How a Jowett Jupiter changed our lives!

All Jowett Jupiter owners know the thrill of owning and driving one of Great Britain’s rare and iconic sports cars. Every owner seems to have their own special story.

Our story started in 1980 when my wife Judie was expecting our daughter, Dana. She suggested a new hobby since our many travels would temporarily end. Our first idea was to own a special English sports car and we were fortunate to purchase a 1962  Morgan +4. Owning this car introduced us to other car enthusiasts and we attended many car events. 

Early in 1982 we were approached at a show by another Morgan owner wanting to sell a 1957 Morgan 4/4 needing restoration. It was a perfect project while our young daughter grew and we could eventually take her on family travels. The new vehicle received a ground-up restoration and was completed and ready to be shown at local car shows by 1983. 

Several years later while competing at a distant car show with our 1957 Morgan, we were approached by a gentleman indicating that he had an unusual British car that had been in storage for many years. He indicated it was a Jowett Jupiter. While I thought I knew about British cars, the name Jowett Jupiter was something new and piqued my interest. We were invited to see the car outside of Pittsburgh and found it buried under a tarp in a shed where it had sat for almost 20 years. The car was immediately purchased and a new garage project was started. 

The Jupiter was in need of a complete restoration. It had a cracked water jacket when the original owner, who bought the car in California in 1951 and was transferred to Pittsburgh, did not realize you need to put antifreeze in the car. Fixing that issue was part of a complete restoration with everything on the Jupiter being replaced or restored. This included dipping all body panels, restoring the chassis with Imron coating, rebuilding the engine and restoring every part possible —  including chrome parts, the interior and the bonnet material. 

The family resumed travel and in 1987 returned to England where we found a historic 1951 Morgan four- seat model at Laurie Weeks Light Car and Cycle Company in Hartlebury. It was in bare metal and waiting our choice of exterior color and upholstery. It was originally owned by a Dr William Steel and driven for the Morgan factory team to the 1951 RAC team championship. By 1990, the Jupiter was complete and ready to compete in its first major show, the 1990 Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix All British Car Show of almost 400 registered vehicles. 

The British cars competed by class such as Jaguar, Austin Healey and MG. The Jupiter was placed in a mixed class where often only one example or unusual make competed. We were excited that our Jupiter took a 1st place award in the large mixed class. We then found out that, out of 400 cars, our Jupiter was named Best of Show. This would be the start of a show car career for our Jupiter that never disappointed. 

Over the next three decades the Jupiter competed for bragging rights at shows along with our 1951 and 1957 Morgans. Over the years both Morgans have collected over 90 awards each, while the Jupiter collected over 110 awards, including many Best in Shows. One such Best in Show award was when we drove the car out of state to Moundsville, W.V., with little hope of winning an award against a field of mostly pre-1940 American vehicles with over 300 competing cars. At the conclusion of the show we were shocked when the 1951 Jowett Jupiter again was chosen Best in Show. The car was invited to several major Concours d’Elegances, including the Burn Prevention Foundation Show in Reading, Pa., where it won another award. In 1995 both our Jupiter and 1951 Morgan were invited to the Meadowbrook Concours d’Elegance in central Michigan where both won awards and got lots of attention.

In Edmund Nankivell’s definitive book titled “The Jowett Jupiter – The Car that Leaped to Fame” aptly describes our Jupiter E1 SAL 125 that over the years it was featured in at least five major United States and international magazines. This was in addition to many By Jupiter! and Jowetteer articles. 

In 2018, the Burrows family received a postal note from England inquiring about Dr. Steel’s famous Morgan from his grandson wanting information on the car’s status. At that point we decided that the car should return home and belong to the Steel family. Tim Steel was excited to see the car that was part of the family history upon its return to Great Britain. 

In the following year, the Steel family hosted family outside of London. Tim picked us and brought us home in the Morgan four-seater. 

In the summer of 2025, our family was contacted by Jeff Lane, owner of the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tenn. Our long-time friend and mechanic, Jim Biery, would often undertake major restorations for Jeff back in Pittsburgh. Lane learned of the rarity and quality of the Jowett Jupiter from Jim, and made an offer to buy the car that we could not refuse. The Lane Motor Museum is the home of the largest European car collection in the United States with over 500 unique and unusual cars and 60-plus motorcycles. The museum continually rotates 150 different cars among its show room displays. While it was bittersweet seeing the Jowett leave for Nashville, we will forever treasure the memories of the many car and the and Jowett owners they met in Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia over the last four decades. 

SHOW US YOUR WHEELS!

