City Wheels: A Two-Way Street

You've Really Got to wonder what in sweet Jesus' name is going on with automobiles these days. Here's Detroit building cars with bumpers that belong on freight locomotives and propelled by engines that run so lumpily that the carburetors appear to have been designed by the Boston Strangler. Then you've got Ralph Nader and his associates, who want to cocoon us so securely inside the blasted things that we could be sent airmail, special delivery without fear of injury. It's all part of society's efforts to grind the rough edges off this infernal machine that has so shaken the foundation of American society in the 20th Century. That can't be all bad, but this house-breaking procedure is tending to remove whatever minuscule evidence of pioneering and innovation was left in the industry. The vast thrust of the contemporary automobile scene is toward standardization; the whole thing is riding down toward the totally homogenized transportation module of tomorrow.

This trend toward formulized automobiles, created as consensus products by a plodding, hidebound industry, a splendid mud bog of Federal bureaucrats and a collection of mildly paranoid consumerists, would seem to mitigate against further new vehicular concepts' arriving on the scene. For example, Federal regulations have canceled any possibility of new roadsters' or convertibles' being marketed. The fiberglass-kit cars, the dune buggies and such that came with a flurry in the Sixties, will soon be gone because of their inability to meet safety standards; the megahorsepower "muscle cars" are gone; and these are solid indications that a day is soon coming when no modifications whatsoever will be permitted for any car. Standardization. Here comes the homogenized automobile.

But if this is the end of automotive excess, what in hell are guys like Don Gates and Big Jim O'Donnell still hanging around for? After all, here are two men with some pretty cuckoo ideas about what America wants in the way of vehicular transportation, and they're still in (continued on page 224)city wheels(continued from page 123) there, expecting to get rich, in spite of the fat boys in Detroit and all those Florence Nightingales in Washington. No matter how large the middle, there is always a fringe area, and here is where Gates and O'Donnell have chosen to stake their claims, although their approaches to the problem are hemispheres apart. Gates, a former resident engineering genius at General Motors, is heading a company that is manufacturing a PPV—a people-powered vehicle—that will sell for less money than you could tie up in a stereo system for your Caddy. James D. O'Donnell, on the other hand, is producing a far-out, American sports car that you can jump into for about 30 grand a copy. Gates in his search for the bottom line in basic transportation and O'Donnell with his high-buck luxury car are both seeking new ways to exploit the national fascination with vehicles and to counter the march toward homogenized automobiles.

Gates looks like a company man. Slope-shouldered and modestly sized, his manner is owlish and quietly precise, as befits his schooling at General Motors Institute and his 17 years of service in the engineering legions of the world's largest corporation. Now he occupies a small, white-walled office in a one-story factory in a Sterling Heights, Michigan, industrial park. His desk is an inexpensive steel model, cluttered with papers and engineering manuals. One end of the room is occupied by a drawing board as large as a billiard table. It, too, is piled with professional books and schematic drawings. It could be the office belonging to any one of a thousand senior engineers who labor quietly in the labyrinths of the Big Three. Now Gates is free of such duties and is the leader of a tiny, eager band of associates that has managed to be the first on the market with a PPV—a vehicle powered by ... human beings. Out back, the 45 employees of EVI (Environmental Vehicles, Inc.) are hard at work fabricating part of the 40,000 PPV's they expect to produce this year.

O'Donnell, in the meantime, sits in a wood-paneled office on the 39th floor of the Time and Life Building in Manhattan. He is a sharp-featured man of middle age, with puffy, rather tired eyes and expensively cut, graying hair that falls stylishly over his ears. He is an investment banker, and he has the relaxed confidence of a high-dollar gambler who is used to winning. On a wall of his office hangs a painting of a prototype of his car—the Stutz—resurrected in name only from the limbo of the Depression and now being marketed by O'Donnell as the ultimate in vehicular extravagance. O'Donnell is no car nut like Gates. He has spent no lifetime in apprenticeship, preparing for his leap into the world of making cars. Automobiles stimulate little interest in him, by his own admission, except that he sees in them a source of revenue through the use of the once magic name of Stutz. While the clatter of Gates's factory is separated from him by a thin plaster wall, O'Donnell seldom connects physically with his cars. They are being fabricated thousands of miles to the east, in the northern Italian village of Cavallermaggiore, 35 kilometers down the road from Turin. Scanning his ledgers high above the bustle of Sixth Avenue, Big Jim hopes that the 35 craftsmen at Carrozzerria Saturn will one day soon sort out the endless production bottlenecks so that he will be able to import 10 to 20 Stutzes a month.

