The cars of the 1970s were just as fascinating as the decade itself. Both size and power took hits while style became polarizing in the name of safety. Many felt the cars of the so-called Malaise Era were a low point in automotive history, but there was a ridiculous bright spot. Stutz was back, sort of, and it took some of the era’s polarizing hoopties and made them into something fun.
I’ve been a bit obsessed with the 1970s lately. Admittedly, many of the cars I’ve written about were built nearly two decades before I was born. It’s been a long time since then, but the cars of the era still leave a bad taste in the mouths of our older readers. I love finding value in even the most unloved cars and there’s a lot to love from the 1970s that perhaps many of us have either forgotten or pushed out of our minds.
General Motors was one of the brands that struggled its way through the trying times of the 1970s. We’re talking about cars that rusted on the showroom floor and 350 cubic inch V8s that made 125 HP. To be fair to the General, it wasn’t the only one who struggled. Everyone had a hard time in the 1970s, even the European brands that the American brands drooled over trying to beat back then.
If the controversial style of the times wasn’t for you, there was a weird antidote with the Neoclassic (above), a new car that replicated — sometimes poorly — the looks of the 1920s and the 1930s. It wasn’t that new of a thing, but it really took off, and Stutz came back from the dead to convert GM products into stuff that’s cooler.
Amazingly, we’ve mentioned Stutz a lot over the life of the Autopian and even at the old site, but we haven’t really written about Stutz, which is a shame.
Stutz is on the list of once prestigious automakers that died long ago, only to be forced back into existence kicking and screaming. Packard is another name that keeps on getting revived, yet never long enough for anyone to remember if they even got a chance to buy a single example. Even Studebaker keeps popping up in the news from time to time and the Silver Knight Group swears you’re going to see a new Stude’ next year.
Stutz refuses to die, too. Investor Warren Liu has owned the brand since 1982 and last promised a revival in 2016. That hasn’t happened yet, so the baroque cars on your screen right now are some of the newest Stutz-branded cars you can buy.
Why Stutz Is Famous
As RM Sotheby’s writes, Harry Stutz was one of those mechanical geniuses of the late 1890s. He grew up fixing agricultural equipment on his family farm and later opened up his own machine shop. Back when Stutz was a 21 or 22-year-old he used his mechanical experience to take retired farm equipment and cobbled them together, creating his first car, the Old Hickory. This car was built in 1897 or 1898, right around the time when so many other dreamers put together their own bicycles, motorcycles, and cars. Despite its humble origins, the Old Hickory had features we take for granted today like a reverse gear.
Cars had long been Stutz’s dream, and he left his life in Ohio in search of an auto mecca. By 1903, Stutz found himself in Indianapolis, which was a hotspot of automotive activity back then. Jumping from employer to employer was common for Stutz and he bounced from the likes of the G&J Tire Company and the Schebler Carburetor Company, never getting to design cars like he really wanted to.
His persistence would pay off in 1906 when he was hired by the American Motor Car Company (not that American Motors), where Stutz flexed his design muscles to create a 30 to 40-horsepower touring car. A year later, Stutz would take his updated resume to Marion Motors and scored a role as the company’s chief engineer. At Marion, Stutz was a racecar driver, but he also managed to design a rear axle-mounted transaxle. In 1910, Stutz changed his employer again, but this time he – with help from financier Henry Campbell – decided to open up a shop of his own, the Stutz Auto Parts Company, to produce the transaxle.
Stutz would finally get his chance to design cars again in 1911 when he built a car for the men most famous for paving the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with bricks. That car went on to place 11th out of 22 during the inaugural Indianapolis 500. Campbell and Stutz joined forces again, opening the Ideal Motor Car Company. Finally, Stutz’s dream came true.
People wanted the racecar so much that Stutz put a version of it into production, creating the iconic Bearcat. The American Heritage Museum notes just how awesome the Bearcat was:
Duplicate cars were for sale with a 50 horsepower (hp) Wisconsin engine and a right hand drive steering wheel. The car was offered in Roadster, Tonneau, and Touring models each priced at $2000.
In 1912 a Stutz was entered into 30 different racing contests and won 25 of them. In the 5 years following 1912, production went from 266 to 2,207 cars. This increase was because of the brands successful racing team.
