High-Bred Hybrids

The Automobile Connoisseur has long dreamed of the happy results that must attend the mating of the best in American and Continental models. The typical European sports car has a lovely Italianate body, sleek, low, chrome-free, running a small, fussy, fast-turning and hard-to-service engine. The typical American high-performance car has a big, immensely powerful, slow-turning engine (that can be fixed in any crossroads garage) driving a grotesquely oversize, barge-like, chrome-curlicued body. Why not take the European body and stick the American engine into it?

A lot of one-shot automobiles were turned out to this formula, some by major firms, some by individuals. The (continued on page 82) High-Bred Hybrids(continued from page 37) Nash Rambler Palm Beach, the Chrysler K-300, the Dart, the Norseman were some of them. Individually made, their cost was fantastic, a minimum of around $40,000.

Some of those who drove them thought they were almost worth it. They were beautiful, they were exotic, and they were fast. What more is there? Only handling and history. The thoroughly experienced driver, wedded to firm suspension and quick steering, found them a bit insecure, and the traditionalist found them socially unacceptable: he wanted a car that had behind it decades of elegance, or of race-winning, or of style-setting.

Still, the idea of engine-swapping was no new thing. The British had been doing it for years, and the Allard, one of the most successful racing sports cars of the postwar period, was usually delivered in this country without an engine, so that the purchaser could drop in a Cadillac or a Chrysler, as he chose. Engine-swapping had even been done on a wholly domestic basis: when the Loewy-designed Studebaker appeared, a good many of the cognoscenti, enchanted by its lines, were prevented from buying only by the lack of horsepower in the Studebaker engine.

The idea of the transatlantic bastard car had occurred to people in Europe, and after the Paris Automobile Show of 1951 the French Compagnie Facel-Metallon, builders of bodies for the Simca Sport and the Ford Comete, began to consider making a new high-performance car. Before the war, France had produced many such: Bugatti, Talbot, Hotchkiss, Delage, Delahaye. Some of these were still being made, in very small quantity, but they were prewar in conception and design. The Facel-Metallon people wanted something that would be new from the tires up.

By March 1953, a test car was in being, and in November there was a second. Both of them ran 110,000 kilometers in France, Switzerland and Belgium. The final design was shown to the press in July 1954, exhibited at the Paris Show in October, and the first production car was delivered in March 1955. It was called the Facel-Vega.

The Facel-Vega is a genuine high-performance automobile de grande luxe. It uses a big Chrysler V-8 engine and transmission, but the chassis is special, a welded arrangement of four-inch tubes; in the coupé model the car is short, at 104 inches only a bit longer that a Nash Rambler. There's a bigger four-door sedan.

In the old tradition of the custommade automobile, unhappily almost gone now, the Facel-Vega offers numerous options to the buyer: Chrysler automatic transmission, or the magnificent Pont-a-Mousson four-speed manual gearbox, with synchromesh on all gears, reverse included, as an option on the option. Disk brakes, power steering, right-hand drive are all available, and the interior can be finished in any leather or fabric available on the world market. An enormous stack of fitted luggage is tagged at $350 extra.

A two-seater in the European tradition, the Facel-Vega coupé makes no concessions to three-abreast seating. The two front bucket seats are separated by the necessarily high transmission tunnel, which carries controls for the lights, windshield wipers and windows, the latter electrically raised and lowered. Part of the impression of luxury the Facel-Vega makes derives from the dashboard, a tremendous door-to-door expanse of walnut paneling.

With 360 horsepower available at 5200 revolutions per minute, the Facel-Vega is fast: using a 3.31 axle ratio, the makers claim 0 to 60 mph in 7.5 seconds, a fabulously quick reading, and a top speed of 130. An alternative 2.93 rear end will produce 150 mph, in theory at any rate. Most owners value the car's comfort and agility over its top speed potential, but it's nice to know that the quickness is available. At 150 mph the Facel-Vega joins the legendary likes of the Ferrari Super as one of the fastest passenger automobiles in existence. And at $7500 the cost is around half, while the exclusivity is not much less. There will never be many Facel-Vegas around, even though the French diplomatic service is to be equipped with them. That's a pity. In a really well-ordered world there'd be one for everybody who wanted it, one for everybody who wanted to know the joy of sliding along a string-straight moonlit road in utter silence, power underfoot to run away from anything, a month's luggage nested under the deck, and someone pretty and amenable in the other seat.

