VeloceToday.com

The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts

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Mystery Car Unraveled

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Side view of our Mystery Car...the photographer couldn't recall the name of the car or what year, but he did remember his girlfriend, who is standing behind it.


Sometimes, it’s still fun….

Today we have almost dozens of books about rare Italian cars; multiple Internet sources which leave no digit unmolested, no photo left unseen; dozens of seasoned veterans with years of experience identifying, finding, buying, and selling rare Italian cars, and then wonderful resources for information such as the REVS and IMRRC.
All of this means that there are few true mystery cars left out there – the wealth of resources has taken much of the fun away from finding a photo of a car one can’t identify.

Still, once in a while one comes up that we find it hard to figure. When this happens, we put the image up on VeloceToday and we are sure to find the right answer. Or so we hope.

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Concept Cars and Aerodymanics: Learning from the U.S.

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Cross Atlantic pollination: This Adler 2.5 liter model was introduced at the 1937 Berlin Motor Show. Its aerodynamic shape was a design of Karl Jenschke. The bodies were built by Ambi-Budd in Berlin, and lines were influenced by the Chrysler Airflow.

By Gijsbert-Paul Berk

What the Europeans learned from the Americans
In the previous articles we have presented a number of eye-catching projects and aerodynamic studies created by European coachwork builders or car and aircraft designers during the first three decennia of the 20th century.

See Concept Cars and Aerodynamics, Part 2, Part 1

Though it often seems that the Europeans had the edge in design, during the first thirty years of the century a number of American designers and manufacturers became important sources of inspiration for the European car makers. In this chapter we will determine how the Americans inspired and influenced European manufacturers and what they learned or copied from each other.

This historic machine has nothing to do with aerodynamics, but the 1917 Dodge command car, used by the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during WWI, was one of the first with an ‘all steel’ body.

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Aerodynamics and Concept Cars: 1888 to 1914

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1911 Grégoire with a coachwork by Alin and Liautard, especially designed to reduce the dust cloud created by the aerodynamic turbulences at the rear of a fast driven motor vehicle.

By Gijsbert-Paul Berk

The selection of outstanding aerodynamic designs up to 1930 that I will present to you is by nature, very arbitrary. During those years there were many other very original automotive creations as well.

However, the concepts I have chosen, have at least two things in common:

1. All of them incorporated new ideas that have influenced future automobile designers.
2. Most of them must have disappointed their designers/creators, as not a single one did everything they expected or became a commercial success. The only exception is Jenatzy’s electric record beater, because with that car he realized his dream to go faster than 100 km/h. But he did call his machine ‘Jamais Contente (Never Satisfied).

Jenatzy's electric powered 'Jamais Contente' was very advanced and streamlined. But the heavy Fulmen batteries were housed in a large square box under the chassis, the car measured 1,40 m. above street level. However, Camile Jenztzy’s large torso and head towering over the streamlined body and the rather unsophisticated undercarriage (chassis) must have spoiled its low drag.

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A History of Concept Cars

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Following our recent article on today’s concept cars and designers, Gijsbert-Paul Berk begins a new series of historical articles that will convey the history of dream and show cars and examine which concept cars or design studies influenced the shapes of our automobiles. Below, three interesting and legendary fashions that helped set styling trends.

By Gijsbert-Paul Berk

Breaking Away
Concept cars, dream cars, or show cars by any name are not by any means new. Historically, dream cars are outrageous, crowd-pleasers and often trend-setters. The story of the dream car begins in 1896 as the French made a concentrated effort to make the new motor car look less like ‘horseless carriages’. In general, the design and construction of automobile bodies was the work of coachbuilders, who only a few years before, had built the horse-drawn carriages. This similarity sometimes caused confusion and irritated a number of people.

This was one of the reasons why the well-known Parisian department store “Le Louvre” organized a competition for ideas for the coachwork of ‘modern’ motor cars in 1896. The contest was open to all kinds of artists such as painters and sculptors but also to architects and coachbuilders. The prizewinning entry was a scale model made from wax, cardboard and glass by Pierre Selmersheim, an architect and furniture designer. As can be seen from the competition, the Selmersheim design was fairly radical and advanced for the era. A photo of it was widely publicized in the French newspapers and European motoring magazines. But none of the many French coachbuilders was interested in building it.


These drawings are additional entries in the competition. It is easy to see why the Selmersheim design in the lead photo above, won.

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A Look at Today’s Concept Cars

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One of the highlights of this year's Geneva Auto Show is the 2013 Ferrari Pininfarina Sergio Concept, a design exercise built to pay tribute to the to late Sergio Pininfarina, who passed away last year. The 2013 Pininfarina Sergio is a realistic concept that could easily be produced in limited series, It is only 1,140 m high, 1,94 m wide, 4,55 m long and weighs 1280 kg. It offers real sports performance, with acceleration from 0-100 km/h estimated at below 3.4 seconds and a top speed of around 320 km. Click for YouTube.

By Gijsbert-Paul Berk

Ferrari Sergio Concept Car

The Ferrari Sergio Concept is a windscreen-less open two-seater sports car (Barchetta). Its mechanicals are those of a Ferrari 458 Spider. Thus the concept car has the same wheelbase and tracks and is also powered by a 4.5L V8, mated to a seven-speed sequential gear box.
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Bertone Museum Becomes a National Historic Site: In English and Italian

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By Roberto Motta
Photo courtesy of the Archives Bertone

On November 2 the Italian Ministry of Heritage and Culture announced that the “Bertone Collection” kept at the company headquarters in Caprie, is now part of the national artistic heritage of Italy. Unfortunately, the Collection is missing some jewelry, but the majority of the collection now is safe.
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Sidebar: The XNR and a Barn Hunter’s Dream Dashed

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The XNR in its full glory. The author long lusted after this car, figuring only he remembered it was pictured in ‘National Geographic’ magazine in Kuwait. Well, someone else obviously found it and restored it. Pebble Beach show program says the owner hails from Beirut. Photo by Hugues Vanhoolandt.

By Wallace Wyss
Color Photos by Hugues Vanhoolandt

Car hunters find their barn finds in various and sundry ways.

One of my ways is to commit to memory cars I see in magazines and file away mentally the last known location.
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