The Bearcat is the most memorable model built by Stutz. The name lasted from 1914 through 1934. The Bearcat was the car used in Erwin “Cannon Ball” Baker’s record setting coast-to-coast drive, inspiration for the later Cannonball Run outlaw race and movies. Baker drove his Bearcat from California to New York in eleven days, seven hours, and fifteen minutes.
For further context, the Bearcat had a top speed of 72 mph, which was blisteringly quick back then, especially when you remember that roads were rudimentary if existent at all back then. Stutz became such a famed early sports car brand that it was the top competition for Mercer. Reportedly, even silly car enthusiast taunts were a thing in the 1910s as Mercer owners said “You must be nuts to drive a Stutz,” while Stutz owners would retort “Nothing’s worser than driving a Mercer.” That sounds like some of the fake history Jason Torchinsky would write!
Stutz enjoyed a nice place in the market. His cars were expensive, but he had enough demand to make a couple of thousand cars a year while raking in an impressive $400,000 in profit. Still, Stutz wanted to expand and he found New York stockbroker Alan A. Ryan, who invested in 1916. Ryan would gain control of the company, reducing Stutz to the role of President.
Stutz continued to invent, including a four-cylinder engine with four valves per cylinder that made 80 HP. Sadly, Stutz reportedly didn’t like how Ryan was more concerned with money than making cars, so he left his own company in 1919, launching the H.C.S. Motor Company in the wake. Stutz would continue to make sporty cars but also branched out into taxis, fire engines, and even aviation engines before his death in 1930.
Stutz began faltering without its founder. The company was taken over by Bethlehem Steel magnate Charles M. Schwab in 1922. As the book The Splendid Stutz writes, via the Stutz Club, here’s how it all fell apart:
To revive the marque, they brought in an experienced automotive executive and engineer, Frederick E. Moskovics, inaugurating the third era. Moskovics sparked a radical redesign of the car in 1926 by featuring a powerful eight-cylinder engine with an overhead camshaft, mounted in a low-slung chassis that could accommodate stylish bodies. For a while, Stutz continued to be active in competition, winning the Stevens Trophy for reliability in 1927 and receiving the AAA designation as America’s fastest stock car. In 1931, Stutz reached the pinnacle of engineering with its dual camshaft 32-valve engine but, as a high-priced, low-production car, was unable to survive the Depression.
The last Stutz was manufactured in 1934 after a total of only 35,000 cars were produced in the company’s 25-year history. As a final tribute, all Stutzes manufactured during the Classic era (1925-1948) are officially recognized as Full Classics as defined by the Classic Car Club of America.
The World’s Most Expensive Car, Sort Of
Stutz sputtered out at the end of the 1930s, finally putting up the white flag in 1939. Then it stayed dead for nearly 30 years. That was until Virgil Exner, known for such greats as Chrysler’s “Forward Look” design philosophy and the Studebaker Starlight, got an idea.
The year was 1968 and America was going through the early years of Neoclassic car designs spearheaded by the likes of the Excalibur. Back in 1961, Esquire magazine commissioned Exner to imagine what the cars of Duesenberg, Mercer (below), Packard, and Stutz would look like in 1963 had those brands not died. At first, Exner was supposed to be the designer for an actual Duesenberg revival (also below), but that project fizzled out before it could get off of the ground.
New York banker James O’Donnell, who previously worked at 3M and American Machine and Foundry, was supposed to back the Duesenberg project. After it flopped, he never wanted to give up the dream of making Exner’s Esquire designs real. He partnered up with Exner again and went to work. O’Donnell did some research and found out that ultra-luxury cars were selling well. He also visited Exner’s studio where he, in his own words, fell in love with a car that Exner said had a “phallic” look.
Exner felt if they were going to make that car a reality, they needed to base it on something with a long hood. He decided going to GM was going to be the best bet for that and the two landed at the desk of John Z. DeLorean at Pontiac. DeLorean was willing to hand the pair the Pontiac Grand Prix for their project. In O’Donnell’s own recollection of the events, it seemed DeLorean wasn’t threatened by the Stutz revival, saying he’d sell a million Pontiacs while Stutz was busy making just the prototype of its car.
