You know what’s an endlessly amusing category of car that’s somehow, improbably, still around? Neoclassic cars. I think the term originated with Virgil Exner’s attempts to revive the Stutz and Duesenberg marques in the 1960s, and then popularized with the Excalibur soon afterwards. Neoclassical cars are, essentially, modern cars (well, modern for whatever era they were built) but re-bodied to look like dramatic cars from the 1920s and 1930s. Generally, they tend to go for long and low and big, swooping fenders and side pipes and lots of chrome and jewelry and are wildly showy things. Generally, if you’re the sort of person who is willing to wear a gold chain that would be substantial enough to secure a schooner to the dock, then maybe a neoclassic car is for you.
The thing about most neoclassic cars is that they tend to be built by small, low-volume carmakers who don’t have the ability to produce entirely new bodies. As a result, most neoclassic cars, as transformed as they are, still maintain some hints of what their original donor cars were. It’s kind of fun to see if you can spot these details, which is what this little quiz is all about!
I have 14 neoclassic cars listed below: see if you can tell, just by looking, no Googling now, what the original donor cars were! Stick your answers in the comments, and then, only after that, you can click the answers link below.
Oh, and don’t be fooled by the VW Beetle turn inidicators; a surprising number of these cars use them, yet only one is based on a VW Beetle body (and not the drivetrain; how did they buy new just-bodies from VW?). This’ll be fun, I promise! Off you go!
Some were easy, some were pretty tricky, right? Okay, put your guesses in the comments, then come back here and see how you did! There’s no prize, just like so much of life, but I’ll respect that you did it.
(thanks to The Bishop for a crapload of research and image hunting!)
The Clenet used an MG Midget body, on a custom frame. I visited their factory in California in the mid eighties, and saw the cars is different stages of assembly. There was no mistaking the shape of the MG Midget (or Austin Healy Sprite) “square body”