn't say which engine is in this car, but instead simply has copy and pasted the salient section from Wikipedia regarding engine specs. As he does note that the car was "brought in" and required the retrofitting of an 80-MPH speedo (thanks Joan Claybrook), the question of whether this was originally intended to be a federalized car remains up in the air.

Other than that, the paint is shiny, the leather is mostly smooth and the trim bits - while having turned a rather lurid shade of orange - are at least present. All is not perfect in Maseratidom, however, and the seller lists a few shortcomings including some electrical gremlins and window glass issues. Also, it needs a new manual choke cable, as one luxury denied this car was reliable cold starting without the yanking of a dashboard knob. One thing he doesn't mention is the seat-back pockets which look like the kids have been riding with their feet in them. This gives them the appearance of empty clown pants, and takes away from the otherwise nice interior presentation.

Despite those shortcomings, this looks like a fine example of the businessman's express, and how often do you come across a $6,750 Maserati that doesn't have a Biturbo badge, or the unholy stench of K-car wafting from it?

So, does $6,750 make you want to hit that Buy-It-Now button for this mature Maser? Or does that price fail at extending your love past the brand's duoportes?

You decide!

eBay or go here if the ad disappears. Hat tip to SagarikaLumos!

Help me out with NPOCP. Click here to send a me a tip, and remember to include your commenter handle.

Speaking of weird Fiats, there's nothing wrong with an X1/9 that a supercharger can't fix!

And just to show that the 24 Hours Of LeMons is taking over the universe (or at least the portion of the universe comprised of Northern California car shows), here's a shot of the Italian Stallions X1/9 LeMons car. We'll be seeing this quad-carbed monster at the Arse Freeze-a-Palooza next month!

What could be better than a Maserati straight six engine? A Maserati straight six engine with Lucas fuel injection, of course! I can't see a single weak point in that plan! OK, here's a gallery for you. We'll be seeing more of that orange Fiat 128 Sport a little later; very interesting story there.

Some of my oversights were really obvious head-clutchers (e.g., Trabant, Saab 96, De Tomaso Pantera), while others required making all sorts of crypto-arbitrary judgment calls. In order to prevent the flood of hate mails I got from Land Rover, Jeep, and Toyota FJ freaks with Part I, we're going to make one seemingly obvious point even more obvious:
NO TRUCKS! NO TRUCKS! CARS ONLY!
Got it? And, once again, we're denying the Ford Fox and Panther platforms and the Volvo 140/240 entrance to this list. That doesn't mean we don't love those cars (in fact, I've owned at least one of each), but each underwent a major chassis redesign before it hit the magical 20-year mark. I'm still not convinced that the C2 and C3 Corvettes are the same car, and Ford's nostalgic reissue of a handful of ceremonial Model Ts doesn't add another year of production to the T's scorecard. Feel free to debate the merits of these decisions in your comments, but try to keep the venom level at or below rattlesnake level. OK, here we go, in order of years of seniority:

Morgan 4/4
54 years (1955-present)
When Morgan redesigned the suspension for the 4/4 Series II in 1955, they figured there wouldn't be much need to change anything after that. Engine suppliers come and go, so they've had to change powerplants every so often (the current 4/4 comes with a Ford Duratec four), but otherwise the Morgan remains pretty much the same wood-framed machine our grandparents knew and loved.
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Lotus / Caterham Seven
52 years (1957-present)
You don't see Sevens on the street very often, since the racetrack is this car's natural habitat, but they are road-legal motor vehicles and thus qualify for this series. Lotus built the Seven until 1972, and Caterham (and about 500 million others) have kept the production lines going since then.
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Hongqi CA770
40 years (1958-1998)
Even the Great Helmsman himself needed a car, for those occasions when he had to inspect the progress of the Great Leap Forward, and there was no way that the People's Republic Of China was going to let the running dogs of imperialism outdo them when it came to classy luxury rides for important government officials. Thus was the Hongqi CA770 limousine born. It appears to have ZIS ancestry, but the Bamboo Curtain keeps such sensitive state secrets from our hands.
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Nissan President 150/250
24 years (1965-1989)
Until replaced by a stretched version of the car we know as the Infiniti Q45, Nissan's luxury flagship was the mighty President. The styling appears to have hints of Mercedes-Benz W123 and Plymouth Volaré, and power came courtesy of the President-only Nissan Y OHV V8.
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Trabant
34 years (1957-1991)
There's not much to say about the most famous Warsaw Pact vehicle of all: two pistons, two strokes, plastic body, and more than three million made. Primitive by any standard, but it put East Germany on wheels!
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Bristol Type 603
33 years (1976-present)
The case could be made that the 603 was really just a warmed-over version of the 1946 Bristol line, but we're setting the 1976 body redesign as the cutoff. You could get a 603 with a Chrysler 318 or 360, and some even came with factory turbocharging!
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Lada Niva
32 years (1979-present)
I dismissed the Lada Niva for its truckishness the first time around, but Unicmanest has convinced me that it's no more a truck than was the AMC Eagle or Subaru Outback. And no, there's no possible way to convince me that the Land Rover was really a car.
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Toyota Century
30 years (1967-1997)
The first generation of the Toyota Century limo, which was based on the Crown luxury car, stayed pretty much the same for 30 years. Why tinker with a successful formula? The "Toyota Hemi" V series V8 powered this perennial zaibatsu favorite.
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Lotus Esprit
28 years (1976-2004)
This was a really tough one, but I'm going to say that the endless series of minor mutations in the Esprit kept it essentially the same car for its run.
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Shanghai SC760
27 years (1964-1991)
It's tough to get good information about Chinese cars designed before Nixon's 1972 trip, but it appears that the Shanghai SC760 was an all-Chinese design and remained virtually unchanged throughout its production run.
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Studebaker Avanti / Avanti II
25 years (1962-1987)
I wanted to stay away from the slippery slope of replica cars, if only to avoid the nightmare of dealing with Cobra replicas, but the Avanti II was built using the original Studebaker frames and tooling and thus qualifies. The engines were small-block Chevrolets (proper Studebaker V8s being unavailable), but otherwise we're dealing with genuine Avantis.
Suzuki Alto / Maruti 800
25 years (1984-present)
The Maruti 800, still in production in India today, is based on the second-gen Alto. It has a long way to go in order to match the Hillman Hunter/Hindustan Ambassador, but 25 years is a good start!
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Rolls-Royce Corniche
24 years (1971-1995)
There's not much you need to change on a car like this, so Rolls-Royce stuck with a winning formula.
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Rolls-Royce Phantom VI
23 years (1968-1991)
374 were made. The Queen got two of them. Any questions?
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Wartburg 353
23 years (1965-1988)
With only seven moving parts in the engine, there wasn't much to go wrong with this East German machine.
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Audi 100 C3 / FAW Hongqi CA7200/CA7300
(21 years) 1982-2003
FAW (or some copycat) might still be making Audi C3-based cars in China now, but we can't be sure. We are sure, however, that the production run lasted at least 20 years.
Image source
Jaguar XJS
21 years (1975-1996)
Should this car be lumped in with the XJ6, just because the chassis is pretty much the same? Blasphemy!
De Tomaso Pantera
21 years (1970-1991)
Can we write about the Pantera without mentioning Vince Neill and his ill-fated 3-block trip to the liquor store? Apparently not! Anyway, the Ford Cleveland-powered Pantera stayed more or less the same for the entirety of its production run, and we all want one!
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Reliant Regal
21 years (1951-1972)
Yes, three-wheelers with closed bodies count as cars. The Reliant Robin nearly qualified as well, but missed by a couple of years.
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Volkswagen Karmann Ghia
20 years (1955-1975)
I left the Karmann Ghia out the first time because it's just a Beetle pan with a sporty body, but that wasn't fair. The Karmann Ghia was a distinct model! Too bad the Brazilians didn't keep making it for an extra 30 years.
Reliant Scimitar
20 years (1964-1984)
The first few generations of Scimitar were pretty much the same car under the skin.
Image source
Saab 96
20 years (1960-1980)
How did I miss this car the first time around? Its ancestry stretches well beyond 20 years, but a couple of decades as perhaps the best two-stroke car ever made is accomplishment enough.
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Cadillac D Body
20 years (1977-1997)
I was very skeptical about including this car in the list, but Cadillac ice-racer William sold me on it. He also came up with some exhaustingly comprehensive rules for determining eligibility for the All-Time Survivors list, and I'll post them pretty soon, but for now I'll just share what he had to say about the Caddy D:
Of course it's the downsized Cadillac Rear Wheel Drive Fleetwood/de Ville ("D" Body), introduced on Cadillac's 75th anniversary for '77. Built from August 1976 until July 1997, the new "Right-Sized" Caddie (and GM's first full metric car) came in a variety flavors (de Ville sedan and two door, Brougham & Fleetwood) and a litany of engines: The program started with the L33 425, last of the "big iron" Caddie V-8's (down from the glory days 500 CID and nearly the same digits in torque), and soldiered on with the most diverse/bizzare collection of engines ever to grace a motor car: 368 Cadillac "Sleever," LF9 Buick diesel V-8, 253 Buick V-6 (the first non-V-8 for a Cadillac), the "8-6-4" disaster variant of the 363, an Oldsmobile 5.6, and finally the Cadillac "GM Corporate V-8 engine of Tomorrow" (forgotten the next day) the All-Aluminum cam eating 4.1 HT. And that's just the first ten years. Sure the de Ville and Fleetwood nameplates bailed to the dark side going front wheel drive in 1985 but the Brougham soldiered on in venerable "D" body glory for another decade and more.