The contrasts between Gates and his pedal car and O'Donnell and his crypto-classic need no belaboring. The two men are only similar in that they are trying to produce road vehicles for the American market—an endeavor that has had a mortality rate higher than the trench warfare at Verdun. Thousands of small firms have tried to nibble at the market of the auto goliaths and, save for a few—Avanti and Excalibur are the best known of a select lot—they have failed. But Gates has a clear chance. His product is hardly in direct competition with the major auto makers, primarily because his PPV isn't an automobile—at least in the classic sense that an automobile is powered by some sort of engine. Riding into the market place on the crest of such concerns as air pollution, the energy crisis and the need for physical fitness, his PPV has elicited major enthusiasm from investors. "I can't believe it," says Gates. "A guy just offered us a sum for a five percent piece of the company that was more than our total investment to date."

The People-Powered Vehicle just happened one day after lunch. Gates and Mike Pocobello, Ziggy Obidzinski and Dick Rutherford—his partners in Antares Engineering, a contract engineering firm the four ex–G.M. employees had started—had just returned from a quick sandwich to resume work on a special-project electric delivery truck when Gates blurted, "You know, the next great trend in transportation will be people-powered vehicles."

"You're crazy," said Pocobello.

But they spent the rest of the day at the drawing board, making sketches of a lightweight, pedal-powered machine that would transport two people at speeds up to 30 miles per hour. Within hours, the basic concept was clear. Their machine would be a tricycle configuration, to reduce the rolling resistance and to minimize the frontal area. Steering would be by a tiller connected to the front wheel. The body would be molded plastic. The prototype was built with an infinite-speed transmission that was a failure.

"We made another mistake on the first one," says Gates. "We used a semilinear pedal motion, which meant that you pumped the thing like an organ. That was about 30 percent less efficient than the normal circular-rotation motion that is used on conventional bicycles. We changed it immediately." Early models appeared with a bicycle-type dérailleur five-speed transmission, but this, too, had limitations and finally Gates, Pocobello and Obidzinski developed and patented their own three-speed transmission that could be up-and-down-shifted while standing still, under way or coasting—something that could not be done with the dérailleur. Once this problem was overcome, the PPV was ready for production—provided the necessary capitalization could be found.

Antares Engineering was a shoestring operation. Gates and his associates had a solid reputation in automobile racing, primarily due to their major efforts with the famous Chaparral cars of Texan Jim Hall. These vaunted machines were for the most part creations of the research and development section of Chevrolet Engineering (although G.M. had an official nonracing policy) and it was Gates who did much of the basic design on the Chaparral 2J "vacuum cleaner"—the boxy Can-Am car that Hall and Jackie Stewart proved was the fastest road-racing machine ever built. It was so fast, and such a radical departure from normal race-car design—with its suction system that kept it glued to the track in corners—that the international racing authorities ruled it illegal. While the 2J was never seen on the race tracks again, Gates's reputation inside the sport was made, which in turn encouraged him and Pocobello (who was also a major factor in Chevrolet racing projects) to leave the company and start Antares.

While they were working on the PPV and other research efforts, they undertook the construction of three radical Indianapolis cars for the 1972 "500." They were weird, canoe-shaped machines that employed far-out streamlining theories. A shortage of development time doomed them to failure and caused Gates and his associates to plunge back into the PPV project with even greater zeal. If the Antares Indianapolis cars had been successful, it is possible that the PPV might have been shelved indefinitely. As it was, they carried on with the project, which will probably prove to be substantially more profitable than 100 Indy cars. A Michigan sportsman named U. E. "Pat" Patrick, who has made a fortune in oil and natural-gas exploration, provided the initial financial backing. "Actually, we were going to take the PPV idea to a big camera manufacturer in Chicago," says Gates. "Dick Rutherford, who handles Antares publicity and promotion, had written a 40-page proposal and because we were (continued on page 228)city wheels(continued from page 224) doing some aerodynamic-design studies on Pat's Indianapolis cars, we took a copy out to his home in Jackson. We just wanted him to read it and offer his comments. He called back the next day and said he was so impressed with the idea that he'd cover the capitalization."