If you’ve got an old car you love, we want to hear about it. Email us at oldcars@aimmedia.com

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This is what Robert had to say about his GTV…

“This is the 2000cc model of the Alfa Romeo GTV. It has mechanical (Spica) fuel injection with an “Inezione” call out on the rear deck. Modern for it’s time with a 5-speed and disk brakes all around. I have owned it for over 20 years and drive it as often as I can. People usually think it’s an old Ferrari, I think because of the color.”

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Ray Otto has a jumbo-sized affinity for tiny little cars. He’s got a bunch of the little rascals — 14 at the moment.

He has three Nash Metropolitans at last count. But his real claim to fame in the microcar world is his fleet of rare NSU Prinz models. He’s got 11 of those.

Otto never planned on being known as the “NSU Prinz” guy, but he has certainly become visible in micro car circles for both his knowledge and his collection, and also for the parts that he has distributed to help other NSU Prinz owners.

“I’ve been lucky, almost every car I’ve purchased has had some extra parts with it,” he chuckles. “I was kind of the go-to guy for parts and stuff and I shipped a lot of stuff to Canada and all over the U.S. to keep them going. You can only use so much stuff yourself, so you gotta spread it around.”

“Yeah, I know a lot about ’em, but there are people out there that know more than I do!”

Otto, a resident of Foley, Minn., certainly used all his knowhow and resources to restore one of his favorites — a red 1960 Sport Prinz that he likes to show off at big car gatherings like the Iola Car Show in Wisconsin, where he had it on display last summer.

“I got my first [NSU Prinz] at a farm auction. I kind of thought I knew cars and there was a German Prinz automobile for sale, and $85 later owned a car I know nothing about…. That was probably 15 , 17 years ago… Then this one came up in Pewaukee, Wis. A guy had this and a coupe, and I wanted to buy both of them. They were together.”

The affable Otto fully expected to rebuild the non-running Sport Prinz, get it humming and looking good and eventually have some real fun with it. The trouble was it needed a lot of work — the engine was frozen for starters. Then he wound up having to beat cancer, which further delayed some of his microcar activities. Finally, when he started to regain his health, he got serious about getting his little red baby back on the road.

“This one the original owner bought in 1960, and in 1961 he seized the engine up on it,” he recalled. “So it went into a warehouse and went through a series of owners and warehouses. The seats were stolen and it was in really rough shape. We bought it and I cut the whole back end engine area out of it. I was going to put a 3-cylinder Geo Metro engine into it, but it became too [complicated]…

“So I pushed it into a corner and left it. It sat for a number of years, but after I was done with my chemotherapy from cancer, I said ‘If we don’t get this car going now, we never will.’ So I proceeded to weld everything back into the car that I had taken out, and took an engine out of one of my parts cars and put it together. It’s been going like this for probably 10 or 11 years now.”

FROM TWO WHEELS TO FOUR

Building automobiles most certainly was not in the plans when Christian Schmidt and Heinrich Stoll founded their NSU Werke operation back in 1873. Their main goal at the time was manufacturing sewing machines. The company settled in Neckarsulm in Lower Swabia in 1880 and eventually went into the bicycle building business. The name officially became NSU in 1892, and it was about that time the company began assembling motorcycles — a venture that lasted into the 1960s.

The company unveiled its first car, a luxury model built under license from the Belgian Pipe Co., in 1905, then began offering its own smaller models through the 1920s. In 1934, Ferdinand Porsche developed three prototypes of his “People’s Car” vision and reached a deal with NSU to be involved, but NSU eventually backed out of the arrangement and instead returned its focus to motorcycles and scooters.

In 1957, the company returned to the automobile business with a new two-cylinder Prinz econocar. Only 29 of the two-door sedans were reportedly sold in the United States in the model’s 1958 debut year. The tiny NSUs had a back seat and room — albeit very cozy — for four passengers. The 35.6cc vertical twin-cylinder four-stroke engine was mounted transversally at the back and produced 26 hp. The engine had twin ignition coils and a Dynastart starter/generator, unit while the chassis rode on four-wheel independent suspension. The chassis had only two lubrication points. The motorcycle-style four-speed gearbox used constant-mesh gears for “easy and silent gear change,” according to the company, and operated with a single-plate clutch. Curved rear glass permitted broad visibility. Luggage and the spare tire fit into the front storage compartment. Standard equipment included a fresh-air heating/ventilation system.

The cars carried a base price of $1,383 in the U.S. and weighed in at a feathery 1,080 lbs.

In 1959, the company added a Sport Prinz coupe model with a more powerful (36-hp) engine that gave the cars a claimed top speed of 65 mph. The Nuccio Bertone styling was much different than that of the sedans and featured a fastback profile with tailfins, a raked wraparound windshield and back window, triangular rear quarter windows and wind-down windows. Standard equipment included a heater/defroster; locking glove compartment and ashtrays; and provisions for radios. The engine, four-speed gear box and differential made up a single unit, with a backward-hinged engine cover at the rear.