The engine-of-the-week theme continued with an Oldsmobile 307 LG8, Chevy 5.0L and finally the Chevy 5.7. With the beginning of the Republican power shift, production packed up and moved to Texas to be closer to oil millionaires who would soon rule/ruin the world. The 1994 re-deux took the "D" body into the world of suppository-based styling complete with Corvette-derived LT-1 350, but in reality it was just a re-skin with the same frame and underbody of Grandpa's car. GM corporate greed and America's thirst for pickup trucks finally made the plant more desirable for more profitable mobile gun rack production and the last GM rear wheel drive passenger car was retired, but only after Elvis and 1.7 million examples had left the building for the last time.

20 years? The (separate) frame, main body structure (more steel alone than most complete cars) is the same from the first to the last. Panel for panel all are the same until '93, when the got out the hasp and rounded out the edges. But nothing else built by Detroit comes even close, so I think we have a strong candidate for the something that was truly Big Three built "big iron" and didn't finish out its production life in exile in Argentina (though likely this was the car exiles in Argentina where driving)..

For serious road racing, you need a car with the engine in the middle: behind the driver but in front of the rear axle. While pretty in its physics on paper, the idea of mid-engined car construction was a difficult birth. In spite of its conception and very successful application by Ferdinand Porsche in the pre-war Benz Tropfenwagen (pictured left) and various Auto Unions, motor racing emerged from World War Two with front-engined cars.

But then physics came marching down on a racing establishment uncomfortable with the idea of horse-pushed carriages. 1958 would be the last season in Formula One won by a front-engined car, followed by Le Mans in 1962 and the Indianapolis 500 in 1964. Since these respective years, all of these races and championships have been won by mid-engined racing cars. Road cars soon followed, with the tiny fiberglass De Tomaso Vallelunga in 1964, then a year later the very car that gave birth to the word supercar: the Lamborghini Miura, with its transversely mid-mounted V12.

In Formula One and at the Indianapolis 500, it was pesky outsiders who convinced the ruling elite with their performances that mid-engined was the way to go. At Le Mans, a most unlikely development occured: reigning Ferrari replaced its front-engined 1962 330 TRI/LM Spyder (a derivative of a five-year-old design) with the radically new 250 P (pictured above at the Nürburgring) for 1963. The scuderia promptly won both at Sebring and at Le Mans.

It was all doom and gloom for the front engine as the Ferraris were followed by the Ford GT40 and decades of Porsches, beginning with the monstrous 917. But then in 1997, an American decided to give the mid-engine the finger. His name was Dr. Donald Panoz and he liked his six-liter V8’s up front, thank you very much.

The Panoz Esperante GTR-1 was a closed coupé with a Roush V8, named after the Panoz Esperante roadster with which it had little in common. In a sense, it was also mid-engined—but unlike every other mid-engined car, it had its engine between the front axle and the driver.

The GTR-1 had its share of teething problems in its debut year, but it returned for 1998 to take seventh place at Le Mans. One of the drivers was David Brabham, the son of triple Formula One world champion Jack "Black Jack” Brabham, who would go on to win last weekend’s race with Peugeot.

At the end of the 1998 racing season, the GT category that the GTR-1 raced in was eliminated. Panoz countered with a brand-new prototype for the next season: the open-top LMP-1. The car retained the GTR-1’s Batmobile proportions and its six-liter thunder-happy V8, presenting an even more Cyrano-esque nose.

The LMP-1 raced at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race made famous by the flying CLR’s of Mercedes-Benz. Driven by Brabham and company, the car finished seventh, similar to its closed-top sibling at the previous year’s race. The LMP-1 would produce its best result in 2000 with a fifth overall finish—which it would repeat in 2003 behind the all-conquering Audis and Audi-derived Bentleys.

By then, the LMP-1 was an aging design, and it was replaced with the LMP07, which would prove disappointing. Panoz withdrew from prototype racing and returned to Le Mans in the GT2 class for 2005, to compete against Ferraris, Porsches and Spykers derived from road cars. Their first outing at the scorching 2005 race would produce no results, but a front-engined Panoz Esperante GT-LM driven by three Brits would beat both Ferrari and Porsche to win GT2 in 2006.

