The following are all pictures that were "sent" to me in one form or another or which I came across when somebody posted them someplace and asked what they were.
Oooh - this is a good one. This is a Ghia 450SS. This car has been reported to have been the brainchild of Hollywood producer Burt Sugarman. Legend has it that Sugarman caught a glimpse of a Ghia 230S on the March, 1965, cover of Road & Track and wanted one for himself. But in the wake of the death of Ghia's boss Luigi Segre in 1963, the 230S project had been shelved. Two were built using a tube-frame chassis, designed by Gilberto Columbo, and Fiat 2300S six-cylinder engines. Columbo also did the styling - but the project was circling the drain by the time of the R&T cover. Sugarman's involvement helped revive the project, but without the Fiat connection. Sugarman had Ghia build him a 230S Spider built around the mechanical bits of a Plymouth Barracuda. A young Giorgetto Giugiaro transformed the 230S, massaging it to accomodate the new mechanicals and transform it into the convertible 450SS. The result was a well-sorted car and Sugarman liked it so much that he figured others would too. Then-struggling Ghia and Sugarman both saw a lucrative business opportunity.
Sugarman brokered a deal with Chrysler to supply Ghia - an old ally of Chrysler - with mechanical-cam 273 V8's (from the Dodge Dart GT and Plymouth Barracuda S). Ghia then made between 20 or 50 of these handsome machines (depending on who you ask). The 273 was the ancestor of the legendary 340, so it had some guts. The Ghia was light too - and this made for an exciting combination. Performance was not in the 427 Cobra league, but it was still a very quick car. Very expensive too - with a list price of around $12,000. The production run was spread out over three years, and by 1968 the car had faded from the limelight. One of these appeared in 1995 in Collectible Automobile - the car had originally been a gift from the late Johnny Carson to his private pilot. Needless to say, this is a rare automobile today.
It's a Fiat 128SL (short for Sport-L). Most likely it's a '73. They stopped making the SL after 1974 and replaced it with the more practical 3P (for Tre porte) hatchback for 1975. The 3P was basically the same car only instead of the semi-notchback of this SL, with it's teeny-tiny trunk, the 3P was a full fastback hatch. The 128 SL replaced the Fiat 850 Coupe in Fiat's lineup, while the mid-engined X1/9 replaced the 850 Spider and the basic 128 replaced the 850 sedan. This continued Fiat's tradition of offering coupes and sporty models based directly on the mechanicals of the mainstream sedans. Underneath the skin, the SL and 3P are pure Fiat 128 2-door sedan.
The SL represented tradition. The 3P that replaced it represented a response to the increasing popularity of hatchbacks like the VW Golf and Renault R5. The basic 128 came as a sedan or a wagon, no hatch option. By 1975 the 128 was six years old and the new VW Golf, with it's better build and more practical body, was taking a huge chunk of the 128's market.
As you can see, this car is a race car. It's for sale in Florida from an entrepreneur who imports cars from New Zealand and that's where this car came from. It's believed that this car ran in NZ until last year with a driver named Ashley Anderson, but I can't confirm or deny that as there are several 128 racers in New Zealand. In any case, it looks like a well-sorted race car.
The engine is the same 1290-cc motor that's under the hood of most US 128's (including mine) - but this one's got a twin Weber 34 conversion and a nice exhaust setup, which means more power. It may also have a higher compression head from a Yugo or a 1116-cc 128. This is a common modification for racing 128's. As in all 128's, that power comes waaaay up in the rev band. A properly built 128 race motor can managed 8500-rpm with ease and not blow it's top - and all 128's need revs to get moving. The 1290, designed by Aurelio Lampredi shortly after his Fiat twin-cam design, is the epitome of a big-bore, short-stroke revver in the classic Italian idiom.
For more information about 128 racers and 128's in general, check out Courtney Wauters' Fiat 128 page. Lots of great info and pictures here.
