Targa (pronounced ta-gah)
(1)
A model name trade-marked by Porsche AG in 1966.
(2)
In casual use, a generic description of cars with a removable roof panel
between the windscreen and a truncated roof structure ahead of the rear window.
1966
(in the context of the Porsche): From the Targa Florio race in Sicily, first run
in 1906 and last staged in its classic form in 1973. In many European languages, targa (or derivatives)
existed and most were related to the Proto-Germanic targǭ (edge), from the
primitive Indo-European dorg- (edge,
seam), from the Old Norse targa (small
round shield) and the Old
High German zarga (edge, rim). The modern Italian targa (plate, shingle; name-plate; number plate or license plate; plaque;
signboard; target (derived from the rounded oval or rectangle shield used in
medieval times)) was ultimately from the Frankish targa (shield). In the Old
English targa (a light shield) was also
from the Proto-Germanic targǭ and was cognate with the Old Norse targa and the Old High German zarga (source of the German Zarge); it was the source of the Modern
English target. The Proto-Germanic targǭ dates
from the twelfth century and “target” in the sense of “round object to be aimed at in
shooting” emerged in the mid eighteenth century and was used originally in
archery. Targa is a noun; the noun
plural is targas.
1974
Leyland P76 Targa Florio in Omega Navy, Aspen Green & Nutmeg (without the side graphics). Like all P76s, the Targa Florio effortlessly could fit a a 44 (imperial) gallon (53 US gallon; 205 litre) in its trunk (boot) and while it's unlikely many buyers took advantage of this, it was an indication of the impressive capacity. The reputed ability to handle fours sets of golf clubs was probably more of a selling point but unfortunately, as the P76's rapid demise might suggest, there just weren't that many golfers.
Although,
especially when fitted with the 4.4 litre (269 cubic inch) V8, it was in many
ways at least as good as the competition, the Australian designed and built
Leyland P76 is remembered as the Antipodean Edsel: a total failure. It was doomed by poor build quality,
indifferent dealer support and the misfortune of being a big (in local terms)
car introduced just before the first oil shock hit and the world economy sunk
into the severe recession which marked the end of the long, post war boom. It vanished in 1975, taking with it Leyland
Australia's manufacturing capacity but did have one quixotic moment of glory, setting the fastest
time on Special Stage 8 of the 1974 London–Sahara–Munich World Cup Rally held on the historic Targa Florio course in Palermo, Sicily (in the rally, the P76 finished a creditable 13th). The big V8
machine out-paced the field by several minutes and to mark the rare
success, Leyland Australia built 488 "Targa Florio" versions. Available in Omega Navy, Aspen Green or
Nutmeg (a shade of brown which seemed to stalk the 1970s), the special build
was mechanically identical to other V8 P76 Supers with automatic transmission but did include a sports steering
wheel and aluminium road wheels, both intended for the abortive Force 7, a
two-door version which was ungainly but did offer the functionality of a
hatchback. In a typical example of Leyland Australia's (and that of British Leyland generally) ineptitude, the Force 7 was being developed just as the other local
manufacturers were in about to drop their larger two-doors, demand having dwindled after a brief vogue. Only 10 of the 60-odd prototype Force 7V coupés survived the crusher but even had the range survived beyond 1974, success would have been improbable although the company should be commended for having intended to name the luxury version the Tour de Force (from the French and translated literally as "feat of strength"), the irony charming although En dépit de tout (In spite of everything) might better have capture the moment.
Except for
those which (usually) stick to numbers or alpha-numeric strings (Mercedes-Benz
the classic example), coming up with a name for a car can be a tricky business,
especially if someone objects. In 1972,
Ford of England was taken to court by Granada Television after choosing to call
their new car a “Granada” though the judge gave the argument short shrift,
pointing out (1) it was unlikely anyone would confuse a car with a TV channel
and (2) neither the city nor the province of Granada in Spain’s Andalusia
region had in 1956 complained when the name was adopted for the channel. The suit was thrown out and the Ford Granada
went on to such success the parent company in the US also used the name.
Spot the difference. 1966 Ford Mustang Fastback (left) and 1966 Ford T-5 Fastback (right).
