Founded in the 1960s, Fiberfab became known for wild, low-volume kit cars that borrowed heavily from the exotic-car dream world while keeping the mechanical bits cheap, familiar, and mostly Volkswagen-shaped. The Aztec 7 was one of its most outrageous efforts, clearly inspired by the wedge-shaped Alfa Romeo Carabo concept and the late-ā60s obsession with gullwing […]
The Avanti name was first used by Studebaker to build cars on the Lark platform using mostly Studebaker parts and people from 1962 through 1963. However, the fiberglass Raymond Loewy-designed bodies appeared again in 1965, and the Avanti 2 assembly went through five different ownership arrangements before it ended in 2006. Those later cars were […]
We’ve featured a muppet handful of LaDawri fiberglass things over the years, including a Del Mar, a Sebring, and a Nackardbaker somethingorother…but we’ve never featured a Conquest before. La Dawri Coachcraft was a fiberglass kit-car manufacturer that started in British Columbia in the 1950s, but soon moved to Southern California (hot bed of the hot […]
The G6 (Group of Six) was the unofficial name for the collection of head interior ministers for the biggest players in the European Union, which included Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Spain, and the UK (before Brexit). This super powerful group of shadowy big state puppet masters met in the steam filled saunas of private resorts […]
Dick Dean was a custom car builder who managed George Barris’ famous Kustom City garage for a few years, and is credited for building (or helping build) TV cars like the Munster Koach, Dragula, the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, the Monkeemobile, Death Race 2000 cars, and the Ghostbusters ECTO-1. In the late 1960s Dean launched his own line of custom dune buggies built on shortened Beetle pans, including the Shalako and Shala-Vette. This work eventually lead to Dean building the Bricklin SV1 with Malcom Bricklin, but I still think his best design is the strangely appealing (not appalling) Shala-Vette. Find this 1969 Shala-Vette offered for $13,000 in Madison, WI (along with a number of other classics being offered by the seller including a ’59 Morris, ’70 Siata Spring, ’69 DAF 55, and others).
This next car comes as a tip from David who writes: Look, run it, don’t run I’m aces either way. But just tell me that’s not actually the air cleaner mounted on what should be the top of the quarter panel. As the proud owner of a ’90 C4 Corvette I’m tempted to get this just to confuse everyone. Yes David, that is a rare optional headrest/aircleaner attached to a single piece Vettish fiberglass body sitting on a Beetle chassis. Wow, that was harder to write than I expected. Find this 1973 Volkswagen Beetle Custom Corvette offered for $1234 in Apopka, FL via fiberbook glassplace.
Fairthorpe Cars out of Buckinghamshire England started making cars in 1954 using motorcycle engines mounted on steel backbones with fiberglass body panels. By the 1970s the company was almost extinct, but not before they released the TX Tripper (possibly through a side venture called Technical Exponents run by the son of the founder), which put dune buggy-ish styling on a Triumph GT6 chassis. It is a hand-built car produced in handfuls and now it is offered for pennies. Find this 1974 Fairthorpe TX Tripper offered for $4,800 in Austin, TX via craigslist.
If you see this next car and get a primordial tingling of deja vu…you might be right, because we’ve featured this car before…and not just another Falcon Caribbean kit car, but this exact Falcon Caribbean was featured in a “what am I?” post in 2014. It is, unfortunately, still in the same semi-finished state as before and the Ford Anglia chassis (probably not the Austin 7 as specified by the seller) is not entirely sorted under the fiberglass body. Get it for cheap, store it, don’t actually do anything to it, and then sell for the same price a few years later. Sounds like a recipe for success. Find this 1959 Falcon Caribbean offered for $7800 via facebag monsterbook.
I’ve never owned one, but have had the opportunity to go for a ride and drive a Lotus Caterham Seven (this was a late model kit car with a 300 horsepower turbo 4-cylinder modern engine) and it was exhilarating to say the least. No, it was terrifying, as a passenger or as a driver. But that was a kit car, and I prefer my cars to come with some history, some patina, some sweat equity needed, like this 1971 Lotus Seven S4 offered for $10,500 in Southeastern Arizona via craigslist.
When somebody uses the term Mayan Magnum, I instantly picture a tall shirtless man with a thick mustache and a fancy headdress who runs security at a private ziggurat and moonlights on the side as a PI when he is not picking up on some random ladies. But he would need a car. Something not as flashy as a Ferrari 308, but perhaps a curious Corvair powered kit-car with a fiberglass body and gull-wing doors. Yes. Like this. Find this 1962 Mayan Magnum offered for $25,000 in Medford, OR via craigslist. Tip from Rock On!