This is a Maserati Ghibli Spider. That's a rare car to begin with, with only 125 made - but there's something unique about this one. The headlights are an exposed design and the grille is modified to accomodate their position. I'm not sure how many others, if any, were built this way but I'd bet it's unique for this reason. A little research revealed that this car has a very low serial number - AM115 280. Which means it's an extremely early Ghibli Spider. The Giugiaro-penned Ghibli Spider was first shown at the Turin show in November of 1968, so perhaps this is a prototype, or one of the very first series. 21 were built before the end of calendar year 1968. I have no pictures from the 1968 Turin show to confirm or deny whether this is the prototype, but it's unusual serial number and front end suggest it might be. I haven't seen this front end on any other Ghibli. Giugiaro felt that the Spider's surfaces were too broad and flat, so perhaps this was one of his solutions to his self-criticism. I guess you have to be the designer to be able to criticize a car as stunning as the Ghibli Spider.
All Ghibli Spyders had odd-numbered serials, so I'm not sure if this one is genuine. The car is listed as a '68, which is prior to the on-sale date of the Ghibli Spider. It's possible this model was a prototype. It's certainly a nice Ghibli if it is indeed genuine - complete with the Campagnolo "Starburst" wheels and the nicer early-style interior with the toggle switches (later eliminated by US safety regs). So, that's almost a positive ID. It's definitely a Ghibli Spider, but that unique front clip makes it hard to tell where and when it came from. This car has been up for auction in the UK twice (that I know of) in the last ten years and both times it failed to sell.
If you're wondering how I found out the information about this specific car, you can tell by both the trim and wheels (for year) and the British registration plate (for more information). Searching on that plate number will bring you alot of information, as in the UK the registration number follows the car and is advertised whenever the car is up for auction.
This is Lancia Appia. The convertible Appia was styled and built by Vignale - but was one of several bodystyles. By tradition, Lancia offered many different styles from various coachbuilders into the 1960's - well after most other makers had ceased this artful but deeply unprofitable practice. Needless to say, all this complexity didn't help Lancia's bottom line.
In addition to the four-door Berlina (from Lancia itself), you could have a Pininfarina coupe, a Zagato lightweight coupe, a wagon from Viotti, and delivery van (furgoncino) and pickup (camoncino) variants too. That might not seem so impressive until you realize that this was a unibody car which started out as a four-door sedan with no central pillar and "clap hands" suicide doors. Lancia started to clamp down on these practices in the 60's in order to rationalize it's lineup and pare back loss-making models. It finally took financial collapse and the Fiat takeover in 1969 to formally put a stop to many of these custom bodied machines.
In case you're wondering about that funny name....the Appia, Ardea, Aprilia, Aurelia, Flaminia, and Flavia were all named for ancient Roman roads around Italy. Many of these roads themselves were named for Roman emperors like Marcus Aurelius. This was a departure from the earlier Roman-alphabet sequence that Lancia would return to in the 1970's starting with the Beta and is only now leaving behind in Europe. All pre-Fiat Lancias are fairly rare in the US, so this was quite a sighting for Bill S. from Maine.
All the way from a classic car meet in Germany comes this 1926-27 Fiat 520 tourer. The list from the Rally listed it as a 1926 Fiat 520 - so it must be a very early 520, because volume production really didn't get running until very late 1926. This was the second Fiat to use the 520 name - there had been a V12-powered 520 known as the "Super Fiat" until early 1926, but only a handful were made and was not considered a success. Fiat would periodically forget this lesson and continue to make unprofitable luxury cars off-and-on until the 70's.
The 520 was a six-cylinder, mid-size car in it's day, though it still would've ranked as a compact by American standards (had such a term existed at the time). It was ultra-conventional for it's day, though not obsolete, and it did feature four-wheel drum brakes, which were made hydraulic during the production run. The side-valve 2.2 liter straight six made a very respectable 46 hp at 3400 rpm, and had ample torque. The 520 evolved into the 521 that premiered in 1929. Though most usually associated with small post-war cars, before WW2 Fiat made all sizes of cars, from big limousines to the tiny Topolino. In fact, before WW1 big luxury cars were Fiat's bread and butter.