Distribution in the U.S. rose to a reported 3,247 for all models in ’59 before dropping slightly to 2,493 in 1960 — the same year the company began offering a Prinz 30 model sedan that had the peppier 36-hp power plant.

NSU was reasonably successful with its microcars in the U.S. and elsewhere until the mid-1960s, when it made the ill-fated decision to switch from motorcycle-like two-cylinder engines to Wankel rotary engines, which it put in its new Spider model. The change had disastrous results, as the rotary engines with plagued by problems, got poor gas mileage and ultimately got the company tied up in too many warranty claims. In 1969, NSU merged with Auto Union and eventually disappeared for good in 1977.

ANOTHER SMALL VICTORY

One of the joys of microcar ownership is often trying to figure out how to make things work with limited parts availability. Owners often figure out how to adapt things like brakes, tail lights and even drive trains from other manufacturers when authentic replacement parts — usually from donor cars — are not available. Otto has many such stories. Fortunately, he enjoys the challenges and has plenty of experience solving such problems.

The biggest challenge he faced with his broken-down ’60 Sport Prinz was getting an engine into it that would run. The rest was pretty much straight-forward restoration work — paint, bodywork and upholstery.

“The engine was in parts. He had seized the engine up. It’s an air-cooled engine, and Americans don’t know how to drive air-cooled engines,”Otto says. “You have to keep the RPMs up to keep the air going through it. The engine and transmission are a combination unit and it takes a quart-and-a-half of oil, so just by inherent design they drip oil a little bit and if you don’t keep track of it they’ll seize up. So this one was seized up at under 14,000 miles. So I took [an engine] out of another parts car that I had purchased. It’s not the original engine from this one, but it’s comparable.”

Otto did the bodywork, paint and all the assembly and troubleshooting himself, but he is quick to credit his wife Joan for the lovely upholstery work.

“My wife did the interior on her Singer sewing machine at home. She’s my sidekick,” he says. “The problem is there is zero parts availability. The taillights are reproduced in Brazil … The hubcaps are made in Argentina. I modified a Volkswagen Beetle headliner to work in this one. We had the chrome done at a professional shop, but otherwise I painted it and did the bodywork. It was pretty much rust-free except for one rocker panel that had rusted out.”

“Some liberties have been taken. The seats are from a Sports Prinz, but I kind of jockeyed the patterns … The master cylinder for the brakes is the same as a BMW Isetta, but this master cylinder is actually from a Volkswagen Beetle. On the Sports they didn’t really have much for options. On the sedans they had a few things with the chrome on the front bumpers with the turn signals and stuff like that, but for the Sport Prinzes there wasn’t much. There was a little scale you could use to weigh your luggage so you knew how much weight you were putting in the front of the car. But as far as actual stuff to go on the car, there wasn’t much that went on it.”

Otto has been driving Prinzes for so long that he’s getting pretty good at it. He isn’t ready to take off on any coast-to-coast journeys in one, but he’s pretty happy to tool around the streets and country roads near his home. The driving experience might best be described as “unrefined”, but Otto kind of likes it that way.

“It can be a real handful. We are from central Minnesota, and a lot of the country roads have wheel tracks from modern cars — wider than this,” he notes. “So with bias-ply tires and the wheel tracks, you can wind up wandering a little bit. But you’re only going about 50 mph. It will go 60, but it likes 50 better. So you are never in real danger. It’s noisy and hot and loud. It’s German engineering ‘quote-unquote’ and its finest. [laughs].”

Otto says only about 200 of the Sport Prinzes were believed to have been sold in the U.S., and he’s not sure how many might still be around. He knows of only “maybe two dozen that were running.”

“I don’t like the word rare … but it’s unusual. Just the uniqueness, is what I like. I sort of walk to the beat of a different drummer, you know. I would never knock anybody’s Mustang, Camaro or Chevelle. It’s a car they love. But I just could never get into ‘em. I never had an opportunity when I was young to get into ‘em. We drove rusted-out ’59 Fords and stuff like that, and I just like having something different and I love the education part of it and showing it and telling people about it.”

“And the only time I part next to one is at home!”

SHOW US YOUR WHEELS!

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We’ve never lusted after an old Volvo before, but that changed when we stumbled across this great piece of Swedish awesomeness hanging out in Prescott Valley, Ariz. It’s a 1964 Volvo 544, and these things are just so odd and unusual that we need to own one at some point.

So many parts of this car remind us of other cars — Dodge, Volkswagen … maybe even a ’40 Ford. It’s all rolled up into one funky humpback package.

The seller says he found the car in North Carolina and it has been sitting for much of the past 20 years. He claims it’s a very original car, right down to its factory Volvo AM radio.