In Cologne,
Ford’s German outpost in 1964 had less success with names when trying to sell the Mustang
in the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990)) because Krupp AG held (until December 31 1978) exclusive rights to the name
which it used on a range of heavy trucks, some of which were built as fire
engines. A truck couldn't be confused with a Mustang although there might have been some snobby types among the French who claimed to see some resemblance. That would
have been in the tradition of Ettore Bugatti's (1881–1947) observation in 1928 the
powerful, sturdy, eponymous machines of W. O. Bentley (1888–1971) were the “world’s fastest
trucks” and it was a comparison between the brutishness of those 6½ litre
(actually a 6.6 (403 cubic inch) straight-six monsters with the elegant
delicacy of his 2.3 litre (138 cubic inch) straight-eights which stirred his
thoughts. The gulf in 1967 between a Mustang
and something like the (conceptually, vaguely similar) Renault Caravelle
(1958-1968, which never grew beyond 1.1 litres (68 cubic inch)) was perhaps not
so wide but would, in some French imaginations, been vivid. Ford’s
legal advice apparently was that under FRG trademark law, Kreidler AG held the
rights to use the “Mustang” name for “two-wheeled vehicles” (ie motor-cycles)
while Krupp AG enjoyed the same for “four-wheeled vehicles”, the act making no
distinction between passenger cars and heavy trucks. From his tomb, W.O. Bentley may have felt
vindicated.
Understandably,
Ford’s legal advice was to settle rather than sue so negotiations began with Ford making clear to Krupp and Kreidler it wasn't seeking exclusivity of use in the FRG and was happy for Mustang trucks and motor-cycles to continue in production. The two German concerns responded with an offer to “share” their rights for a one-off payment of US$10,000 (in 1965, on the US West Coast, the list price for a Porsche 911 was around US$6,500) which Ford declined. Given trucks are sold on the basis of factors like price, functionality and cost of operation rather than an abstraction like the
name, why the Krupp board didn't make an effort to take advantage of what would have been good (and free) publicity seems not to be publicly available but negotiations were at that point sundered and until 1979 Mustangs in the FRG were sold as the “T-5” or “T5”. Almost identical to the US version but for
the badges and a few pieces of “localization”, the re-designated Mustang was in the 1960s one of the most popular US cars sold in Europe, aided by the
then attractive US$-Deutsche Mark exchange rate and its availability in
military PX (Post Exchange) stores, service personnel able to buy at a discount
and subsequently have the car shipped back to the US at no cost; the
system was retained (of the 4,000-odd Mustangs sold outside North America in
2012, nearly one in four was through military channels).
The badges: As they appeared on the early (1964-1966) Mustangs in most of the world (left), the T-5 badge used on early Mustangs sold in Germany (centre) and the (non-hyphenated) T5 used in Germany between 1967 and 1979 when the last was sold.
Ford
also had difficulties with the FRG registration authorities. When first made available in 1964, the T-5
was actually a standard (US-specification) Mustang with the required parts in a “T-5
Kit”, supplied in boxes in the trunk (boot) and ready to be installed by the dealer. That approach was in the US used for a number
of purposes (notably high performance parts such as multiple carburetors and
the requisite manifold) but the German authorities weren’t amused and insisted
all this had to be done on a production-line, explaining why all but the earliest
T-5s were produced in batches. Visually, the
changes which distinguished a T-5 from a Mustang were slight and included (1)
wheel covers with a plain black centre. (2) the word “Mustang” being removed
from horn ring & gas (petrol) cap, metric graduations on certain instruments (such as odometers & speedometers which measured kilometres rather than miles) and (3) a “T-5” badge replacing the “Mustang”
script on the flanks. Other than these
cosmetic items, mechanical changes were limited to suspension settings
(including adding the shock-tower cross-brace fitted to the Shelby GT350s) better to handle continental roads and the fitting of European-specification lighting. Curiously, although Ford obviously didn’t
make much effort when coming up with the “T-5” name (it was the project code during the Mustang's development in Detroit), it did create a “T-5”
badge (part number C5ZZ-6325622A) to replace the “Mustang” script on the front
fenders and it was thought necessary later to do a re-design, the new
one (part number CZZ-16098C) dropping the hyphen and placing the centred characters
vertically. Apparently content, the new
badge was used until 1978 when Krupp’s copyright expired and the Mustang’s badges
became global. As was common, there were
also running changes, a dash bezel above the glove box (with the T5 designation)
introduced during 1967 and continued the next year while the 1971 range
received a new dash emblem which sat in the centre, above the radio and heater
controls. However, anyone driving or
sitting in a T5, unless expert in such things or unusually
observant, probably wouldn’t have noticed the car was in any way different from
a Mustang of that vintage. Although the records are in places sketchy (and occasionally contradictory), the consensus is between 1964-1973, some 3,500 T5s or T-5s were produced.
Scenes from
Rote Sonne (1970, promotional poster, centre): A 1966 Ford T5
(left) and some of the cast (right) with a (circa 1966) Volkswagen Type 1
(Beetle). Note the jackboots.