While Panoz’s front-mid-engined prototypes could never really hold up against mid-engined racing cars from major manufacturers, they proved that the front-mid engine construction was a viable concept. In the years that followed, a crop of supercars built on the same principle would emerge: the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and the Ferrari 599 GTB. The latter is now also available as a track-only version, for decades inconceivable in a front-engined Ferrari, showing perhaps that we have indeed come full circle since Enzo Ferrari first commissioned a mid-engined prototype for Le Mans in 1963.

All we need now is a team with the funding and the guts to follow through.

Photo Credit: Matt Turner/ALLSPORT, Speedhunters, Lokis_world/Flickr, Mike Hewitt /Allsport, Ferrari, Ker Robertson /Allsport

A few hours after we published our in-depth interview with Stile Bertone’s new design director Jason Castriota, I was standing by Lake Como with him showing me the secrets of his first Bertone design, the Mantide.

The front fenders melt into wings behind the front wheels then draw up into a single taut bunch—reminiscent of a calf muscle—which in turn passes under an archway similar to Castriota’s famous C-pillar for the Ferrari 599 GTB. The confluence of curves and LED’s in the back is, when viewed from a step back, a classic Kamm tail. While retaining the tried-and-true shape of the fastback, the Mantide is boldly futuristic.

But will anyone be able to drive it? There are plans to make two more examples, Castriota says, in white and green, to create an Italian flag with the addition of the first car. Then, in an email to the New York Times, he said: “We would not rule out producing as many as 10.” A price has also been quoted: €1,500,000

That's close to two million US dollars at the current exchange rate—almost two Veyrons worth of cold, hard cash. Not insignificant for a car built on a Corvette ZR1, which retails for 5% of the Mantide’s asking price. Let’s examine what you get for that kind of money, apart from the warm feeling of contributing to a company’s survival which has given us the Miura, the Countach and the Lancia Stratos.

Interior

While Jeremy Clarkson has named the Corvette ZR1 his car of the year for 2008 and our own road test editor Wes Siler called it “the best car ever made,” the fact remains: on the inside, it's all Corvette.

To whit, from our first drive:

In fact, the only thing detracting from the ZR1’s grand touring credentials is the interior. The only options on the $103,300 car are an awful set of chrome wheels and the 3ZR upgraded interior package, which succeeds in moving the interior from cheap and nasty into luxurious bass boat territory with more embroidered ZR1 and Corvette logos than my fragile mind could comprehend. We have a hard time accepting the “value” excuse; for this kind of money we’d no longer like to feel like a Jeff Foxworthy punchline. An automatic transmission is, thankfully, not an option.

Let’s see what the Mantide has to offer:

As you can see, it’s a modern European alcantara-carbon-fiber-leather affair, with the car’s hexagonal theme continuing as cutouts on the racing seats, themselves thin carbon shells. The instrument screen is the one used in the Ferrari FXX, the gearshift is a nice aluminum knob and it’s certainly got a snug racer feel to it. But it’s perhaps not as remarkable as the car’s exterior.

Certainly a major upgrade on the Corvette, though, but then that’s not saying much when you’re considering this is a two million dollar Italian super car.

Exterior

Here in Europe, the current Corvette is not liked much. It’s a big, brash American design, a brute amongst small European cars, but while it’s unarguably alien to these shores, I rather fancy its low, wide, flowing looks. In ZR1 trim, it’s a proper menace, with all the right vents, wings and scoops.

The Mantide gets rid of that all. Aside from the front-engined layout and the fastback silhouette, you would be hard pressed to tell there’s a Corvette underneath. And there is: the Mantide is not like the Italian-American cars from the 60s like the Iso Grifo or the De Tomaso Mangusta which paired an Italian chassis with an American V8. Beneath the red carbon fiber is a Corvette ZR1: LS9 engine, aluminum chassis, the works.

But what carbon fiber! It’s all sharp Bertone creases which turn into subtle arcs as you examine them up close, dihedral Enzo doors, smatterings of hexagons everywhere. The angular rear wheelarches—straight off the M577A armoured personnel carrier which transported the space marines into the doomed reactor core in Aliens—frame black Transformer wheels.

It’s dramatically new, so shockingly new that it’s actively disconcerting to take a few steps back and see its classic berlinetta profile. In person, it creates the sort of time warp the iPhone did when it first went on sale in the summer of 2007. You felt as though you were holding a sliver of 2011 in your hands.