In case you had any doubt of O’Donnell’s intentions, the Tampa Bay Times wrote that his goal for the new Stutz was to make a car “for the discriminating and very wealthy only.” A Pontiac Grand Prix for the fabulously wealthy, that is. How wealthy? I’m glad you asked.
The Stutz Motor Car of America was formed in 1968 and those Pontiacs were sent off to Carrozzeria Padane outside of Turin in Italy to be coachbuilt into the neo-Stutz cars. Over in Italy, Hagerty writes, the Pontiacs had their metal trim covered in 18K gold plating. O’Donnell said everything from the steering wheels to the cigarette lighters plated in gold. He claimed even the engine’s oil dipstick was plated in 18K gold, because why not. If that wasn’t enough gold, buyers also got gold-plated ignition sticks.
The early cars also got Australian lamb’s wool on the floor and ceiling, English leather seats, burled walnut trim, and a Learjet radio. Later, O’Donnell expanded the absurdity. The cars would get mink carpeting, thrones, optional armor plating, and even optional machine guns.
If none of this was crazy enough for you, I think you should know that in 1970, Stutz arrived at the New York Waldorf Astoria Hotel with the Stutz Blackhawk, which was marketed as the most expensive car in the world. Its base price was $26,500 ($221,298 today), which was about the average price of a new home in America at the time.
We’re not entirely sure if the Stutz was the absolute most expensive car in the world. Keep in mind that a 1975 Rolls-Royce Camargue was £29,250. The Ferrari F40, which did come later but was still in the Neo-Stutz production run, was $399,150 ($1,133,069 today) when new. For sure, the Stutz-ified Pontiac Grand Prix was certainly among the most expensive cars of its day.
Neo-Stutz also wanted to make sure prices stayed in the stratosphere. By the mid-1980s, the Blackhawk reached $115,000 while Stutz was willing to sell you a limo for $285,000. Keep in mind that all of these cars were based on comparatively plebian GM products.
Completed Blackhawks made their way to the only dealer for the revived Stutz, Jules Meyers Pontiac in Los Angeles, where Stutz hoped to attract celebrity buyers. The second prototype Blackhawk was paraded around Los Angeles, catching the attention of none other than Elvis Presley. Elvis loved it so much that he demanded to buy the prototype on the spot even though it was actually supposed to go to Frank Sinatra. Elvis sweetened the deal by willing to be in promotions for the car, so it was snatched out of Sinatra’s clutches.
This strategy worked. The revived Stutz sold to such famous names as Evel Knievel, Barry White, Sammy Davis Jr., and Lucille Ball. Meanwhile, the cars snaked their way into television and movies, appearing as symbols of wealth.
Stutz stayed married to GM, too. The Blackhawk coupes of the 1970s were built out of Pontiac Grand Prix while the models of the 1980s switched to the Bonneville. Stutz also started selling the Bearcat in 1976, which was initially just a Blackhawk with the roof chopped off. The Bearcat ended up being based on a lot of models, riding on the Pontiac Bonneville, Buick LeSabre, or Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale until the mid-1980s, when it switched to the Pontiac Firebird and Chevrolet Camaro.
Stutz also sold Buick, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile-based sedans as well as Cadillac DeVille-based limousines. Perhaps the craziest Stutz revivals — which is impressive because this whole thing was wacky — were the Chevrolet Suburban-based Stutz armored or convertible SUVs of the mid-1980s. You’re also probably wondering about firepower and I do have good news about that. The Stutz revivals usually came equipped with the larger engine options from their respective models, but they were still just as choked by emissions equipment as their base cars.
Making Cars Is Hard
The bigger problem was that, as Hagerty writes, the new Stutz concern quickly learned that its business model wasn’t sustainable. At first, the Stutz Motor Car of America company took completed GM vehicles, shipped them to Italy, had the vast majority of the vehicle cut out and thrown away, and then rebuilt. Then the cars were loaded onto planes and flown back to America. Even though Stutz was pricing these cars outrageously high, the company was still losing money on each one. How bad was it? Stutz lost $10,000 on each of the original 25 Blackhawks.