Directed by Rudolf Thome (b
1939), the plotline of Rote Sonne (Red Sun) revolves
around four young Fräuleins (Peggy,
Sylvie, Christine & Isolde) who have entered into a mortiferous pact to use
their charms to lure men into their grasp as a prelude to murdering them. Maybe the foursome had read Valerie Solanas's (1936-1988), S.C.U.M. Manifesto (1967) which, even today, is still about as terminal as feminism gets. Although criticized as an example of the “pornography of violence” the film
genuinely did fit into the contemporary feminist narratives of the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) 1949-1990), a place in which ripples from the
street protests which swept Germany in 1968 were still being felt and it was in
1970 the terrorist collective Rote Armee
Fraktion (Red Army Faction (RAF)) was formed; In the English-speaking world
it’s better (if misleadingly) known as the Baader–Meinhof Gang.
Front page from
the Krupp Mustang brochure (1958, left) announcing ...jetzt auch als Frontlenker (“...now
also available as a forward control truck” (known in the US as the CoE
(cab-over engine) configuration)) and two pages from the 1975 Ford T5 brochure (Ghia
(upper right) and Mach 1 (lower right) versions). The photography and text (in translation) in
Ford’s T5 advertising followed the originals except that whereas the US
agencies usually included people, for German eyes, there were only the cars. The CoE configuration became popular because it allowed an increased load area while still complying with the maximum length limits set in many jurisdictions.
Front cover of 1974 Ford T-5 brochure. Unlike with the original Mustang which “didn't have a bad angle”, photographers assigned the Mustang II needed carefully to choose the aspect because if snapped unsympathetically, it could look quite gawky.
The timing
of the release of the Mustang II on 21 September, 1973 (for the 1974 season)
proved exquisite because on 17 October, 1973 began the geopolitical ructions
which three days later would trigger the announcement by OAPEC (Organization of
Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) of a “total embargo” of sales of oil to the US and
certain other countries. What following
from that came to be known first as the “1973 oil crisis” before being re-named “first oil shock”
after not dissimilar troubles in 1979; one way or another, the world has since
been adjusting to the change. The
Mustang II, lighter, smaller and notably more energy-efficient than its
predecessor (which as late as 1971 had a 429 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 on
the option list) was the right car for the time and proved a great success,
despite the traditionalists being appalled at the engine choices being
initially restricted to what were (compared with what had been and what would
later return) rather anaemic four & six-cylinder units.
Ford T-5 brochure, the basic coupé (left) and the 3-Türer (three door) hatchback (right). By 1974, the US manufacturers were using the word “hardtop” more loosely than the when in the 1950s & 1960s it had been standardized to mean: “no B-pillar”. Here, it seems to be used as a synonym of “two-door coupé” although by 1974, in the US, the term “pillared hardtop” had been coined to describe those vehicles with a B-pillar but no frames for the side windows. The Mustang II used frameless side-windows so the use may have been a nod to that and it certainly wasn't to differentiate it from a (soft-top) convertible, that body style never offered on the model.
On paper,
the more modest dimensions and fuel consumption should have made the Mustang II
more suited to the German market and Ford may have had high hopes (at least as
high as homes got by the mid-1970s) but the appeal of the early Mustangs was the
relatively compact (in US terms) size and the small-displacement (again, in US
terms) V8s (260 & 289 cubic inch; 4.2 & 4.7 litre) making the car
something of a “sweet spot” in what was a small but lucrative German
niche. In the 1960s, there was no
European-made car quite like it, thus the small but devoted following enjoyed
by the early T5s but the Mustang II used a template which was quasi-European and the
most obvious comparison was with Ford’s own Capri II, built in Cologne and on any
objective measure the Capri II was a better car than a Mustang II (T5), most Germans (an other Europeans) concluding while there were reasons to buy a Mustang, there were few to buy a Mustang II. So good was the German Capri it was for
years exported to the US where, sold by Mercury dealers, often it was the
best-selling import, was withdrawn from sale after 1977 only because the
strength of the Deutsch Mark (the FRG’s currency) against the US dollar rendered
the project unviable. Production numbers
for the T-5s based on the Mustang II are disputed and it’s believed the total
was “low three figures”, the appeal of the 1973-1978 T-5s not greatly enhanced
by the addition in 1975 of an optional 4.9 litre (302 cubic inch) V8 which increased
fuel consumption rather more than it improved performance. As a footnote, Ford called the 4.9 a “5.0” to
avoid confusion with their 300 cubic inch straight-six truck engine (which,
like the 302, was a true 4.9). Because
the 300 wasn’t used in Australia, there the 302s (one of which was a unique “Cleveland
302”) were (after 1973 when the country switched to metric measures) badged 4.9
to provide greater market differentiation from the companion 5.8 (351) V8.