The Mantide? I’d say it’s from 2017. Similar vehicles are on their way to leave the inner Solar System.

But then is it worth the price of 20 ZR1’s? There is, of course, no rational answer to such a question, as even the ZR1 is not an entirely rational purchase, being, as Dan Neil put it in his article The rapture of the hypercar, a big needle to deliver the combustible heroin of petroleum.

If you have space-faring ambitions on the public road, set to the soundtrack of a pushrod V8 with titanium bits, then by all means get in touch with Stile Bertone and put down whatever deposit they ask. The car geeks of the world need you to enable them to carry on the traditions of coachbuilding.

And then I saved the best part for the end. If you open the gigantic hood and peer inside, what you’ll see is exactly what you'll see when you open the hood of the ZR1 — a grinning, black Corvette Racing skull named Jake.

So even though this is not a race car, your Le Mans ass-kicking heritage is right there. And who could ask for more.

Photo Credit: Alex Conley (Corvette ZR1), Natalie Polgar and the author (Stile Bertone Mantide)

First, let's hear what Tricky Dick had to say to those communists in the media who wanted nothing less than total emasculation of the Executive Branch of the United States government. You see, he canned Cox for selfless reasons, yet once again the press was out to get him!


It would have taken a miracle for Nixon to survive impeachment, which is the reason he resigned. Unlike Nixon, however, you won't have the option of resigning from your Pantera project, not when you've managed to buy the car for the once-in-a-lifetime low price of just $2,500. Got your attention now? That's right, this 1973 'Lamborghini' Pantera (go here if the ad disappears), complete with genuine "Clevlander" 351 engine, is sitting there in North Jersey with a 25-Benjamin price tag! The seller states that it's in "Good Shape just rusted," which is much like saying that the reputation of the United States Presidency is in good shape, other than some Watergate damage. The buyer hardly needs to mention that it doesn't run, but he wants to make that fact perfectly clear. The interior is "in tact," though, which makes the project a bit easier, and Ford Cleveland parts are no sweat to find. If you're thinking of just making it run and then enjoying the glory of driving the meanest-looking rustmobile in your town, think again: the Pantera's monocoque construction means that rust anywhere on the body will probably lead to catastrophic structural failure at high speed. But so what? 2,500 bucks!

Panteras are cool, and there's no denying that they're pretty quick, but the Vince Neil stigma is pretty tough to scrub away. And what if you'd prefer a precise, road-gripping machine to a fire-and-brimstone pushrod V8-powered testosterone monster? Well, also available in 1973 was the Lotus Elite, which- thanks to fiberglass monocoque construction and Lotus' famed suspension engineering- weighed about 17 pounds and grabbed the pavement the way the goddamned Ho Chi Minh-loving press sank its fangs into Richard Milhous Nixon and wouldn't let go! That's right, you'll go all Woodward and Bernstein on your favorite twisty mountain road once you get this '73 Lotus Elite (go here if the ad disappears) back into running condition. Actually, it might already be in running condition, but the seller was too busy slamming a huge fist onto the CAPS LOCK key to type out that inconsequential tidbit, though he or she does state that it "NEEDS RESTORATION." All the photographs are from similar angles, so we can't tell you much about the condition other than the obvious missing front body components, and we also can't tell you how many miles are on the clock; if it really has racked up "5000 K" miles, we're looking at a five million mile British car here, which could mean it's the highest-mileage car in the world (though to achieve that figure it would need to have maintained an average speed of a just under 17 MPH the entire time since it was built). Hey, maybe it's really a super-cherry 5,000-mile car, and all for just $3,400. You can't lose!

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1) 1909 Peerless Model 19 Touring Car

2) 1941 Willys Coupe Street Rod

3) 1951 Nash Rambler Custom Landau "Roll-Top" Convertible

4) 1967 Porsche 912 Soft Window Targa

5) 1957 Volkswagen Beetle

6) 1974 Chevrolet Camaro IROC Race Car

7) 1974 De Tomaso Pantera L

8) 1958 GMC Series 101 Pickup

9) 1966 Amphicar 770

10) 1959 Fiat Jolly 600

So there you have it, our picks for the crappiest cars up for sale at this year's 2008 Monterey Auctions. We know some of you will think we're heretics for picking a few of these, but by and large these rides just don't cut the mustard when masterpieces like the 1938 Bugatti 57SC Atalante are on the same block. So what do you think? What's the crappiest car of this years auctions? Feel free to fight it out in the space below.