We love ABBA. We love IKEA and Swedish meatballs and Saab. We’d love to visit Stockholm some day. And for only $9 500, we love this!

CHECK IT OUT

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The post Old Cars We’d Buy That: 1964 Volvo 544 appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

“This is my 1951 Jowett Jupiter which I have owned for over 30+ years. It resulted from a ground up restoration to original and finished in 1990. An unusual British made car that was made for the American market in the early 50’s which had great success at LeMans winning its class in the early 50’s, it has many unique features. This includes a four cylinder opposed engine, all aluminum body, torsion bar suspension, dual carbs, and-4 speed column shift.”

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It took Mark Harrell quite a while to figure out exactly what kind of four-wheeled automotive treasure his dad dragged home one day back in 1968.

About 45 years, in fact.

David Harrell was an over-the-road truck driver who like to tinker with mechanical stuff when he was home. After a long trip to Texas back in ’68, he came home and told his family he had a surprise in the back of his semi-trailer. The senior Harrell had found a weird-looking little French car for sale along the road in Texas and decided it needed to come home with him to Wisconsin.

The beat-up white 1961 Renault 4CV actually changed hands a couple times within the Harrell clan over the years before Mark got his turn with the car. 

“It sat for a long time, yeah,” recalls Harrell, a resident of Marshfield Wis. “ I finally asked my dad one time what he was going to do with the car, and he says, ‘Why, do you want it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, what do you want for it?’ He said $400 — that’s what he originally paid for it. It had sat in his garage for the longest time. My oldest brother [Mike] actually got it from my dad for $400 and he had it for a while, then sold it back to my dad for 400 bucks. And my other brother [Danny] worked on it for a while, too. So 400 bucks was going back and forth between two of my brothers and my dad and me.

“We knew it was a Renault, and that was about it,” Mark laughs. “My dad liked working on engines and stuff, and he just thought it was cool. He didn’t know what it was, no. And I didn’t either – not until I retired out of the Army in 2013 and we decided to find out what it was.”

The family might have treated the little Renault a little differently over the years if it had known exactly how unique the car is. It turned out the car was probably one of the rarest little buggies Renault had ever produced: A 1961 C4V Resort Special. It’s one of 50 such critters that were built for a resort complex than never materialized in Florida, and one of just 12 survivors that have been accounted for.

Harrell still shakes his head in disbelief when he recounts finding out how rare and unique the car is.

“Once we put some feelers out there online we had a lot of people coming back from California and Florida and other places telling us, ‘Even in the condition it’s in, don’t get rid of it! You can sell it like that, or restore it if you can. It’s a very rare car!’ Once we found out what it was, we figured we can’t let it rust away. We’re gonna save up some money and find somebody reputable to work on it and get it back to the way it was supposed to be. And, of course, we found some pictures of them online, and we thought, ‘Wow, this is really going to be cool if we can get this running again.’”

BORN FOR THE BEACH

One of the more interesting and successful cars ever built by Renault — the 4CV — traces its roots back to one of the worst periods in France’s history: the German occupation during World War II from 1940-44. Partly because his company continued to produce the Juvaquatre automobile after WWII broke out, Louis Renault was arrested by the French government soon after the liberation of Paris by the Allies, accused to collaborating with the Nazis. The Renault company had fallen under German control during the war, and after the Allied invasion, Louis died in in prison in 1944. Pierre Lefaucheaux, who had fought against the Nazi occupation, was then put in charge of the company, and shortly thereafter the firm was nationalized and given the name Regie Nationale des Usines Renault.

While the company was under German control, company brass were given orders to focus only on military and commercial vehicles. Fortunately, there was a plan afoot within company walls to continue work developing a small vehicle that company officials believed would be popular and practical when the war ended. Somehow, the Nazi honchos in charge of overseeing what was happening at the Renault factory did not keep a very close watch on the store, and work on what would become the 4CV continued in secret.

A new protype of the 4CV had actually been tested during the war, and it was destined to lead the Renault lineup of the 1950s. The 4CV first appeared at the Paris Salon in 1946, powered by a rear-mounted 760cc four-cylinder engine that produced 16 hp and featuring four-wheel independent suspension with coil springs. Lockheed hydraulic brakes did the stopping.

Top speed was about 55 mph and the car tipped the scales at just 1,146 lbs., helping it achieve up to 47 mpg.

The 4CVwent on sale in 1947 in Europe and was known in France as “La Quattre Chevaux” (4 hp). Initial prototypes had two doors, but the production cars were four-door models. By 1949, the 4CV was on sale in the United States and known by some as the “Green Renault” because its sole U.S. distributor was the John L. Green company. The 4CV was certainly different than anything on U.S. roadways at the time, with its pudgy appearance and sloping tail. It had rear-hinged “suicide” front doors and sliding windows.