1964 Daimler (C-Specification) SP250 (née Dart) in London Metropolitan Police configuration.
The wire wheels are a later edition, all police SP250s supplied originally with steel wheels & "dog dish" hubcaps); many (non-police) SP250s have also subsequently been fitted with the wheels. Scotland Yard purchased some 30 SP250s (all automatics) attracted by their 120+ mph (195 km/h) performance, allowing them to out-pace all but the fastest two and four-wheeled vehicles then on the road. Police forces in Australia and New Zealand also adopted SP250s as highway patrol vehicles. The
Daimler SP250 was first shown to the public at the 1959 New York Motor Show and
there the problems began. Aware the sports
car was quite a departure from the luxurious but rather staid line-up Daimler
had for years offered, the company had chosen the attractively alliterative
“Dart” as its name, hoping it would convey the sense of something agile and
fast. Unfortunately, Chrysler’s lawyers
were faster still, objecting that they had already registered Dart as the name
for a full-sized Dodge so Daimler needed a new name and quickly; the big Dodge
would never be confused with the little Daimler but the lawyers insisted. Imagination apparently exhausted, Daimler’s
management also reverted to the engineering project name and thus the car
became the SP250 which was innocuous enough even for Chrysler's attorneys. The Dodge Dart didn't for long stay big, the name in 1964 re-used for a compact line although it was the generation made between 1967-1977 which was most successful and almost immediately Chrysler regretted the decision to cease production, the replacement range (the Dodge Aspen & Plymouth Volaré (1976-1980)) one of the industry's disasters. The name was revived in 2012 for a new Dodge Dart, a small, front wheel drive (FWD) car which was inoffensive but dreary and lasted only until 2016. The SP250 was less successful still, not even 3000 made between 1959-1964, something attributable to (1) the unfortunate styling, (2) the antiquated chassis, (3) the lack of development which meant there were basic flaws in the body engineering of the early versions and (4) the lack of interest by Jaguar which in 1960 had purchased Daimler, its interest in the manufacturing capacity acquired rather than the product range. It was a shame because the SP250's exquisite 2.5 litre (155 cubic inch) V8 deserved better.
Lindsay
Lohan with Porsche 911 Targa 4 (997), West Hollywood, 2008. The Targa was reportedly leased by her former special friend, DJ Samantha Ronson (b 1977).
Sometimes though, numbers
could upset someone. Even in the highly
regulated EEC (European Economic Community, the origin of the European Union
(EU)) of the 1960s, a company in most cases probably couldn’t claim exclusive
rights to a three number sequence but Peugeot claimed exactly that when Porsche
first showed their new 901 in 1963.
Asserting they possessed the sole right to sell in France car with a
name constructed with three numbers if the middle digit was a zero, the French requested
the Germans rename the thing. It was the
era of Franco-German cooperation and Porsche did just that, announcing the new
name would be 911, a machine which went on to great things and sixty years on,
remains on sale although, the lineage is obvious, only the odd nut & bolt
is interchangeable between the two. So
all was well that ends well even if the French case still seems dubious because
Mercedes-Benz had for years been selling in France cars labelled 200 or 300
(and would soon offer the 600). Anyway, this time, it was the project name (901)
which was discarded (although it remained as the prefix on part-numbers) and surviving
examples of the first 82 cars produced before the name was changed are now
highly prized by collectors.
Sometimes
however, the industry uses weird names for no obvious reason and some of the cars
produced for the JDM (Japanese domestic market) are, to Western ears, truly bizarre
though perhaps for a Japanese audience they’re compellingly cool. Whatever might be the rationale, the Japanese
manufacturers have give the world some memorable monikers including (1) from Honda
the Vamios Hobio Pro & the That's, (2) from Mazda the Titan Dump, the Scrum Truck &
the Bongo Brawny, (3) from Mitsubishi
the Super Great, the eK-Classy, the Town Box, the Mirage Dingo
Teddy Bear & the Homy Super Long,
(4) from Suzuki the Solio Bandit &
the Mighty Boy, (5) from Toyota the Royal Lounge Alphard, (6) from Subaru
the Touring Bruce, (7) from Nissan
the Big Thumb, the Elgrand Highway Star & the Cedric and (8) from Cony, the Guppy.
