Electel Blogspot

I wrote about ace race dirver Berndt Rosemeyer's Horch 853 Coupé by Erdmann & Rossi here .  This post is about another Erdmann & Rossi 853.  It's a 1938 853A Special Roadster restored by RM Auto Restorationn . Its commentary on the car and restoration is here .  It notes: "These first two cars [discussed in the article] may be considered the 'first series' cars, in that they closely resemble the [factory's] wooden model, and are virtually identical to each other. Both survive, one in Texas (Dr. Charles Key) and one in Germany (Horst Lautenschlager). "A subsequent series of cars were built (the 'second series' cars) which differed from the first in several respects. The coachwork was more modern, and featured pontoon shaped fenders and a one piece rear body (no separate fenders). "Five of these cars were built, three of which are known to survive today. The first example was built for Nazi Herman Goering ... This first Horch 853 Spec...

I wrote about a 1939 Lagonda V12 Drophead Coupé with a factory body designed by in-house stylist Fred Feeley here .  Since I believe design of convertibles is less taxing to a stylist than cars with hard tops with all the possibilities of forms, window shapes, and other rquired deatils, I tend to focus on such cars on this blog.  Therefore, I owe readers something about Lagona V12 Saloon styling to compensate for that post about a convertible. In that post I commented that Feeley's frontal design, the basis for both factory and custom bodies, was more rounded than, say, the angularity of Rolls-Royces.  Which made me wonder if there were examples of Logonda V12s with angular bodies and how such bodies might relate to the rounded frontal design.  It happens that the Freestone & Webb coachbuilding firm (brief Wikipedia entry here ) built some "razor-edge" bodies (F&W initiated that style) on V12 Lagondas.  Some these are shown below. Gallery First, three i...

"The Ugliest Roll Royce Ever?" -- That was the title of a 2001 piece on Motor Trend magazine's web page.  Well, maybe.  But there might have been a few that were worse. The cited car was a 1954 Roll-Royce Silver Wraith with a custom body by Italian coachbuilder Vignale completed in 1955.  The designer was the well-known Giovanni Michelotti who later designed production car bodies for Triumph. Being a custom bodied automobile, its design features were influenced by Vignale's client.  Some of this is mentioned here on the Bonhams auction web site in reference to its 2014 offering at Quail Lodge in California.  What might be important is that he was an American.  Which suggests that he wanted the car to have 1954-vintage American styling features. Gallery The car was on display for a while at the Blackhawk museum in California's Bay Area.  That is the source of this and similar images below.  The "ugly" bit is the front end design that features t...