Antares' new spin-off company, EVI, immediately moved into its 25,000-square-foot factory in Sterling Heights and began production. A majority of the young staff were Vietnam veterans, working on a liberal profit-sharing plan. Within months, a number of wildly enthusiastic distributors had been signed to handle a 30-state area. Most of the sales territory is in warm, Southern areas, although demand for PPVs in the affluent Eastern Seaboard suburbs is expected to be brisk.

The PPV is an impressive machine. Light (125 pounds), cheap ($389, fully equipped and assembled) and tough (space-age plastics), the PPV takes no experience and a minimum of strength to operate. "People can develop about one quarter horsepower for long periods and up to two horsepower in short bursts. With our transmission, a pair of pedalers can run all day, once they've found their pace," says Gates. Rolling along on 20-inch tires, two average males can cruise a PPV at 20 mph and can hit nearly 30 with frenzied, flat-out pumping. Operating in bottom gear, two men can crest a 15 percent grade without suffering cardiac arrest. Considering its three-wheel configuration, the PPV is amazingly stable. It will generate a cornering force of .8 g, which is better than most passenger cars. Its special drum brake is superb and really reckless maneuvering can tilt it up on two wheels with no danger of overturning.

Driving a PPV is something like being in a Grand Prix car designed by Schwinn. The seats are plastic buckets, with raked backs that give one the impression of being in the ground-hugging cockpit of a racing car. The plastic windscreen adds to the competition flavor of the machine. As in conventional American automobiles, steering is done from the left-hand seat, which faces a small control handle similar to that employed by light aircraft. This is gripped by both hands while under way and the hefty front-wheel drum brake is activated by a lever mounted on the right handle grip of the steering bar. The gearshift lever is mounted, sports-car fashion, on a console between the two seats. The passenger faces a solid, chromed grab bar on the cowling, which is handy during the prodigious cornering feats the PPV is capable of accomplishing.

No matter how sophisticated the PPV's system of gears might be, the end product of the mechanical-advantage chain remains the leg muscles of the passengers, and there is no sense kidding around about the fact that pumping a PPV over hill and dale can be hard work. While efficient, the semireclining position is not as effective as the upright posture required by a normal bicycle, and drivers contemplating serious travel are advised to seek out husky passengers. Nevertheless, people with normal strength, operating in relatively flat terrain, such as in most cities, can have a fantastic time with a PPV. It sails along in complete silence, save for a subdued, metallic hum from the drive chain and the gentle scrubbing noises of the three tires against the pavement. Establishing a cadence between driver and passenger as to when to pedal and when to coast is simple enough, and the sensation is one of freedom and motion.

"We have to keep upgrading our sales estimates for the PPV," says Rutherford. "For a while, we looked at a maximum yearly production of 280,000 units. But now that seems obsolete, especially with European markets beginning to open up. What makes this thing really beautiful is that it isn't a toy. It works. People of all ages can use it for all kinds of errands and short-haul travel and recreation. The possibilities were unlimited, we thought, before the energy crisis. But now, with people predicting that gasoline may reach one dollar a gallon in a few years, the PPV's potential is breath-taking."

It is sufficiently breath-taking so that several other manufacturers have already entered the field. EVI's most serious short-term rival is probably the Environmental Tran-Sport Corporation of Windsor, Connecticut, which hapes to produce its Pedicar for about $500—as soon as sufficient financial backing is obtained. The Pedicar, designed by Robert Bundschuh, a 38-year-old aircraft engineer, is a four-wheel two-seater, complete with a roof (the PPV is open, although a surrey top is optional). It utilizes a "linear-torque drive system" (the organ-pedal-pusher system rejected by Gates), operating through a five-speed transmission. The Pedicar, due to its greater frontal area, higher rolling resistance and theoretically less efficient propulsion method, does not seem—at initial glance—to be as sophisticated a machine as the PPV, but Gates does not discount it as a rival. "If they get into production, they'll be a factor, but it won't in any way affect our goal to become the largest light-vehicle manufacturer in the United States."

Gates and Pocobello have already completed the prototype of an electric-powered version of their PPV. Four other radical, zero-pollution vehicles of various configuration are also under development at EVI and Gates candidly admits that some will work, some won't, but all will be tried. "Like they say, experience is a hard school, but fools learn in no other," he muses over the rumble of the assembly line beyond the wall.