Post publish commentary: Since some of you seem to have checked your sense of humor at the door and consider everything a serious offense to the senses now, I'll go out of my way to make it clear the term "Crappy" is being used in the jocular sense. Perhaps I didn't lay it on thick enough, but the main beef is with the culture of auctioneering driving the prices up on relatively normal cars. I don't think these are crappy, but the multi-million-dollar classic car gold rush is forcing the prices up and the prestige down on otherwise neat, but normal cars.

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You hear a lot about the De Tomaso Pantera- especially after Vince Neil couldn't even drive one to the liquor store without incident- but the little Italian car company with a love for Ford Cleveland power built other fine automobiles as well. For example, the De Tomaso Longchamp, a mean-looking coupe with 351 snarling Dearborn horses under its hood. Only 409 were ever made, so you're probably breathing a sigh of relief despondent that you can't get one for your personal Hell Project. Not so fast, sport! Jalopnik is on the case, and we've unearthed- yes, that's the word- this 1974 De Tomaso Longchamp with a starting bid of just one dollar... and that's with no reserve, we might add. Some of you who harbor dreams of getting a last-second acceptance into the 24 Hours of LeMons New England race might be taking note of the New Hampshire location of this car, but how could you let a jewel like this get all beat up on a race track? Why, that rust might not be as bad as it looks! And rest assured that this is a numbers-matching car, so you can bank on making a huge profit at Barrett-Jackson after you restore it.

What's your favorite Canadian car company? For us, it's got to be Bricklin. Yes, the man responsible for bringing Subarus and Yugos to our continent also built his own sports car, the Bricklin SV-1. Back in the 70s, the man at the wheel of an SV-1 didn't have to worry about where his next STD would be coming from, because all the ladies were eager to dish up the spirochetes to a Bricklin-equipped gent. While we could have gone with a 351 Cleveland-powered SV-1, this AMC 360-powered '74 model has nine more cubic inches and a big helping of Kenosha Kool. And look- a 4-speed! Jack up the Malaise power output to, say, 500 horsepower and you'd have the best of Early Malaise style coupled with modern-day acceleration. The seller's description would work a lot better without the photographs, we think; words like "excellent" and "beautiful" don't seem to fit the utter basket case challenging project pictured. It appears that the fiberglass has rusted somehow. But hey, the engine runs and the car drives- how hard could it be?

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This is the star of the show; the top seed. A seemingly indestructible 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 that runs from the law in a glorious 40-minute chase scene.
The local country radio reporter's ride, a Ford that might as well have "dorky" painted all over it.


A drop-top Ford with questionable structural rigidity that gets hit in the side so hard it splits neatly in half. Ridiculous, but funny.
The Belvedere rent-a-cop with a German Shepard. Attempts to chase down a tow-truck stealing a Challenger, and fails.


A burgundy Roller stolen in broad daylight from the airport drop-off curb; chauffeur left the key in it.
A Fleetwood serving as personal transportation for the ring-leader of the operation. An arranged assortment of sunglasses on the dash, and enough room for the whole crew to cruise around.


Stole a Challenger right off a dealership lot, then outran security even with the Challenger still attached. The star of the second best chase in the movie.
A poor little Type 3 that got flipped on its roof by Eleanor, starting a huge pileup. Cute car, humiliating role.


The Dodge carries the flag for all the cop cars in the movie. They're cool rides burdened by somewhat inept drivers.
One of the "girls" on the hit list, though it only appears on film for a moment. Not a hearse, but a custom station wagon.


License plate reads "OOO GAL." The Dodge was a stolen car wearing VIN tags from a wrecked donor; An identity thief before it was popular. Sadly, it had to go to the crusher once people started getting wise.
A new Plymouth out on a test drive gets smashed by a cop in pursuit of Eleanor.


Lyle Waggoner's Intermeccanica Italia swiped from spaced-out stoner cleaning it.
A stolen Corvette in a sizzling color. Not on film very long, but it leaves an impression.


The undercover cop that started the epic chase with Eleanor. It Went toe-to-toe with the Mustang, but couldn't quite keep up.
A nice bright green Dodge that suffered the fate of being crushed by a garbage truck rolling onto it.


An old sedan DeVille ridin' low. Occupants seemed to enjoy smokin' the herb so much that they drove the Caddy to self-destruction.
A Rolls limo big enough to carry a fully-assembled bicycle in the back seat with room to spare. Just wait for the chauffeur to leave the car unattended, insert the bike you rode up on, and drive away. Petty theft made high-class.


Don't get distracted by the girl, this DeTomaso is what you really want. She's just askin' for it, leaving the keys in the car like that.
This Jensen Interceptor is practically good enough for JFG, and it's apparently good enough to make the South American client's, list as well.