Cousin to the Facel-Vega is the Dual-Ghia, a Chrysler-based Italo-American high-performance car. The Dual-Ghia originated in Detroit when Eugene Casaroll, head of Dual Motors, a subsidiary of the Automobile Shippers firm known as a sponsor of Indianapolis 500 cars, fell victim to the wish for a fast, unique automobile. He made a couple of tentative stabs at it and then asked the Detroit representative of the Italian coach-builder Ghia, Paul Farago, to give the matter some thought. Farago thought for a while, then bought two Dodge D-500 chassis and took them to Italy.

The D-500 Dodge had created a considerable stir when it appeared in 1956. It would accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 9.6 seconds and in another 40 seconds arrive at 115 mph -- and all this with a total weight of over two tons.

In Italy Farago had his two D-500 chassis cut up and reworked in the interests of a lower center of gravity. Ghia designed a typically handsome convertible body, unusual but restrained, and the completed car weighed 200 pounds less than the D-500 Dodge. It was consequently a little faster in acceleration and in getting to top speed, 123 mph. Moving the 230-horsepower engine six inches rearward in the chassis materially improved the car's handling qualities over the parent Dodge. The Dual-Ghia was available with power brakes and steering and automatic transmission at about $7600 and a production run of 100 was planned. The car went on the market in the middle of 1957. By March of 1958 the last one had been sold and none has been made since. Hoagy Carmichael had one, Dan Topping and Gussie Moran were owners. Gilbert Kahn of the famous New York financial family had one, liked it so much that he said he was sure he could sell six of them to his friends. Frank Sinatra got one, and the car soon became a top prestige symbol and badge of belonging among members of The Clan, the hip set in Hollywood. Peter Lawford and Eddie Fisher picked one up. Tony Curtis said he wanted one too.

Unlike the Facel-Vega, available only as a hard-top, the Dual-Ghia is a convertible. It offers American big-engine performance, American big-scale comfort (there's room for three in back) with Italian styling, for the last dozen years the world's best. Retaining Dodge suspension, it's not a competitive sports car, but it certainly is a high-performance automobile of unusual grace and beauty.

Out of production now, the Dual-Ghia may appear again next year. Plans are incomplete. The new one would be different in at least two ways: it would be a hard-top, and it would probably cost around $10,000.

For the man who wants something a little bigger than the Dual-Ghia or the Facel-Vega, say rather more than twice as big, there's the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham. The six-page publicity release announcing the car said nothing about the fact that the 1959 Brougham is being shipped, chassis and shell, to Italy to the famous Farina coach-works for finishing. The styling, although executed by Farina, is basically Fisher, and few onlookers, not noticing Farina's signature-plate on the car, would take it to be anything but standard Detroit.

The Brougham is a limited-production car, and is unique even in its own category in that there are no mechanical options. There is no need for options. The American public wants nothing to do with a stick-shift, understands little about alternative axle-ratios, and everything else is standard: air conditioning and air suspension, automatic headlight dimmer, power front-quarter windows, power seats and electric door locks and power rear-deck lid. The customer can, however, have anything he likes in the way of interior options.

The Brougham is an all-out attempt at a series-produced luxury automobile of the highest order. It is an enormously comfortable prestige-building carriage, with remarkable suspension characteristics, marvelously good power steering, and the most brutally snobbish horn-tone in the world! It is full of novelties such as a rear-quarter window that slides out of sight when the door is opened, in the interests of easier passenger passage. The Brough is 225 inches long and at $13,075 costs a little less than the small, or economy model, Rolls-Royce.

That's the field at the moment: Chrysler, Dodge, Cadillac engines; Facel, Ghia, Farina coach-work. If you can't be made happy by a choice from this group you're fussy indeed. However, there is hope for you. Buy a couple of whatever chassis you like, take them to Italy, wander around Turin until you hear the unmistakable sound of hand-held hammers bashing metal, and then go in and talk to the man. Eventually you'll find one who'll listen to you, if you've remembered the important thing, which is: bring money.

Frank Sinatra and His Dual-Ghia

Facel-Vega

Cadillac Eldorado Brougham