While the little band at Antares seems to have solved its basic production problems and is preparing to open a second, larger manufacturing facility while thinking in six-figure annual outputs, O'Donnell would be delighted if his tiny Italian factory could provide him with half a dozen cars a week. "Our major problem is production," he says. "During the first three years we were in operation, we were able to build only 25 cars. We had been hoping for that many a month. We had unbelievable problems with strikes, labor shortages and supply difficulties. The Italians are great prototype builders, but they don't like steady production work. Finally, last September, we had to gather up our own group and organize production our own way. Since then, things have been improving."

O'Donnell's entry into the car business was through the back door. It rose out of the abortive attempt by a group of Indianapolis businessmen to resurrect the fabled Duesenberg during the middle Sixties. Operating in the vanguard of the great nostalgia craze, a number of speculators and car freaks decided during that period that what America really wanted was updated versions of famous but defunct car marques. A Tulsa designer created a plastic-bodied, Corvair-engine-powered version of the Cord (much modified, it remains in limited production), while others rushed into the market with everything from a replica Model A built on a pickup-truck chassis to bogus updates of Auburn Speedsters and Type 35 Bugattis. "The Duesenberg firm was in financial trouble from the start and my investment firm was called into the case. After diligent study of their situation, I could see that the concept had real potential, except that their particular operation had incurable management and financial problems. What impressed me was the number of signed purchase orders from important people. It seemed to me that the idea of taking an American-built chassis and giving it handmade steel coachwork of exclusive design had real merit."

Operating with his head, not his heart, O'Donnell created the Stutz Motor Car Company of America with one idea in mind: to make money. Unencumbered by sentimentality, he set out with a financier's pragmatic aim of turning a profit. He immediately engaged two men who had been involved in the Duesenberg project: Virgil Exner, the former chief stylist of Chrysler Corporation remembered for his swooping, winged, rococo Dodges, DeSotos, Plymouths, Imperials of the late Fifties known as the Forward Look; and Paul Farago, a veteran of Italian-American custom-car construction who was responsible for the Dual-Ghia, a Dodge hybrid that gained limited cache a decade ago when it became standard-transport issue for the so-called Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, et al. After O'Donnell had discovered that the Stutz label was public property and legally made it his own, Farago and Exner created a car under which they would slide the trademark. Realizing that the major expense of an automobile lies in the drive train and chassis, they decided to use the Pontiac Grand Prix as the basis for the new Stutz. It was chosen, says O'Donnell, because of its relatively narrow frame rails and the rearward placement of the engine, which permits a long, rakish hood. One can only speculate how Harry C. Stutz would have reacted to his name's being used on a custom-bodied Pontiac Grand Prix. His Bearcat two-seater open sports car of 1914-1919 is synonymous with the flapper era and remains one of the milestone automobiles. When the Depression finally destroyed the great marque, its Black Hawks and superlative DV-32 high-performance, luxury machines ranked with the best in the world. Today, the few remaining Stutzes are among the rarest and most desirable cars for wealthy and discriminating collectors. In contrast to these marvelous automobiles, which featured double overhead camshafts, straight-eight engine, four-speed transmission, centralized chassis lubrication, massive hydraulic brakes, etc., the latest version's automotive excellence is only label-deep. The Pontiacs are bought in complete, ready-to-drive form and shipped to Italy, where O'Donnell's crew strips away the Grand Prix body and refits a steel version designed by Exner and overseen by Farago. Aside from the attachment of Koni shocks, new wheels and tires, precious little is done with the original General Motors hardware. In fact, Federal emission regulations forbid tampering with the stock 455-cubic-inch Pontiac engine, and the G.M. Turbohy-dramatic automatic transmission is excellent as it is, so that, too, is left stock. In essence, all the basic mechanical components of the Stutz are pure, undistilled Pontiac.