Fantastically obscure Manta Mirage stolen during a test drive. Salesman gets out to switch seats, thief slides behind the wheel and takes off.
The Maserati is another car on the list only appearing for a moment, but it's pure style.


A Cadillac filled with drugs, one of the few things to survive in the remake movie from 2000. How do you get rid of all that white powder? Burn it. Who cares if it's worth a million bucks on the street; these are responsible criminals.
The hopped-up Plymouth was on the screen for only a quick flash, but we're sure it's even quicker down the strip.


Parnelli Jones' Baja Bronco is the icon of off-road racing. But that didn't stop anyone from stealing it in the movie.
The Lamborghini is elegantly beautiful, but forgettable in this context.


Epic cool car and JFG resident, but it's too bad we can't see it's wacky suspension in action.
Who needs a high-tech anti-theft system? Just keep a tiger in your Cadillac.


Another limo left unattended and vulnerable. All the coolness factor of death with none of the emotional struggle.
Hard to say what exactly has been done to this Chevy Vega, but it sure ain't stock. Another one we'd like to see actually driving.


It looks plain on the outside because it's supposed to. There were two identical Fords used for scouting out all the cars on the to-be-stolen list before the day of the big hit. Equipped with walkie-talkies too!
Nothing says "Malaise Era" more than a Stutz. And this one was stolen right in front of a confused old lady. Classy.


[Screenshots are property of the movie's copyright holders; not Jalopnik]

We've seen a few Stutzes on the site- say, the Diplomatica and the Blackhawk- and we've admired them greatly for their subtle, restrained beauty. But come on now- those cars were made by fly-by-nighters who won the right to use the Stutz name in a Kansas City poker game. What a class act like you needs, my friend, is a real Stutz! You think you just can't swing the kind of dough necessary to put a Jazz Age Stutz in your Hell Garage? Think again! We've found this 1931 Stutz SV16, and the bidding is still under ten grand at the time of this writing. This one's got a custom body "said to be crafted by Brunn," a thoroughly trashed interior, and a big heap of bits and pieces. We're not going to lie to you- Stutz parts are kinda hard to come by- but we figure you could make do with some interior components out of a late-70s Pontiac Bonneville. We'd keep the straight-eight engine, of course, but it really needs some turbocharging and Cherry Bombs. Come on, the Stutz was all about excess!

A Stutz is great... if you're William Faulkner, squandering your advance money from your latest crap screenplay and guzzling from a jug kept under the driver's seat. And that's fine, but these days you'll catch a higher grade of STD if you're rolling in Rockstar Mode. And it's just about impossible to get more rockstar than a De Tomaso Pantera. We've found this fine '74 Pantera for a seems-reasonable-to-the-seller 27 grand. There's rust. There are many layers of old paint. There are many missing parts ("The calipers were sold as I was goingto upgrade anyhow"). The engine is either "brand new" or "will be complete within 3-4 weeks"- take your pick! But if you're not serious- and we mean dead serious- forget it, because this seller says straight up: "NO LOOKIE-LOOS!"

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You want a Cleveland-powered De Tomaso machine, but the Vince Neil stigma has you firmly in the No Panteras camp? Ever considered a Longchamp? Yes, a luxurious Ford-powered Italian coupe that will have heads a-turnin' and jaws a-droppin' wherever you go. You're in luck, because here's a nice '76 on eBay, bid up to a mere 15 grand at the time of this writing. The seller claims this one is in "very nice" condition, with a recent engine rebuild and 10-year-old paint and interior. So you figure, hey, this car ain't no project- it's ready to go! Thing is, any Italian car is a project the minute it rolls off the assembly line; just keeping this thing drivable and looking presentable is going to be an endless, wallet-emptying task. For one thing, how could you tolerate a flawed 10-year-old paint job in such a beautiful car? And what right-thinking Jalopnik reader could look at that 351C and not want to get, oh, 600 horsepower out of it (with associated broken parts)? See, it's already dragging you down!

But why get one car nobody has ever heard of when you can have three? Would you believe three '85 Bitter SCs for just $22,000? The Bitter SC was based on the Opel Senator chassis, so maybe you'd be able to find some of the mechanical parts (better start learning German). Thing is, one of the cars has the original Opel running gear, and another has a Chevy LT-1 with a claimed 305 horsepower (the third car has no engine, so maybe it's an ideal recipient for the Nissan 4.5 V8 from yesterday's Q45). Was the Chevy swap done correctly? Can the Opel suspension and differential handle it? How about those flaky Opel electrical systems? Oh, there will be surprises aplenty for the lucky winner of this stable of German thoroughbreds!