1964
Porsche 901 (left), 1968 Porsche 911L Targa (soft window) (centre) and 1969
Porsche 911S Targa (right)
Compared
with that lot, Porsche deciding to call a car a Targa seems quite
restrained. Porsche borrowed the name
from Targa Florio, the famous race in the hills of Sicily first run in 1906 and
where Porsche in the 1950s had enjoyed some success. Long, challenging and treacherous, it
originally circumnavigated the island but the distance was gradually reduced
until it was last run in its classic form in 1973 although in even more
truncated form it lingered until 1977. The
construct of the name of the Targa Florio, the race in Italy from which Porsche
borrowed the name, was Targa (in the
sense of “plate” or “shield” + Florio,
a tribute to Vincenzo Florio (1883-1959), a rich Sicilian businessman,
automobile enthusiast and scion of a prominent family of industrialists and
sportsmen; it was Vincenzo Florio who in 1906 founded the race. Porsche won the race seven times between between 1963-1970 and took victory in 1973 in a 911 Carrera RSR, the car which in its street-legal (the Carrera RS) form remains among the most coveted of all the 911s and many replicas have been created. Porsche didn't make any 1973 Carrera RS Targas; all were coupés.
1976 Porsche 914 2.0 with factory-fitted heckblende in Nepal Orange over black leatherette with orange & black plaid inserts. All the mid-engined 914 built for public sale had a targa top although for use in competition the factory did a few with a fixed roof to gain additional rigidity. The 914 was the first of a number of attempts by Porsche’s engineers to convince customers there were better configurations than the rear-engine layout used on the 911 & 912. The customers continued to demand 911s and, the customer always being right, rear-engined 911s remain available to this day. Porsche now offers front & mid-engined models so presumably honor is thought satisfied on both sides.
Lamborghini Miura Roadster in metallic blue over white leather.
The modern convention is to distinguish between a roadster (with a roof which wholly can be removed or folded back) and a targa (with a removable panel about the seats (a cat with left & right panels being a “T-top”)) but in what now seems a linguistic quirk, Lamborghini in 1968 displayed a (sort of) targa it called a Roadster. It would be the only convertible Miura of any type the factory would build. Although the P400 Miura's rolling chassis had generated much interest (and some scepticism from engineers who understood the implications of installing its mid-mounted V12 engine transversely) when displayed at the 1965 Turin Auto Show, when a pre-production prototype was used for the car’s debut at the Geneva show, it created as much of a sensation as the Jaguar E-Type (XKE, 1961-1974) arrival in the same city half-a-decade earlier. The Miura is the spiritual ancestor of the “supercars” and “hypercars” of recent decades but while undeniably beautiful, at high-speed (it could exceed 170 mph (275 km/h)) the aerodynamic properties were dubious and the transverse engine induced handling quirks even experts found challenging to master. Still, with close to 800 made over three series (P400, 1966-1968; P400 S, 1968-1971; P400 SV 1971-1973), it was a great success and the most desirable are now multi-million dollar machines. It was quite an achievement for a concern which between 1948-1963 had built only well-regarded tractors and although the Miura wasn’t the company’s first car, it was the one which gained the marque the credibility to ranked with Ferrari and indeed greatly it influenced the mid-engined Ferraris and Maseratis of the 1970s as well as encouraging lower-cost imitators such as De Tomaso’s Mangusta (1967-1971).
Lamborghini Miura Roadster in metallic blue over white leather.
Perhaps counterintitutively the sensuous Miura was named after a breed of bull but it was one prized in bullfighting for its aggressive qualities so one can see the connection. While a few claim to be cooks who helped stir the broth, the Miura’s lovely lines usually are credited to Marcello Gandini (1938–2024), a designer working at Giuseppe "Nuccio" Bertone’s (1914-1997) Turin-based Carrozzeria Bertone. The one-off Miura roadster wasn’t exactly the first mid-engined coupé in a targa configuration, Ford building in 1965 five such GT40s (1964-1969) but these were pure racing cars and the first appeared a few weeks before Porsche in 1965 released the 911 Targa so it’s not surprising Ford dubbed the things “roadsters”. The Fords were actually rolling test-beds for components and featured a number of differences from the more numerous coupés but nor was the Miura Roadster simply a coupé pulled from the assembly line and then de-roofed. What Bertone did was a significant re-engineering, the roofline lowered by 30 mm (1¼ inches) with the rollover hoop lowered to reduce drag, the angle off the windscreen made more acute and the rear bodywork re-shaped with larger air-intakes for the V12, a more pronounced spoiler fitted to the rear deck, the tail-pipes re-routed and revised taillights were fitted. Unseen were structural changes which reinforced the chassis, the box-section side members strengthened to compensate for the loss of rigidity created by removing the roof. Inside, there were detail changes to the trim and switchgear.
Bertone’s Lamborghini Miura Roadster, Brussels Salon de L’Automobile, January 1968. Young ladies adorning exhibits were once a fixture at motor shows and this bevy was more fully clothed than many.