The body itself, which utilizes Pontiac window-lifting mechanisms, door hinges and latches, window glass, instrumentation, air conditioning, etc., is well made of heavy-gauge steel, with the proper amount of traditional Italian coachbuilder's attention to detail, including superb English-leather upholstery and a multi-coat lacquer paint job. The styling itself is debatable, both in taste and in execution. Because many of the inner panels of the original Grand Prix have been retained, it has been difficult for Exner to conceal the original over-all contours created by G.M. chief stylist William Mitchell and his staff. He has, however, succeeded in adding a number of organic accent lines and filigrees, so that at first glance one is given the impression that the new Stutz has been molded from ice cream and is beginning to melt. Such effluvia as fake exhaust pipes beneath the doorsills add to the over-all impression that the Stutz is a rich man's answer to the Kalifornia Kustom Kar Kraze. O'Donnell is fond of saying that his car has "an Italian body with an American heart" and justifies the use of so many G.M. components on the basis that designing and building an original engine, transmission, etc., alla Lamborghini or Ferrari, would be prohibitively expensive. "Besides, under our system, a Stutz owner can have his car serviced at any Pontiac dealership and it gives a billion-dollar parts inventory without any expenditure on our part."

This close relationship with General Motors has an added bonus: Should you want to find out what it is like to drive a Stutz, a road test is no farther away than your nearest Pontiac dealer. A drive around the block in a new Grand Prix will give you a reasonable impression, although the added bulk of the Stutz—much of which is insulation and sound-deadening material—makes O'Donnell's device seem more sumptuous. The claimed weight is in the neighborhood of 4500 pounds, but the car creates a feeling of the inert bulk of perhaps three tons. It is quiet and the thick odor of the English leather and the lacquered wood paneling give one an initial impression of luxury, but this elegance is slogging along on the suspension of a mass-produced Detroit car with the inherent limitations of this relatively primitive species. The addition of high-priced shock absorbers and first-class tires cannot conceal the reality that the Stutz is sluggish and clumsy when compared with the thoroughbreds in its price range.

With the present instability of the dollar, a new Stutz will cost you nearly $30,000. Over 100 have been delivered in the United States, while several others have been delivered in Europe and the Middle East. However, over 90 percent of all Stutzes have been sold in Los Angeles, the nutball car capital of the world. There, Jules Meyers, a bright, hard-hitting young car dealer, takes his allotment of the cars and makes them even more elaborate than O'Donnell's original. He spends an extra $5000–$8000 on carefully modifying the engine for additional smoothness and power, improving the suspension, adding thicker insulation, plus some 14-kt.-gold interior trim and a leather spare-tire cover. One might think that this addition of frosting to the fruit-cake would make the dessert too sweet for anybody's taste, but recently, Meyers claimed that he had 67 orders for new Stutzes, each with a $10,000 deposit. Most of those sold have been purchased by the Hollywood showbiz crowd—a group hardly renowned for its taste. Stutz press releases constantly harp on the fact that such celebs as Elvis Presley, Dick Martin, Lucille Ball, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Robert Goulet and Arthur Willey, Jr., ex-director of Lubrizol Corporation, are owners. After the Dual-Ghia passed out of fashion, the Hollywood crowd glommed onto the Excalibur, a quasi reproduction of the SSK Mercedes-Benz, for its status vehicle, then leaped into Mercedes-Benz 250SL sports cars for a while. Now the trendies are driving Stutzes, not because the Stutz has any particularly redeeming features as an automobile but because it is exclusive, ostentatious and expensive. Anyone who understands the strange workings of status in Hollywood can see that Dean Martin and the Stutz mate like diamond pinkie rings and white-on-white shirts. With Rolls-Royce and Bentley expected to produce nearly 2800 cars this year, thereby reducing their exclusivity, and Ferraris difficult for a nonexpert to drive, and everybody owning a Mercedes-Benz, what is one to do—aside from buying a Stutz?

The Stutz is the Hollywood cult car of the hour, and for O'Donnell, that is all he needs. He has the field to himself at the present time, aside from the limited threat imposed by something called the Bugazzi—a gussied-up Lincoln Continental Mark IV, being manufactured in minute quantities in Hollywood by an organization called California Show Cars. Despite his protests that his Stutz is a completely original car fabricated with uncompromising attention to detail, with the finest materials, O'Donnell is a perceptive man who understands that true quality is a strange amalgam of tradition and craftsmanship, and that his car's "American heart" badly compromises his product. But he is a businessman, not a car connoisseur, and his automobile is perfectly aimed at a specific market.

So Jim O'Donnell and Don Gates are forging ahead in their own distinct worlds of automotive extremism, which is a debatable virtue but, on the other hand, is hardly a vice. Each understands that no matter how far the mass-market standardization is carried, there will be those who will continue to seek—even crave—vehicles that are unique, if nothing else. As long as we have wheels, man will be coming up with offbeat conveyances to roll on them.