Stutz tried to stem the bleeding by switching coachbuilders and by dialing back Exner’s wild designs. Later Stutz examples wouldn’t have the distinctive split windshield and the coachbuilder would save substantially more componentry and structure from the donor cars than before.
Then, the rest of the world just changed around Stutz. The company lost its designer when Exner passed in 1973, its sole distributor closed in 1976, its promoter, Elvis, died in 1977, and then the 1980s rolled in, ushering in an age of futuristic technology and design. New cars that looked like cars from the 1920s suddenly became old hat.
Amazingly, Stutz managed to limp along until 1995 before finally running out of gas. Around 617 cars were built in total, and all of them are delightfully bonkers. Sadly, mostly everyone involved in neo-Stutz is gone now. James O’Donnell passed in 1997, two years after his company closed up business.
A casual look at the Stutz market suggests that while these cars may have been among royalty when they were new, they’re not anymore. Prices for the Stutz Blackhawk suggest you could get one for under $70,000. Heck, there’s one for sale right now for the princely sum of $29,900. What a long fall from grace. The later models seem to have a similar thing going on.
These cars have always looked weird and it’s a giggle when you see that yes, Stutz really went above and beyond to turn 1970s GM Malaise into something you were supposed to buy over a Rolls-Royce. The company may not have achieved its promise of making a Pontiac Grand Prix the most expensive car in the world, but I love the fact that Stutz tried. These cars may be out of place and out of time, but I hope people keep making them. They’re just the right amount of silly.
I cherish the innocence of car design ugliness from that era. It’s an honest, smiling, no BS type of ugly. It’s kitchy, gilded, atrocious, no excuses ugliness proudly presented by some bold&bald (baold ? boald ?) guy with a moustache.
Not some artsy-fantsy banglebuttness that would write phonebook-sized PR packs explaining why you should be entranced and how it’s revolutionary and beautiful and you don’t understand.
It’s also not the “tacticool” style ugliness infesting so much of the design of today’s trucks and SUVs. For what that’s worth.
Well, that one might be not so bad, given that it relies on mostly two things – the separation of top and bottom part of the car in two different colors, which visually makes an otherwise proportionally tall vehicle (tall in the sense of a lot of metal going verticaly, not in the sense of how tall the car is off the ground) look just a tad sleeker, plus wheels which look at least a bit toy-ish, which plays on the Tonka truck vibe most adult kids love.
It’s not too bad, if not abused.
I don’t know why but the grille reminds me of that scene in Up in Smoke where Chong steals the Rolls Royce grille off the neighbor’s car and bolts it onto his beat up Beatle.
My favorite of this genre car is the Zimmer Quicksilver. A close second is Excalibur (1st gen) with the super charged engine
To be clear, those two cars are not in the same category. The quicksilver was an up-cycled Fiero and the Excalibur was scratch built in a car factory, but I do like both of these cars and they are the only neo-classics I would consider.
In the 1970’s there was a neat “legal” trick you could do with an expensive car. If you needed a car for business, you could depreciate that business expense over three years. My father had a co-worker who did this. The co-worker was a travelling salesman (industrial products). He would buy a Rolls Royce as his company car. He would depreciate the cost of the car over 3 years. At the end of this period, he would sell the Rolls for a nice amount and do it all over again. Unfortunately, the IRS put a dollar amount limit on this practice in the ’80’s.
If anything I’m surprised they didn’t expand the limit in to the 80s.
It’s still a thing.
The deprecation time for a work vehicle is over a period of 10 years, and for regular cars/trucks the max depreciation is, IIRC, 65% of the initial value.
However for vehicles with a GVWR of 6500lbs or greater, it was 100% up to a couple years back – but that percentage has been dropping bit by bit every year.
This is why SuperDutys and large SUVs were being bought by everyone who was “self employed” – from Uber drivers to real estate agents – and the drop in percentage available for depreciation is among the reasons the demand for those are declining.
umm, if you fully depreciate something… then when the company sells it they have to report the entire sale amount as a taxable gain (since the basis is zero).
If you just pocket the money then that is tax fraud.