The reaction when the roadster was displayed at Brussels was little less enthusiastic than at Geneva two years earlier and dealers and the factory at once received enquiries about price and delivery dates. Unfortunately, what the designers knew was that stunning though it looked, what the roofectomy had done was so compromise the structural rigidity that not even the strengthening done to the platform had been enough to make the Roadster a viable production car. To achieve that, the whole shell would have had to be re-engineered and Lamborghini’s engineers knew that though achingly lovely, the shape and the transverse mounting of the V12 which made it possible were both flawed concepts and the future lay in longitudinally-positioned power-plants within an angular wedge. Those conclusions would be rendered in physical form when the prototype Countach appeared at Geneva in 1971 and its lines can be seen still in twenty-first century Lamborghinis.
The ILZRO’s ZN 75 in iridescent green over tan leather. The delightful “eyelashes” above the Miura's headlights unfortunately didn't appear on the P400 SV.
So the Roadster was destined to be a one-off curiosity but the show car subsequently had an interesting life. In 1969 it was purchased by the New York-based ILZRO (International Lead Zinc Research Organization) which wanted something eye-catching with which to promote the use of the metals in automotive use. Renamed ZN 75, it became a demonstration platform for zinc and lead applications in automotive engineering; it was repainted in an iridescent green, and various components were recast in zinc and lead-alloys, including trim, bumpers and even engine parts. On the periodic table, the chemical element zinc has the symbol “Zn” while the “75” was a reference to 1975, the year the ILZRO and other industry groups were lobbying the regulators to set as the date by which new automotive materials and corrosion-resistance standards would become widespread. The ILZRO’s campaign emphasis was on galvanization and anti-corrosion technologies, with the argument that by the mid-1970s, manufacturers would need extensively and more systematically to use zinc and such to meet with expectations of durability and comply with legislative dictate. During the 1970s, was shown around North America, Europe, and Asia becoming one of the more widely seen Miuras and decades later, was restored to its original appearance. Whether it even should be referred to as a targa is debatable because Bertone didn’t include a removable roof panel but over the years some Miuras have been converted to targas (with a removable panel) so the pedants can designate the original roadster as being “in the targa style”.
1938 Packard 1605 Super Eight Sedanca de Ville by Barker.
The idea of
a vehicle with a removable roof section over the driver is more ancient even
than the Porsche 911. Now, a “town car”
is imagined as something small and increasingly powered in some Greta Thunberg
(b 2003) approved way but in the US, what was sold as a “Town Car” used to be
very big, very thirsty (for fossil fuels) and a prodigious emitter of
greenhouse gasses. The idea had begun in
Europe as the coupé de ville,
deconstructed as the French coupé (an
elliptical form of carosse coupé (cut
carriage)) and the past participle of couper
(to cut) + de ville (French for
“for town”). So, it was, like the
horse-drawn coupé carriage, a smaller
conveyance for short-distance travel within cities, often just for two
passengers who sat sometimes in an enclosed compartment and sometimes under a
canopy while the driver was always exposed to the elements. In the UK, the style was often advertised as
the clarence carriage. The
coach-builders of the inter-war years created naming practices which were not
consistent across the industry but did tend to be standardized within
individual catalogues. In the US,
reflecting the horse-drawn tradition, the coupé
de ville was Anglicized as coupe de ville and appeared as both “town
brougham” and “town car”, distinguished by the enclosed passenger compartment
(trimmed often in cloth) and the exposed driver who sat on more weather
resistant leather upholstery.
1974 Lincoln Continental Town Car. The big Lincolns of the 1970s are about as remote as can be imagined from the original idea of something small and agile for use in congested cities but Ford also called this body style the "pillared
hardtop" so by then, linguistic traditions clearly meant little.
Dating from
the 1920s, a variant term was “Sedanca de
ville”, briefly used to describe a particular configuration for the roof
but so attractive was the word it spread and soon there appeared were Sedancas and Sedanca coupés. Like many
designations in the industry, it soon ceased to carry an exact meaning beyond
the front seats being open to the skies although by the 1920s there was usually
a detachable or folding (even some sliding metal versions were built) roof and
windscreens had become a universal fitting.
For a while, there probably was (unusually in an industry which often
paid scant attention to the details of etymology) an understanding a Sedanca de ville was a larger vehicle
than a Sedanca coupé but the former term became the more generally applied,
always on the basis of the ability of the driver’s compartment to be open
although it’s clear many of the vehicles were marketed towards owner-drivers
rather than those with chauffeurs, that cohort having moved towards fully
enclosed limousines. It’s from the
Sedanca tradition the US industry later picked up the idea of the “town car” although the association was vague and had nothing to do with an open driver’s
cockpit; it was understood just as a model designation which somehow implied “prestige”.