By spring of 1949, Renault was turning out 300 of the tiny four-door sedans each day. By 1952, the 4CV represented one-third of the total production of all French automobiles with more than a quarter million produced. Production continued until 1961, with a slightly smaller 757cc engine used from 1951 onward. A small number were assembled in England, and also in Japan under license.

Certainly one of the rarest — and most collectible today — 4CVs ever built were the memorable and obscure 1961 Jolly Resort Specials. Italian coachbuilder Ghia had done a number of open-air (no doors, windows or enclosed top) Jolly conversions on Fiat 500 and 600 chassis, and Renault opted to do the same with its 4CV for an order of 50 cars for a planned Florida resort. The cars came in either white, a pale blue or coral color, and all had weather-resistant wicker seats and removable surrey tops.

The order of beach cars materialized, but the planned resort never did. They were unwanted orphans right from the start.

“The cars were just sitting around, and a few got distributed,” Harrell said. “We know there is one in Australia and we know there are a few back in Europe and a few in the United States. According to all the Renault enthusiasts and guys who know the history, out of those 50 they can only account for 12.”

HAVING A JOLLY TIME

Where his Jolly had been and what kind of life it had led before it wound up in his father’s semi truck is still a bit of a mystery for Harrell. As far as he can tell, his dad was the second owner of the Renault. How the first owner wound up with the car is anybody’s guess at this point.

“The guy in Texas probably got it in like ’62 or so… The car doesn’t lean into corners. It doesn’t have torsion bars, so it doesn’t corner, and I think he flipped it. So he didn’t want the car and there was damage on the driver’s side, I think. Anyway, I think my dad was probably only the second owner of it and then it was in our family that whole time. It had 9,000 miles on it when I got it… It was originally white. It did run a little bit when he [first brought it home], but there was some damage to it.”

“Everything was wrong with it when I got it. My one brother decided to take the whole engine apart and work on the engine. Then the other one had done a bunch of Bond-O on it. It was a mess by the time I got it. It been stored on a farm at my father-in-law’s … I’m surprised it didn’t rust away because it was stored on gravel the whole time. We were very lucky that there was minimal rust on the whole thing.”

Harrell eventually turned to a nearby restorer, John Draxler, owner of Nostalgic Auto Crafters in Hewitt, Wis., to turn back the clock on the Renault. There were plenty of stops and starts, parts chasing and hurdles to climb over during the three years Draxler worked on the car. Eventually, the project turned into the quintessential “every nut and bolt” restoration: chassis, drivetrain, body and interior.

“The engine parts were easy to find because when they built this they put a Dauphine engine in it, and Renault built a lot of Dauphines. And they didn’t want to redesign an engine just for an order of 50,” Harrell pointed out. “The little things on the body were the hardest to find — the tail lights, the bumpers, the side mirrors … Everything on the outside was tough to find. We were very lucky that the signal lights on the front were glass, and you can’t find them anywhere, but we had them, thankfully. They were in a box of parts that my brother had. We were fortunate on some stuff.”

Rebuilding the wicker seats turned out to be a combined effort between the couple’s son Brian and a wicker artisan in North Carolina.

“Brian is a welder and fabricator so he fabricated front seats for us and we’d go over to the shop where it was being worked on and we built up boards or a milk crate and figure out how high we had to make it,” Mark noted. “Then he took the back seat and put the same design on it. We took a piece of the old backseat along with all the frame work and we sent it to North Carolina. We found a person there that would wicker it. It’s not easy to find somebody to do that kind of work.”

One of the big decisions Mark and his wife Dorothy faced was what color to paint the Renault. A fresh coat of white would have returned the car to its original look, but the pair decided on something a little more eye-catching: a two-tone blue and white.

“We wanted sometime to really make it shine, really make it pop,” he said. “The blue is Laguna Blue, which is perfect because it’s a beach car. We saw that color on a Corvette at a car show. The gentleman actually had the color code, which is all I really needed.

“The Arctic White is actually whiter than white. …We really like the way it turned out. The chrome really looks good on it, and the contrast between the two colors looks good.”

Harrell made two modifications to the car’s electrical system for the sake of safety and reliability. He installed a push-button starter and a safety knife switch on the battery to turn off the battery power.

 “[The battery] loses juice, for whatever reason, and I was actually able to find the same type of coil, but it’s got like a little booster. That helps. And we put a little heavier type of wire in it… It’s temperamental, being a 6-volt system. I’ve got a little breaker on the battery because for some reason the 6-volt system likes to trickle out the juice. I’ve talked to guys who said to put that little breaker on that goes across the battery post and we disconnect it.”

The switch on the battery also makes the Jolly a little less flammable, Harrell says.