I as a teenager at the time and I have no knowledge of the finer points. I do remember a gentleman who was also a notary who restored ’60’s Mustangs. He would buy the car and notarize the title with the seller’s name, restore the car, sell it for $$$$, then put in the buyer’s name and date it then. Yes, highly illegal. Never reported the income. Kept the money in a safety deposit box. And died in the ’90’s without any arrests. This was common in the Good old Boy network in western North Carolina. Think moonshining, etc. Jr Johnson. My father once sold Jr a lot of plastic tubing to him at Holly Farms chicken in Wilkesboro NC. Couldn’t figure out what Holly Farms needed with plastic tubing. But, if you were still in the moonshine business it could replace all that copper tubing.
“I was a teenager at the time and I have no knowledge of the finer points.”
You would do well on a witness stand.
No worries. 49 years ago. I’m sure statute of limitations has that fixed. Now I’m that I’m deaf, all my answers would be “Huh?”
What is your point?
To make sure that anyone reading the thread understands that it is potentially illegal and keep some fine folk from going down the wrong path.
That’s why you give it to your kid afterwards (Who may or may not be a paid employee)
Then when they’re done destroying it – you put it behind the shed on cinder blocks.
Yes, there are many slightly less illegal things you could do.
I would insure it with my dog as policyholder, burn it, collect the insurance proceeds and deposit it in a bitcoin account.
So the neo-classic models would be accurately called Putzes, then?
This makes for a great thought experiment. What car would each editor use to create their own modern Stutz?
I don’t know if it could count since it went out production a year ago, but give me twelve months of leeway, and I think the only correct answer could be the Chrysler 300.
That’s a good choice.
Corvette?
Interesting.
I’d take one of the ones built on a Collonade Grand Prix with the 455. You can make those cars handle pretty well for their size and mass, if you want to, and of course the 455 can be warmed up significantly.
It is amazing that a company could be so poorly run that they would buy a car for around $3,000 retail, sell it for $26,500, and lose around $10,000 per car. That is some real good federal government thinking right there. Sarcasm
Well, nuance… That’s the company losing the money. Not whoever’s running it – that one probably transmutated that cotton paper to goods & services.
Being fascinated with the 70’s is fine… as long as one accepts that most things from that decade are better left dead.
What? You don’t like that it’s Stayin’ Alive?
Clearly Milletmatic vehemently hates the national 55mph speed limit, and I agree it was quite the ovvereach.
The 55mph speed limit was awful – but it was done for the right reasons which wasn’t about safety (as we were told) so much as it was about fuel efficiency.
Can’t argue that.
Arrrgghh! I can’t stand that song!
In fairness… I do miss the ‘73 Chevelle I learned to drive on. But ‘73 was the tail end of V-8s that were worth anything.
Sorry, couldn’t help it.
For the sake of clarity, the first car I was ever allowed to start was a 1975 Chrysler Cordoba with a 360. (Cloth interior, no Corinthian Leather)
Meh. Along with most things from most decades, to be honest. Hell, even disco has been rehabbed in my eyes since then. See username – in hindsight, at least most disco music was played and recorded in real time by human musicians, so at least it passes my own personal artistic Turing test.
I finally decided that this is the dividing line between music I like and music I don’t like: I prefer music that human beings can reproduce in real time in meatspace over music that cannot be reproduced in any similar way if the power goes out. That might mean anything from Beethoven to Led Zeppelin to Duke Ellington to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to Bill Monroe to Ravi Shankar – or even KC And The Sunshine Band or The Trammps.
I have recently realized the same thing. Music made with a real human drummer holding his or her own feel for the rhythm sounds so much better than one where you can feel the computerized metronome. There are obvious exceptions especially in the EDM space but give me Jeff Pocaro or Bernard Purdie on drums any day.
or Ravi Shankar’s daughter, Norah Jones.
Disco has yet to be rehabbed for me. Although… I didn’t like it the first time around… so it arguably would have to be “habilitated” first.
I’ll respectfully disagree with the “if the power goes out” bit. As a lover of synth pop and new wave from the start… and bands like Ladytron now… synthesizers are “good electronics.” I’d say drum machines weren’t… but Trent Reznor used them on Pretty Hate Machine… and that album is fantastic.
But… Rest in peace, Neil Peart.
