"Lost" Espada finds a loving home

My friend Syed over at IEDEI posted a heartwarming follow-up story about the car below, which he and I respectively featured on our sites a while back after a visit to Gullwing Motor Cars in Queens.  The metallic green car, which had a Chevy V8 swapped in for the original Lamborghini V12, was very straight and not rotten, but looking shabby as it languished outside in the lot.Had I the resources at the time (or now, come ot think of it), I would have loved to take this car under my wing and breath new life into it.  Thankfully, its new owner has done exactly that.  He's doing a light rolling restoration and keeping the car mostly as found (she sure polished up nice!), and although we'd love to see the original V12 back in the car, the current owner says the lighter, smaller V8 improves the handling and weight distribution.  We wish him all the best of adventures in his wonderful new ride!

Click HERE for my original post about the car.

Click HERE to read about its current whereabouts on IEDEI.

Concorso Italiano 2011

Concorso Italiano, which was begun in the early 1990s, has become one of the top events in the Pebble Beach weekend. Compared to the rarified air at the Quail and Pebble Beach Concours D'elegance, the Concorso feels a lot more inclusive and down to Earth.  Its physical location is a lot closer to Laguna Seca than Carmel, and this is fitting as the event seems to straddle the line between the hardcore gearheads and the straw hat and blazer types. It feels more like a typical regional car show where owners sit by their cars (most actually drive their cars in rather than trailering them!) and chat and have a good time. Unlike a regional show, however, the scale of the Concorso is huge, and the array of machinery on display is a vast survey of mostly postwar Italian vehicles. And true to the inclusive spirit of the show, they even added a category for non-Italian cars!  We had a great time at the Concorso, which has the cars well organized by marque and model. It's really cool, for example, to see a perfectly aligned row of Maserati Boras or DeTomaso Panteras. These are cars that you'd be lucky to see once in a blue moon on the street, yet at the Concorso, you get to see a whole family reunion.  It's just fantastic. In addition to the more common Italian cars, there is all sorts of wonderful, obscure stuff in attendance. Have you ever seen an Intermeccanica, for example?? How about an Iso Lele? I certainly saw a few cars I had absolutely never laid eyes on before, so the show was very educational. Click HERE for the 2 page Mega Gallery!

Classy and Glassy: Transparent Tailgates of the 70s

I really love some of the 70s cars that have transparent tailgates. Sure they aren't safe, and sure they are vulnerable to even a minor parking mishap.  But boy are they cool!   It's interesting to note that this concept has recently returned to vogue somewhat with hybrid vehicles, going back to the first generation Honda Insight.

Bertone Pirana - British Cat in an Italian Suit

In researching the history of the Lamborghini Espada, I was surprised to discover that it was not based solely upon the famously outlandish Marzal concept car, which was built on a stretched Miura chassis for the 1967 Geneva Motor Show. In fact, there was another less famous Bertone show car built for the 1967 Earl's Court Motor Show in London, which even more closely presages the Espada.  It was constructed by Bertone directly over a Jaguar E-type 4.2 Liter 2+2 chassis provided willingly(!) by Jaguar.  I think most observers would agree that Marcello Gandini's design doesn't hold a candle to Malcom Sayer's iconic feline curves, but the result is an fascinating historical footnote that is worth remembering, and puts the Espada into context. Does anyone know where this one-of-a-kind car ended up? I was unable to find any modern photos of the Pirana online.

By the way, don't you love the lightweight Dunlop alloy wheels?

Lamborghini Espada - Wafer Thin sports sedan from the Space Age

For a long time I thought the Espada was an ugly car, but I gotta say, it has really aged into a unique and fascinating time capsule that has to be seen in person to be believed.  And thanks to its strange looks, Espadas are still relatively attainable exotics.  This weekend, I had the pleasure of inspecting this particular metallic green example up close. It needed a ton of work, but I was just blown away by the amount of awesome design details packed into the exterior and interior by Bertone's designers back in the late 60s - under Gandini's direction. The Espada was produced for about 10 years, and was praised for its road manners by magazine testers. If you want to buy this car, check it out here!

The hexagonal, stacked instrument cluster is a work of art that is strikingly contemporary today.

The interior's chrome accents are tasteful and look amazing in person.

At just under 4 feet in height (!), this compressed 2+2 looks like it is hurtling towards you even when it's wedged into the corner of an overcrowded lot in Queens.

The three-pronged knockoffs are pure Italian exotic.