 “The gas tank is about 10 gallons … and one of the worst designs ever. They put it right above the battery. With gas, you’ve always got the fumes, and you’ve spark right there. We’re thinking some of those 50 probably burned to the ground and that’s maybe part of why only 12 are left. When I fill it up I’ve got a little 1-gallon can and I disconnect the battery.”

Harrell joked that the scary gas tank location isn’t the only reason operating the Resort Special can be a little on the adventurous side. There are no doors to lean on or grab onto, no protection from mother nature, no seat belts to keep you planted in the wicker seats, and minimal cornering agility. Even the foot pedals are a bit of challenge.

“It’s hard to drive because the brake and gas pedals are so close together,” Harrell says. 

“I think it was made for people with flip-flops or sandals on!”

“People have had these things up to 60 [mph] … Ah, I dunno, it’s a little engine that gets hot. I don’t want to do that. I’m not in a hurry when I drive it. I don’t drive it over about 35 miles an hour. It think it goes up to 40. It’s a small engine, only 850cc. Some of them were like 750, but this one’s an 850, still a four-cylinder 3-speed manual. When the wife and I drive around we always take the top off. The bars just set on a peg in the back and just come right off. It’s just fun to drive around without the top on. [The top] will rattle and the wind catches it. It doesn’t fold down, so you either put it on and leave it on, or take it off. At car shows we always put it on because that’s the way it looked.”

Harrell says the car has mopped at car shows around Wisconsin in the years that he has been showing it. Collecting trophies is fun, but he says what he and Dorothy enjoy most is showing up early for a show and taking their car out on joyrides around the different towns they travel to.

Occasionally, people will mistake the C4V for the similar looking Fiat Jolly. A few recognize it as a Renault. Almost nobody knows it is a long-lost beach car and one of the few survivors of its kind.

“We get heads turning when we drive it through town,” Harrell says. “The back end with the louvers looks like the hood of a Volkswagen. People think we chopped the top off a Volkswagen. And a lot of people think it’s a golf car because of that goofy Surrey top on it. I tell them this would be the most expensive golf car you’ll ever have! [laughs].”

Harrell cringes at the idea of ever parting with his fabulous little Renault. It’s been in the family since he was 8 years old, and finding out how significant the car was and then embarking on a mission to restore it to prime condition has been a very meaningful journey. His father David and brother Mike have both passed on, but he knows they would both be thrilled with how the rags-to-riches story of the 1961 buggy turned out.

“Everybody is always telling us if you ever want to sell it, go to Arizona or Florida to the resort communities because somebody is going to pay dearly to have this thing,” he says. “Some people have suggested I get ahold of some big hotel companies in France — since it’s a French car — so one of them could have it in their lobby, so it will always look nice.”

“If I ever do sell it, I never want to see it again!”

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“One of only three Singer Le Mans Special Speed Models imported new into North America via Revecomb Motors of Vancover, BC. This car was sold to its first owner in San Diego, California, where it became a well-known sight at Four Cylinder Car Club events in the 1950’s. It was used in local competition and featured in the Salon section of the March 1953 issue of Road & Track magazine. Only 135 Special Speed Models were produced in 1936 by Singer Motors in the UK, which has no connection with the Singer Sewing Machine Company in the USA.”

“This Singer has never been restored and its condition and patina reflect many years of enjoyment and care.”

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Written By James M Heaney

I first saw “Bernadette”, a stunning 1975 BMW 528 E12 in metallic brown with matching chrome and her alloy shoes sparkling at the European car showroom at Port Melbourne, Australia in the early nineties. My partner at the time told me not to touch her as she’d be too expensive to run. I did the opposite and bought her anyway. I was looking for an old Benz or something European and it had to be from the “old school” smell like leather, wood grain, classic shape, stately looks and of course the bonnet to open the reverse (how sensible) to conventional cars . Bernadette filled the bill. With her long bonnet and short backside (like all good German sports car should be) I fell for her wedge shape so James and Bernadette became an item. My partner also loved her.

In those days the 528 was wholly made at Stuttgart in Germany. The E12 started life in September 1972 as a 4 cylinder and replaced the 1500/200 series. Known as the “new class of cars”. The E12 came to Australia in 1974.

The E12 was designed by French stylist Paul Bracq who joined BMW after leaving Mercedes… the E12 was directly and wholly aimed at the 280 Benz (“First of Fives”). The 528 with its wedge shaped body must have seemed refreshing and youthful against the boxy Benz at that time.

When I finally brought her home Bernadette was my Sunday car, as I always had a run-a-round car, but also would drive her on week days to clients. We spent long weekend drives and picnics in the old girl she never missed a trick and always had a presence when parked.

She loves to eat the highways and feels at home traveling @140 K but hates the cold until warm. She tolerates stop start traffic and loves a bit of a drink with her 1 ton frame. She’s a tough old bird at the best and worst of times. Bernadette was always reliable and never let me down.

