Needs Some Work: 1980 Manta Mirage
Every car that meets the necessary prerequisites to be featured on Daily Turismo is an interesting car…but sometimes they are cars that I don’t want to own. This next car fits into that category of the rare stuff that could find a home in my garage…and trust me, my garage is a strange place. It current extends into the public street and involves several Buick station wagons that I didn’t seek, but they came to me — anyway, if I were to add to my collection of vintage fun cars, something with a Chevy 350 V8 and headers and styling like this would be top of the list. Find this 1980 Manta Mirage offered for $12000 in Ventura, CA via craigslist. Tip from Rock On!
From the seller:
1980 Manta Montage
condition: good
cylinders: 8 cylinders
drive: rwd
fuel: gas
odometer: 1
odometer rolled over
paint color: blue
title status: missing
transmission: manual
type: other
Manta Montage For Sale
This is the car Jim Crosby built. There is a 2 part article in Kit Car magazine from the early 1980’s.
The car has genuine Champ 500 bolt on wheels. These wheels were originally designed for the Eagle Indy Car. Ray Lipper supplied this set to Jim Crosby for the Manta kit car. It is reportedly one of the first set of bolt-on, non center lock Champ 500 wheels made.
It has a brand new set of Hoosier Street / Auto Cross radial tires.
Jim had the transaxle rebuilt with limited slip differential and gearing more in tuned with a V-8 engine.
The car comes with a Manta factory radiator, shift linkage, clutch, flywheel, starter motor, and engine adapter plate.
The car is built on a full tube frame.
It has a Bundle of Snakes exhaust like a GT-40.
The suspension is a combination of Corvette and custom-fabricated parts and uses Corvette brakes.
The Manta has Porsche 911 rack and pinion steering and genuine Koni coil over shocks; not cheap imitations.
The windshield is in excellent condition: no chips or cracks.
We are offering this car for $12,000 or best reasonable offer.
Phone calls only. No text messages please.
all the oldies like me are immediately in love with this thing, just the basket of snakes is worth the price of admission. Luckily the ad is no longer active so I
and my garage are safe.
Looks like you could get this thing roadworthy in a couple of weekends and have yourself a sweet ride.
Gee that went fast.
I wonder what it sounds like, I’ve never heard a 180 degree bundle of snakes exhaust on a Chevy.
The Jim Crosby? Um. OK, who’s Jim Crosby?
Maybe the guy that helped build Goldenrod?
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/hrdp-0711-goldenrod/
Or that guy who was driving Gremlins in the Daytona 6hour?
Where is Stan (the I owned two of these Stan)?
Maybe he knows
The car featured above is not a Mirage. It’s a Montage. And it even has the plexi back window (which often blows out at speed, needs venting).
I owned one Montage, and one Mirage. My Montage was an E-vehicle built in the 1980s, and the Mirage was a daily driver of an Indy car designer (Ken Wallis) with an LT-1, IIRC.
Fun cars.
-Stan (…the *other* Stan…)
PS No idea who Jim Crosby is. Might be Jim/Bob Crosby Brothers, endurance drivers back in 1980 for AMC.
PPS The Montage (above) is based on the McLaren M6-GT, Bruce McLaren’s original road car (only one real one was ever built, Bruce died at Goodwood driving a different car). I consider the M6-GT one of the most beautiful cars ever built.
Legend has it that the LoVette brothers (Manta) took the measurements/molds off of Bruce’s original M6-GT when Denny Hulme had it shipped back to New Zealand after Bruce’s death:
http://mathewscollection.com/gallery/1969-mclaren-m6-gt/
PPPS (lots of PPs here…)
The Jim Crosby mentioned in the ad apparently worked for the LoVette brothers at Manta. This was apparently a car he personally built.
I never met the LoVettes, or Jim.