During the late 1950s, Raymond Loewy made a break from designing cars for Studebaker and went on a European trip, designing cars for Jaguar, BMW, and as we see from the January 1961 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, Lancia as well. The Loraymo, as Loewy called it, was based on a 1959 Lancia Flaminia chassis and […]
In moderation, most things are just fine. Take, for instance, the trend of rebodying the Volkswagen Beetle. Once the Beetle became ubiquitous and dirt-cheap, everybody with a chopper gun started to use the Bug as the basis for bringing their notebook-margin doodles to life. Yet there were many refined, restrained and quality-focused coachbuilt Beetles, mostly […]
It’s nearly impossible to think of two cars with as little in common as Fiat’s pre-war people-mover, the 500 “Topolino,” and that sumptuous, 21st-century chariot of the uber-rich, Maybach’s 57S. And yet, there is a link: Each was the basis of a limited-production variant produced by the German coachbuilder Weinsberg. Strictly speaking, what lies beneath […]