In 2003 I came back from being OS for six months. Bernie was being looked after by family members but she was not exercised. While driving merrily down the freeway with the music on a bright sunny day, windows down, I heard a noise. I look at the bonnet and saw steam coming from all directions. I then looked at the temp gauge and to my shock the temperature was on boiling. She coughed, spluttered and chocked. Bernadette died at 29 years old with the original motor.

It was a sad day as the mechanic driver told me the worst “you’ve cooked the engine.” As I was traveling behind her, I was watching her on the back of a truck in all of her classiness, she still looked beautiful even in death. Everybody said “it’s too expensive to get fixed and she’s old, parts are hard to find”, etc etc. The money I needed for her was a problem at the time as I’d just returned from OS, so she stayed at my friends for some months.

Everybody told me the same thing – get rid of her, even the mechanic told me it wasn’t worth it, you’re wasting your money to completely redo the engine from the ground up… so I did it anyway.

I was happy to do it and never regretted it. Bernadette was always a reliable car and besides she’s rare and no one has a car like her and that alone was enough.

Well then the family said “What a good car” the mechanic said “What a good car and a brilliant motor” and sung her praises. He became a fan, and everybody said the car would last another 29 years. Hmmm…

Somebody scratched her in Fitzroy, a trendy suburb of Melbourne, running a coin down all of her left hand panels – it was 1 cm deep. The only car in the street damaged, she was parked near hot sportier cars, Range rovers, but they wanted to damage the old girl. I also had the ash tray pinched and have never been able to get a replacement as it was upholstered with chrome around the edges not available in the country. Parts are getting harder to find.

Bernadette is rarer each year and often people would have a look at her and say nice old BM, or they don’t make em like that any more to that extent. The past BMs and Mercs are the true German classics and how I expect a European car should be (somewhat lost in recent years blending in this more of the same is best attitude) I have to agree I have no interest in the newer BMs and prefer other makes… It’s old BMs for me and the second one is going to be a 2 door …a rare one again and besides Bernadette needs a partner!

In 2010 Bernadette did get a partner, a 1986 E30 Baur in silver with a complimentary Navy blue roof affectionately called “little Bernie”. Both of them are the last of the retro style BMWs. I love the classic lines of these cars as well as all the ’70s BMWs. To me this was the golden time when BMW did classic with perfection. Symmetry and well balanced resulting in beautiful proportions. The E30 is an example of this beautiful simplicity.

Bernadette has been a bit of a celebrity over the years with features in Unique Cars, The Herald Sun and Classic and Sports Cars. She has also been on show twice at Doncaster BMW show casing the new 5 series. She has been a bridal car and has a blog dedicated to her.

She is fairly well known around the traps. You’d hardly see an old E12 in that condition with her white shoes on the street corner any time too soon.

Sadly, last year 2018, after sitting in the garage for 4 years due to circumstances, the water coolant had eaten her insides. She was being readied for a run to Bendigo to the 100 years of motoring run with the BMW Car Club of Victoria when she, with a cough and splatter and smoking like a steam train came to a stand still.

What to do? Should I part with the old girl after 23 years and call it a day and farm her excellent body and interior parts off? Nahhh… I’m into rarity… I’m not into what everyone has. She’ll be back.

It took about 8 months as I needed to find the right person, because I wouldn’t let just anyone touch my old E12. I had someone in mind but they were busy and I would have to wait. I stopped to see Steve Summit who now runs Northern BM. He convinced me he could do the job, I was impressed as he had been building racing motors since he was 15 and he and John looked after the old girl for some time with kid gloves and gave her the respect of an elderly lady.

Now she back roaring and ready to go, the old girl feels like she has rockets on her back posterior. Steve must have worked some of that race car magic through her DNA.

Hopefully she’ll be around for another 24 years, she turned 44 this September, so the story continues!

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Wayne Hayward loved his little 1969 Fiat 500L so much that he couldn’t leave it behind. He just had to bring it home with him — all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.

Hayward drove the wheels off the tiny sedan while he lived and worked in Italy. He didn’t mind using a 50-year-old microcar as his daily transportation — even in the hills and snow of northern Italy. He had so much fun being squeezed behind the wheel that he brought it home to Plainwell, Mich., with the rest of his belongings.

“I’ve had it since 20017. I bought it over in Italy … and I drove it back and forth every day for about 2 ½ years. I had it repainted over there and had the seats redone over there. All the work that’s been done to it has been done by Italians [laughs].”

Hayward isn’t certain what it was that made him want a tiny, time warp car as daily transportation in a foreign nation. He says he just seemed to gravitate to the cars during his time overseas and after buying a different car for his wife from a dealer, the conversation turned to old Fiats. 