Porsche had
since the late 1940s been building roadsters and cabriolets but while the 911
(then known internally as Project 901) was under development, it was clear US
regulators, in reaction to a sharply rising death toll on the nation’s
highways, were developing some quite rigorous safety standards and a number of
proposals had been circulated which threatened to outlaw the traditional
convertible. Thus the approach adopted
which, drawing from the company’s experience in building race cars, essentially
added a stylized roll-over bar which could accommodate a detachable
roof-section over the passengers and a folding rear cover which included a
Perspex screen (the solid rear glass would come later). Actually, the concept wasn’t entirely novel,
Triumph introducing something similar on their TR4 roadsters (1961-1967)
although their design consisted of (1) a half-hard top with an integral
roll-bar & fixed glass rear window and (2) two detachable (metal &
vinyl) panels which sat above the passengers.
Customers universally (and still to this day) referred to this
arrangement as the “Surrey Top” although Triumph insisted only the vinyl insert
and its supporting frame was the “Surrey” while the rest of the parts
collectively were the “Hard Top kit”.
The targaesque top was available on the TR5 (1967-1969), a de-tuned
version of which was sold in North America as the TR250 with twin carburetors
replacing the Lucas mechanical fuel-injection used in most other markets, the
more exotic system then unable to comply with the new emission standards.
1953 Ford
X-100 with roof panel retracted (left), the Quincunxed five carburetor
apparatus atop the 317 cubic inch (5.2 litre) Lincoln Y-Block V8 (centre) and
the built-in hydraulic jacking system in use (right).
However,
long before Porsche told us there were Targa and a decade before even Triumph’s
Surrey, Ford had displayed a two-seat “targa”.
In the years to come, things like the 1953 Ford X-100 would be called “concept
cars” but that term didn’t then exist so Ford used the more familiar “dream
car” and that does seem a more romantic way of putting it. Reflecting the optimistic spirit of the early
post-war years, the X-100 included a number of innovations including the use of
radial-ply tyres, a built-in hydraulic jacking system, a rain-sensor which
automatically would trigger an electric motor to close the sliding plexiglass
roof panel, a built-in dictaphone, a telephone in the centre console and the
convenience of heated seats and an electric shaver mounted in the glove
compartment. Some of the features became
mainstream products, some not and while the “variable volume horn” wasn’t
picked up by the industry, one did appear on the Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100;
1963-1981) although that was a rare supportive gesture. It was also an age of imaginative labels and
Ford called their quincunx induction system the “Multi-Plex”; while the
engineering proved a cul-de-sac, the name did later get picked up by
multi-screen suburban cinema complexes.
For the X-100, Ford used what was then a popular technique in the
lunatic fringe of the burgeoning hot rod: an induction system using five carburettors
in a Quincunx pattern. Inherent
difficulties and advances in engineering meant the fad didn’t last but the apparatus
remins pleasing to those with a fondness of unusual aluminium castings and
intricate mechanical linkages. X-100
still exists and is displayed at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
1969
Mercury Marauder X-100. In 1969, the
blacked-out trunk (boot) lid and surrounds really was done by the factory. During the administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974), things were not drab and predictable.
In a number of quirky
coincidences, the name X-100 seems to once have been an industry favourite
because as well as the 1953 Ford “dream car”, it was the US Secret Service’s
designation for the 1961 Lincoln Continental parade convertible in which John
Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated in Dallas,
Texas. One might have thought that
macabre association might have been enough for the “X-100” tag to not again be
used but, presumably because the Secret Service’s internal codes weren’t then
general public knowledge, in 1969 Ford’s Mercury division released an X-100 as
an up-market version of its second generation (1969-1970) Marauder. Notionally, the X-100 was a “high
performance” version but its 365 (gross) horsepower 429 cubic inch (7.0 litre)
V8 was an option in lesser priced Marauders which meant the X-100, weighed down
by the additional luxury fittings, was just a little slower than the cheaper
models with the 429. The market for
“full-sized” high performance cars was anyway by 1969 in the final stages of
terminal decline and although an encouraging 5635 were sold in 1969, sales the
next year fell to 2646 and the X-100 was retired at the end of the 1970 and not
replaced. Most bizarre though was
project X-100, a US$75 million (then a lot of what was at the time borrowed
money) contract in 1943 awarded to Chrysler to design, machine and nickel-plate
the inner surfaces of the cylindrical diffusers required to separate uranium
isotopes. Part of the Manhattan Project
which built the world’s first atomic bombs, Chrysler built over 3,500 diffusers
used at the plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and many were still in service as
late as the 1980s. Not until after the
first A-bomb was used against Hiroshima in August 1945 did most of the X-100
project’s workers become aware of the use being made of the precision equipment
they were producing.
Built by Ferrari: 1973 Dino 246 GTS with "chairs & flares" options. The "GTS" stood for "Gran Tourismo Spider" but it was a true targa in the sense codified by Porsche.
