This World-Beating Sports Car Failed So Hard You’ve Probably Never Heard Of It

For many enthusiasts, the Chevrolet Corvette has been America’s quintessential sports car since its birth in 1953. One Chicago man apparently didn’t agree. John Guanci wanted an American sports car that slayed the European competition, but all American sports cars fell short. So, he set out to build his own sports car, a car that would outrun the Europeans, cement itself as America’s exotic, and be as reliable as a stone axe. Then whole thing then fell apart, but I actually have good news for one lucky person.

This 1982 Guanci SJJ-1 is just one of three of these cars in existence. It was the third and final prototype for what was supposed to be a Corvette killer. But as you’ll read below, that never happened. But you can own the car you see on your screen today. It’s for sale with all of 208 miles on its odometer. In other words, it’s a brand-new car from a company that died over 40 years ago.

It’s a shame Guanci Automobiles Inc. never got its chance to shine because this car wasn’t a shed build, but a legitimate effort to make a kind of performance car even General Motors wasn’t doing at the time.

Woodstock’s Only Automaker?

According to an article by Motor Trend in January 1982, Chicago-area businessman John Guanci used to be a proponent of Detroit’s soft and powerful land yachts, cars that looked majestic so long as they weren’t challenged with anything more than a slight bend. Then, the magazine said, he slipped into a friend’s Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. It was love at first sight and Guanci got the need for speed. First, Guanci got a T/A, but as his finances improved, so did his taste in cars. Later, Guanci would pick up a Lotus Elite and loved how it drove, but didn’t like its penchant for trying to leave him stranded.

Guanci developed a dream out of this. He wanted a car that looked and drove like a European exotic, but had the rock-hard dependability of an American car. So, he started looking around for what he could buy at home.

By now, it was early 1977 and the American sports car landscape didn’t seem to support this idea. General Motors toyed around with introducing Wankel engines in its cars, and one of its propositions was a Corvette-type of vehicle with a rotary placed in a mid-rear configuration.

Unfortunately, General Motors found out that rotaries left a lot of unfulfilled promises and killed its project. It was still a year before the Vector W2 concept car and just a little over a decade before Gerald Wiegert even put a car into production.

Ultimately, Guanci decided there was nothing in America that fit his criteria and European cars were just too unreliable, so he decided to make his own American sports car to beat the European exotics. But, as Motor Trend wrote, the 41-year-old Guanci was an industrialist with a successful manufacturing and fabrication business. He was not a car designer or an engineer.

But he did have some money and some pull, so he was able to get famed race car constructor Bob McKee in on the project. McKee then introduced Guanci to car designer Mike Williams and fiberglass specialist Steve Norcross. Soon after, Guanci Automobiles Inc. was founded in the small town of Woodstock, Illinois, today famous for being the home of movies like Groundhog Day. There doesn’t appear to be a trace of Guanci Automotive left today as a different building stands where Guanci Automotive once did:

Each of the men would take on roles doing what they knew best. McKee engineered the vehicle’s underpinnings while Williams penned an Italian Gran Turismo-like design to be sent to Norcross, who did the work in creating fiberglass molds to turn those drawings into something real.

American Roots, European Aspirations

Guanci directed the project to be as American as possible, and the team managed to fire off the first two prototypes in time for the 1979 Chicago Auto Show. As such, the SJJ-1 show cars used off-the-shelf components from General Motors, including the same 350 cubic inch L82 as used by the Corvette at the time. This V8 was mounted transversely in the middle of the vehicle and made 220 HP. Unfortunately, Guanci ran into trouble sourcing more of these engines and found out that he’d have to certify the engine for California. As a result, Guanci changed the engine from the V8 to the 3.8-liter turbocharged V6 from a Buick Riviera. This engine made just 185 HP, but it weighed 150 pounds lighter than the V8, bringing the SJJ-1 to about 3,050 pounds with a 45/55 weight distribution. Guanci even robbed the donor Buick of its THM 325 three-speed automatic but added a custom limited-slip differential.