The Studebaker that never dies its the Avanti model. it was ahead of it’s time in styling when new and kind of worked in the 80s/90s but a swoopy two door coupe these days would only appeal to the few remaining boomers that wanted one but could never afford one in the 60’s
If only it had been the Golden Hawk that pressed on the same way.
My first car was a 1960 Valiant, a well thought out design, but the exterior ugly as sin.
Whooda thunk there would be rich people who craved that style for decades after.
Some of Virgil Exner’s designs have stood the test of time well, IMO others not so much.
There’s a remarkably practical side to these cars. Any schmuck with dough can go buy a Rolls, but then you’re stuck paying the dealer rates for maintenance, repair and parts.
Or you can buy one of these and get it serviced at Big Dick’s Lube n Tune.
There is a reason no one advertised it runs like a Pontiac. Or other 70s GM HULK. Rolls sells because style, performance, and grace. Those Stutzs’ are for Nouvee Riche gold chains wearing bros.
TBH, a Rolls-Royce of that era had a General Motors Hydramatic transmission and a pushrod V8, aside from the Citroen-licensed hydropneumatic suspension system, they were reasonably robust when new.
Pretty sure Big Dick could have serviced a 70’s Rolls too if the parts were available. Unless RR used pentagon and slot headed “safety” bolts or some other such gatekeeping to keep Dick’s grubby plebian hands off.
Well, Big Dick would have had to pay attention to which way the lug nuts turned on each side of the Rolls – because they aren’t all the same…
“Note: Each wheel nut is marked with an arrow
indicating the direction of its removal. Nuts on left-hand wheels have left-hand threads. Nuts on right-hand wheels have right-hand threads.”
https://rrtechnical.info/sz/sz87/r.pdf
Poor Dick can’t read 🙁
“The bigger they are, the harder they’ll work
I got a soft spot for a good-looking jerk
I like ’em big and stupid
I like ’em big and real dumb“
Ah Julie Brown. I preferred her as a Blonde:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Wi3A3skb0
My fave blonde in that movie – who can still be found in her pink Corvette on Sunset:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpDau9z-67E
Srsly – Mercedes should do an in-depth investigatory on the Pink Corvettes of Angelyne…
https://www.instagram.com/officialangelyne/?hl=en
So like Chrysler?
They were a joke. I will speculate the celebs didn’t pay retail if at all. That marketing plan might work today.
I mean it kind of worked for Elon. I distinctly recall George Clooney rolling around in an early production Tesla Roadster providing all sorts of free advertising for that schmuck.
Clooney is a schmuck
Dean Martin had an early Blackhawk as well, wrapped it around a tree drunk driving in Beverly Hills, which was made more ironic by his “DRUNKY” vanity plates
Sorry back then you could tell a cop you wrecked because you had too much to drink and get out of a ticket and get a ride home. Now you end up broke and in prison. I’m not saying it was right but that’s the way it was. And yet the country was happier and better off until Jimmy C.
If anything, the publicity around it was probably beneficial to him, fit with the carefully crafted on-stage image he had built up over the years
“And yet the country was happier and better off until Jimmy C.”
Vietnam enters the chat, joined by OPEC Embargo and Watergate.
Ehhhhhhh…
I’d say the country was quite unhappy and not very well off when it elected Jimmy Carter, and even unhappier and worse off when it voted him out.
Sorry officer, I had too many Slippery Nipples down at the Hickory Hut
The Copper Marketing Association funded Mercer roadster was neat, the sideways disappearing headlights especially so. I always wondered why I have never seen them on another car. They would be pretty neat on a hot rod.
One thing always bugged me, though, why the Dutch flags?
Oh, to be a dude at the turn of the century! You could just walk your ass from the generational dirt farm in Ohio, all the way to booming metropolis of Indianapolis. Show up at the first auto place you see and ask for a job. No one asks if you’re qualified or sane. Then like three years later, you go to the big leagues, and even they don’t ask if you have any sort of educational background. Just be willing to pilot their race car, possibly to your death in whatever pile of dirt qualified as Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1905 and know 2/3rds of the alphabet. And boom, your Chief Designer now.
Brand new industry, no established rules or entrenched players, same way college dropouts or high school kids hit the big time in computers and software in the 1970s and 80s.
built his own stuff. not just walking his ass.