The rhyming colloquialism “chairs and flares” (C&F to the Ferrari cognoscenti and these days the early Dinos are an accepted part of the family) is a reference to a pair of (separately available) options available on later production Dino 246s. The options were (1) seats with inserts (sometimes in a contasting color) in the style used on the 365 GTB/4 (Daytona) & (2) wider Campagnolo Elektron wheels (which the factory only ever referred to by size) which necessitated flared wheel-arches. In the early 1970s the factory wasn’t too punctilious in the keeping of records so it’s not known how many cars were originally built equipped with the wider (7½ x 14” vs 6½ x 14”) wheels but some privately maintained registers exist and on the basis of these it’s believed production was probably between 200-250 cars from a total run of 3569 (2,295 GT coupés & 1,274 GTS spiders (targa)). They appear to have been most commonly ordered on UK & US market cars (although the numbers for Europe are described as “dubious” and thought an under-estimate; there are also an unknown number in other countries), the breakdown of verified production being:
246 GT: UK=22, Europe=5, US=5.
246 GTS: UK=21, Europe=2, US=91.
The “chairs and flares” cars are those which have both the Elektron option and the Daytona-style seats but because they were available separately, some were built with only one of the two, hence the existence of other slang terms in the Dino world including “Daytona package”, “Sebring spiders” and, in the UK, the brutish “big arches”. In 1974, the Dino's option list (in US$) comprised:
Power windows: $270.00
Metallic paint: $270.00
Leather upholstery: $450.00
Daytona type central seat panels: $115.00
Air-conditioning: $770.00
14 x 7½ wheels & fender flares: $680.00
AM/FM/SW radio: $315.00
Electric antenna & speakers: $100.00
At a combined US$795.00, the C&F combo has proved a good investment, now adding significantly to the price of the anyway highly collectable Dino. Although it's hard to estimate the added value because so many other factors influence calculation, all else being equal, the premium would seem to to be well over US$100,000. Because it involves only wheels, upholstery and metal, the modifications are technically not difficult to emulate although the price of a modified vehicle will not match that of an original although unlike some of the more radical modifications to Ferraris (such as conversions to roadsters), creating a C&F out of a standard 246 seems not to lower its value. These things are always relative; in 1974 the C&F option added 5.2% to the Dino GTS's list price and was just under a third the cost of a new small (in US terms a "sub-compact") car such as the Chevrolet Vega (1970-1977).
An enduring design: 2023 Porsche 911 Targa 4 (992).
Porsche
didn’t complicate things, in 1966 offering the Targa as an alternative to the familiar
coupé, then in series production since 1964.
Briefly, the company flirted with calling the car the 911 Flori but
ultimately Targa was preferred and the appropriate trademarks were applied for
in 1965, the factory apparently discovering targa in Italian means “number
plate” or “license plate” only that year when the translators were working on international
editions of the sales brochures. The now
familiar fixed, heated rear screen in safety glass was first offered in 1967 as
an alternative to the one in fold-down plastic one and such was the demand it
soon became the standard fitting. The
Targa carried over into the 911’s second and third generation being,
re-designed for 1993 in a way that dispensed with the roll bar and it wouldn’t
be until 2011 the familiar shape returned.
1970 Iso Grifo Targa (Series I, 350 cubic inch (5.7 litre) Chevrolet V8, left) and 1971 Iso Grifo Can-Am Targa (Series II, 454 cubic inch (7.4 litre) Chevrolet V8, right). The raised centre section on the hood (bonnet) of the big-block Grifos was known informally as the "penthouse"; it was required because the induction system sat higher than on the small-block cars. Not all approved of the penthouse because they found it discordant with the otherwise flowing lines but its brutish functionalism seems a fitting tribute brute force beneath.
Among
the small volume manufactures which in the post-war years found a lucrative
niche in combining sensuous European coachwork with the cheap, powerful and
robust American V8s, there was a focus on two-door coupés because (1) this was
the example set by Ferrari and (2) there most demand in the segment clearly
existed. The ecosystem was sent extinct
by the first oil shock of the early 1970s but in the era, some did offer
convertibles and where not, there were specialists prepared to help. There was though, the odd targa. The achingly lovely Iso Grifo spyder
(roadster) shown at the Geneva Motor Show in 1964 never reached production but in
1966, less than two years into the Grifo’s life (during which almost 100 had
been made), the factory put a targa version on their stand at the Turin Motor Show. It was only ever available to special order on
a POA (price on application) basis and between then and the shuttering of the
factory in 1974, only 17 were built, four of which were the Series II Can-Ams with the big-block Chevrolet V8.