McKee gave the Guanci SJJ-1 a 102-inch wheelbase with a tubular steel monocoque, a central stainless steel backbone structure, and a full roll cage. Dick Kleber further refined McKee’s work as the car nudged closer to production.

There have been rumors around the Internet about this car being based on a Pontiac Fiero or perhaps a DeTomaso Pantera. Those rumors are incorrect. This car was built largely from the ground up, only borrowing some components from GM. There also seems to be some confusion about the name, as I’ve seen it reported as “SSJ-1” for “Super Sports John Model 1.” However, all of the evidence I’ve seen, from the Motor Trend piece to an advertisement I found, only called the car the SJJ-1.

Even the suspension was as American as possible. Motor Trend notes that the SJJ-1’s suspension was fully independent and featured custom springs wrapped around Monroe adjustable shocks. The ride was carried with unequal-length, fully adjustable upper and lower A-arms using spherical rod ends with Teflon bushings. Motor Trend also notes that the vehicle had front uprights from the Corvette, but custom cast aluminum uprights in the rear plus a large 1-inch front sway bar. The magazine continued by saying that the SJJ-1 had brakes from the Corvette as well as 6,000 PSI braided stainless steel brake lines.

Capping off the build was an interior featuring leather-wrapped Recaro thrones.

Motor Trend got to test the third and final SJJ-1 prototype around the towns that dot the border of Illinois and Wisconsin. As a resident of this area, I can confidently say there isn’t much in the way of curves or hills out here. Yet, Motor Trend apparently found enough twists to be impressed with the SJJ-1’s performance. Sure, the car took about 10.9 seconds to reach 60 mph, but apparently the car cornered level and was surprisingly comfortable for something of its caliber of handling performance. In the end, Motor Trend even said that this turbo V6 test car drove better than the previous V8. If the prototype was that good, the production car had to be even better.

Unfortunately, things looked a little rough even in 1982 when the Motor Trend issue was published. John Guanci said he already invested $600,000 ($2,006,156 today) in the cars, tooling, and facilities and the project was still a year behind schedule. But he figured things would be fine. Guanci wanted to make sure the car was right, even if it took too long and cost too much money. He wanted this to be a hit out of the park. And at a price of $63,500 ($212,318 today), the car had to be a hit. That was $45,000 ($150,461 today) more expensive than a base-model Corvette!

Guanci expected to have the first customer car on the road in the spring of 1982 and with several more by the end of the year. He figured that once things ramped up, his Woodstock factory could produce around a dozen cars a year by hand.

One Of Just Three

Sadly, Guanci was hit by two insurmountable problems. The first was that people weren’t exactly lining up to buy absurdly expensive cars from a startup company in the early 1980s. Keep in mind that Guanci had these cars developed during a time of economic uncertainty and double-digit interest rates. Then, one of Guanci’s investors suddenly passed away. Ultimately, Guanci Automotive fizzled out after producing just the three prototypes. Allegedly, the one SJJ-1 that sold went for $49,000 ($163,836 today), so it didn’t even go for what Guanci wanted to sell them for.

Reportedly, the Guanci family held on to two of the prototypes while the third ended up with the company’s sole customer. The car we see here today, the third prototype, was one of the ones in the Guanci family collection. It’s said that in the 1990s, the family upgraded this car. The 3.8-liter turbo V6 was tossed out for the L47 Aurora V8. Its 250 HP and 260 lb-ft of torque should mean a faster car than even John imagined back in the late 1970s.

Somehow, despite all of this, Guanci never really put many miles on this car. The odometer reads just 208 miles and the vehicle’s immaculate condition seems to support that. According to the listing, the vehicle was recently restored to running condition by the Genius Garage engineering education charity program. Thus, if you purchase this car for $48,000 and drive it home from Bowling Green, Ohio, the money you spend will be going toward teaching the youth about automotive engineering.

That sounds like a pretty sweet deal, but perhaps nearly as cool would be owning just one of the three cars that were supposed to destroy the Europeans at their own game. Sadly, we’ll never know for sure if Guanci would have succeeded in his mission, but it sure looks like nothing else that came out of America back then.

(Images: Casey P on Facebook Marketplace, unless otherwise noted.)