Dude bad take. You can go from the farm and get a nice paying job in a great field. Then design and drive race cars and your own design. Be one of the first to drive at Indy. Perspective my man. At the Autopian you must ask WWJD? What would Jay Do? (Leno)
They were hideous then and are hideous now!!
I saw perhaps a dozen of the earlier models (so Blackhawks, I guess) around L.A. in the seventies/early eighties. I looked one over pretty closely and couldn’t have told you what (or if any) existing car it was based on…every minor body detail I examined, expecting something familiar, was different on the Stutz. They just did not take any (obvious, at-least) shortcuts like all the other neo-classics. Most people’ reactions to them in the day of the 2nd-gen Seville was “Oh…wow…OK, that’s interesting”, a bit over the top but no one thought they were a joke, the fit and finish were just too good.
While working on an automotive TV show in Canada, our producer (age around 30), had a tuxedo black modern Stutz that looked much like the photo. As an educated young man, I thought he drove it as an ironic statement but no, he absolutely loved that car and thought it was peak automotive design.
Not wanting to judge his auto choice, we all played along and eventually we came to appreciate his interesting choice. I did get to ride in it once. Unsurprisingly, it rode like a boaty Pontiac.
Most people laughed at these back in the day. A car for Chester Tate from Soap or Herb Tarlek from WKRP in Cincinnati.
Or Bill “Blaze” Blazejowski in NIght Shift.
I picture this in the driveway of an 80’s stand up comedian in a movie where they become suddenly rich through an inheritance (with a catch).
Rodney Dangerfield?
Or Richard Pryor or maybe even Eddie Murphy in Trading Places. But this car would have been in-character for Rodney in multiple roles.
Yup, but NOT Judge Smails. Or Ty Webb.
This is the car Black Dynamite drives, so It’s ok to me. If you haven’t seen Black Dynamite, do yourself a favor and spend a cold evening watching.
“Your knowledge of scientific biological transmogrification is only outmatched by your zest for kung-fu treachery!”
Now I want some chili and donuts…
I’m really trying to find something attractive about those cars, but I just can’t. They look like caricatures of normal cars. Like something from a children’s movie or a carnival.
Well, the interior upgrades are undeniably nice, same deal as with Zimmer’s neoclassic Mustangs and Town Cars in the ’80s – the exterior was questionable, but I legitimately liked what they did inside
Well think about it. During the 70s~80s Pamela Anderson was supposed to be the hottest woman on the planet. Dyed hair, nip and tuck face, fake boobs, she was as much a caricature of a woman as the Pontiac was of a regular car. Funny thing is I liked the Stutz not a big Pamela Anderson fan. At least after the transformation.
Pamela Anderson was probably 2 years old at the start of the 80s…. Just sayin
Pam Anderson was a child for the entirety of the 1970s and for much of the 1980s, that’s kind of gross
Are you sure the top shot is Pontiac? The door handles and greenhouse scream Lincoln to me.
Stutz sacrificed GM B-bodies to make the sedans like the one in the topshot. That said, it does look like the coachbuilder used different door handles.
Per the article over 60% of the original car was tossed. Maybe just buy frame and chassis, shipping is less and you are paying less. That is why you need bean counters you just don’t let them have the final decision.
Yeah, it’s wild they shipped full cars to Italy just to discard the vast majority of them. The entire build process was wasteful from top to bottom. Does this mean there was an Italian junkyard somewhere with hundreds of GM body panels and such?
Very likely, GM wouldn’t sell just the chassis. Ford did the same thing in the ’80s with Zimmers and those Cougar-based Tiffany coupes, no matter the volume, the converters had to buy finished cars at retail from dealers.
I wish someone was making electric skateboards for coachbuilders to build cars on. We could see some wild cars for rich people on top of them.
Edit: Fixed the topshot error, carry on, friends! 🙂
I’m going to have to quote Rick James on this one – Cocaine is a hell of a drug
Hopefully, the cocaine (visor) mirrors were illuminated and also trimmed in gold.
Sorry that wasn’t Rick James but Dave Chappelle in a skit playing Rick James. To follow up I’m not a Rock Star but I play one on TV.
Look again. That WAS Rick James:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ry2XlLKctiI
(quote is at 4m:38s)