Exceptional motorcars from around the world
At this moment, here You can find a German car from the
'20s (only one survivor kwown), a Jaguar-based one-off,
the Montelier
from the States, the sole Egyptian sportscar,
a wild Colani, an Etceterini,
an odd Rolls and the first Holland
post-war sportscar.
There were/are two Egyptian brands I know of:
Ramses, currently the Fiat assembly plant and Phoenix
Raymond Flowers, a British businessman was the brainchild of the (in)famous
Frisky three-wheeler in the UK.
Before that, he set up a workshop, Phoenix Industries in
Cairo, Egypt. In 1955 Autocar featured a picture of a Phoenix sportscar.
A press release in 1956 said Phoenix was the name of BMC (Morris and Austin)
cars assembled in Alexandria as part of the Flowers empire.
The accompanying illustration to this piece shows the 2SR6 racer.
Credit belongs to Road&Track magazine.
The Phoenix news bulletin said that the car was the personal property
of Raymond Flowers. It was designed in England and construced in Egypt.
The power unit, a four-cylinder 1960 cc, 140 bhp unit was supplied from
England.
In 1956 at the midst of the Suel Canal crisis the car appeared at the Reims 12
Hours, but didn't start. It may've been for political reasons.
Soon Flowers had to leave Egypt so he returned to UK and created the
Frisky minicar which was styled
by Michelotti.
Montelier
Bill Hoskins submitted this picture on
this car and Dave Sisson, as usual :-), gathered together information.
The car was built by the Montelier family from scratch. It has a 6-cylinder
Jaguar engine and the suspension was also taken from a Jaguar. The Monteliers
are known as very high quality restorers.
Photographed somewhere in the States by Dave Sisson in 1980 this is a Rolls-
Royce Phantom III Labourdette Aerodynamic Open Coupé. Either this
car repainted or a very similar model was recently auctioned by the Blackhwack
Collection.
Szabo & Wechselmann was a coachbuilder in Berlin after the first World
War. Their elegant bodies soon guaranteed enough customers. So they
made a deal with NAG, a German carmaker of those times to supply
several specially-modified chassises for them.
In 1921 the first Szawe appeared. The body was designed by Ernst
Neumann-Neander, respected German flyer and later constructor of a wild
three-wheeler.
Until 1924 several cars were made on NAG bases. Szawe was the German Rolls-
Royce before Horch and Maybach became big guns.
In 1924 the project folded. Only one car known so survive and it's now
exhibited at the Danish Museum of Technology.
|
Maurice Gatsonides, inventor of the speed camera and Holland's best rally
driver introduced the Gatso in 1948.
It's body was made from Duralium. Beside the strange shape the three
front headlights were also a bit odd. The car was powered by a 120 bhp
3.9-litre sv Mercury V8 engine. Only a few were made until 1950.
|
Luigi Colani, the eccentric American car designer created this Bugatti-like
limousine in the '70s
Go back to the KTUD main page!
Thanks for visiting this page. Please send me Your
comments.
Copyright September, 1996.
Paul Negyesi npaul@hu.inter.net
Disclaimer: These information are destined to enjoy the history
of the cars not to grab pictures from here and feature elsewhere.
The same goes for the details. Copyright isn't a meaningful word any more,
but be good and don't let me discover Your page featuring info or picture.
taken from the KTUD Archive.