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Blending is a beautiful thing. Go to a beach in Brazil and dare to refute that claim. Blends of ideas and cultures give us the gestalt of advancement. Sometimes it's a Canadian making a new whiskey, sometimes it's a Dane (Brahe), a German (Kepler), and a Briton (Newton) whose combined ideas explained the universe. Argentine Alejandro DeTomaso needed money to fund his racing teams of Formula Twos and Juniors, so he blended race technology with the needs of the streets and created the world's first mid-engine production car on his very first attempt.

DeTomaso went with what he knew. His first street-legal car would have a steel spine frame, four-wheel disc brakes, and use the 1.5-liter Kent engine from the Ford Cortina. The engine featured twin side-draft Weber carbs and produced 105 hp in a car that had a 90-inch wheelbase and would eventually weigh only 1,544 pounds. An unequal-length wishbone suspension with the same uprights used in the Lotus Seven and Elan and the Triumph Spitfire were used up front with a reversed lower wishbone, top link and radius arm suspension bolted to the motor and transaxle in the rear, all fully adjustable. It would be a Formula Ford for civilian duty.

More photos at European Car magazine.

The Argentine with the American wife living in Italy contacted Fissore to craft the first example of the car in 1962. It was first seen as a roadster, but that idea was scrapped in favor of a coupe. Steel outriggers would lead to an aluminum body with an amazingly open greenhouse of roughly 50/50 glass and Perspex.

A spat between DeTomaso and Fissore lead to the actual production of the car being handled in 1964 by Ghia, which would later become DeTomaso property. Aluminum bodywork became fiberglass, a mid-engined car for the strada took its final form, and it was given a name: Vallelunga, after an Italian racetrack favored by DeTomaso. The first examples in 1965 used a four-speed VW transmission, but later models were given five forward cogs. Top speed was about 130 mph — damn respectable for a four-cylinder car of the era.

The Vallelunga danced. The stiff spine frame, potent brakes, low weight and sturdy motor combined to make the car an extension of the driver's will. Canny engine placement allowed for nearly uninterrupted vision. Look hard at every mid-engine car to follow it and you won't find one with such excellent sight lines. That placement also puts the Kent about a foot from the driver's head, but honestly: Who doesn't like a screamer?

Another spine chassis, mid-engine car, Lotus' Europa, would debut in show rooms the following year, but the Argentine model is clearly the more beautiful of the two to my eyes. The styling owed something to the Ferrari 250LM, no doubt, but was good enough as a whole that the Vallelunga was shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art as "an example of technological progress and outstanding design."

For all this, the Vallelunga didn't sell. Three prototypes, fifty cars built by Ghia and five Competizione lightweights tuned up to 130 hp are the entire production run. DeTomaso's eyes turned the development of his next blend of American power and Italian style, the V8 Mangusta.

The agile Vallelunga, the car that established the DeTomaso brand, is hardly known. Its rarity puts its current day value at about $135,000. A 43-inch tall car (about two inches shorter than an Elise), Alejandro's first car is a giant in the history of automotive development. – James Gribbon

[The Jalopnik Fantasy Garage appears every Tuesday. Readers vote the cars in or out. The idea is that we'll have 50 cars in our Fantasy Garage, the world's greatest mechanic and endless wads of cash. Would you like to nominate a car for the Fantasy Garage? Write tips@jalopnik.com with the subject line "Fantasy."]

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The Jalopnik Fantasy Garage, So Far:
Jensen FF | RUF RT12 | Maserati Quattroporte Executive GT | 1978 Aston Martin V8 Vantage | Honda 1300 Coupe 9 | 1931 Daimler Double Six 50 Corsica Drophead Coupe | Ferrari 288 GTO | Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 | 1970 Buick GSX 455 | First Generation BMW M Coupe | Bugatti Veyron 16.4 | Ford GT | Citroen SM | Porsche 928

Related:
Jalopnik Fantasy Garage: Jensen FF [Internal]

1954 Moretti 750 Gran Sport [fantasyjunction.com]

Related:
1968 Alfa Romeo Ambulance at Fantasy Junction [Internal]

For some weird reason, we just suddenly just started suffering from a complete, utter and sheer attack of Pantera-lust, and we're not talking about Phil Anselmo's old band, either. We simply need one, no two ways about it. Please, gracious, well-heeled readers, we will accept delivery at our San Pedro office. We mean, look at the damn thing. Just look at it!

Pantera International

Related:
New York Times Remembers Original "Hybrids" [Internal]