“This dealer got these periodically and would restore them. I got into a conversation with him and told him I wanted one that wasn’t restored. I wanted to do the work myself,” Hayward recalls. “He was on the lookout and actually found a couple for me. I turned down the first couple and this one had minimal rust and just a couple of spots of surface rust, so I took him up on this one. It had a makeshift, daily driver paint job when I got it. But underneath you can feel all solid, not rust whatsoever.”

In hindsight, Hayward is glad he pulled the trigger and bought his ’69 when he did. He is convinced it would have been a lot harder to get one after he got back to the States, and he feels like it’s getting a little tougher every year.

” Surprisingly, it’s getting harder and harder to get them and it’s mainly because the Italians have cracked down on old cars, and they won’t release them once they hit a junk yard. But they are literally around the countryside if you have connections in Italy, and I know people from working there, and I’m able to get parts shipped.”

He is a little fuzzy on his Fiat 500L’s history. From what he can gather, he is the car’s third owner — or fourth if you include the dealer who found it and sold it to him.

“How many miles are on it? Miles? I actually couldn’t even begin to tell you, and it’s all in kilometers, too. It’s difficult to tell,” he laughs. “I do have pictures of the original titles … they won’t release the titles. The Italian government doesn’t release the titles. I know the names that were on it and I can see when it was serviced, but that’s about it.”

Tiny Car, Big Impression

The Fiat 500 had long since cemented its status as one of the most successful, enduring and appealing sub-compact — aka microcars — ever conceived by the time the 1969 model year rolled around. The 500 was launched in 1957 and called the Nuovo (“New”) 500 in the summer of 1957 and had some big shoes to fill as the successor to the Topolino. Moreover, the Nuovo 500 was ticketed as a challenger to the VW Beetle, which was well on its way to becoming the most popular car on the planet.

The 500 wasn’t quite as round as the Beetle, but it came in a similar package: four-seater, air-cooled rear engine; minimalistic and affordable. With only a 72-inch wheelbase and 12-inch wheels, it was even smaller than the “Little Mouse” Topolino. Driver’s had to learn to double-clutch the non-synchronized transmission, which was mated to a 13-hp two-cylinder, 479cc engine. Top speed was about 50 mph.

The early 500s only had room for two and used soft tops with plastic back windows, but 1960 saw the arrival of the 500D model, which included a tiny back seat, along with a slightly larger 499cc power plant that generated 17 hp. The tops only rolled back to the top of the rear window, which was now fixed. A station wagon model was also added in ’60, called the Giardiniera. As the 500s evolved during the ‘60s, they gained slightly nicer interiors, forward-hinging doors and larger windshields, among other things.

The “L” model was unveiled in the fall of 1968. The “L” stood for “Lusso”, or luxury, which made it the top-of-the-line 500. The interior was slightly upscale with a black steering wheel with two pairs of spokes, pleated seats, and tubular guards helped protect the bumpers on the front and back. In the drivetrain department, the 500L output was actually reduced from 21 to 18 hp to improve in fuel efficiency, putting it in the 30 mpg ballpark.

The Fiat 500 was a runaway hit in Europe, where roughly 3.5 million were sold during the car’s run from 1957-’75. However, the 500 model was not available in the U.S. after 1961. As was the case for many other microcars that came and went in ‘50s and ‘60s, American buyers just never warmed up a car that only weighed about 1,000 lbs. and could fit in a parking space only 10 feet long.

Tiny “grocery getter”

Other than a modern stereo/radio and modern antenna, Hayward’s 500L is very much like it was when it left the factory. It wears the same shade of white paint and has the same drivetrain. He had one fender replaced, but otherwise the sheet metal is all original.

“The only accessory that is on it is the radio. It was a unit under the dash because it was a daily driver. Everything else is stock stuff. The sunroof comes stock on all of them and the reason they have this roll-back roof on them is the cost was cheaper than metal, back in the day, so every one of them came with that because it was cheaper to build. It’s got a little two-cylinder 499cc engine in it that makes 18 hp; non-synchronized four-speed transmission; you really gotta know how to double-clutch! You gotta know how to do it and know how to bump the throttle to keep things going.”

“It does 45, 50 [mph] pretty good. It doesn’t like 55 and higher very much.”

See below gallery for the little Fiat in Italy

Hayward isn’t sure what the world record is for most people stuffed into a Fiat 500, but he knows at least six can fit. He had that many shoehorned in during a short stint at the Woodward Dream Cruise. 

“I had my son and my daughter and three of their friends in it,” he chuckles. “We got six in ‘er, but we didn’t go very far that way.”

Hayward insists that he never batted an eye or had any doubts about the 500’s capabilities when he drove every day in Italy. If he had to, he’d drive it every day through Michigan winters, although that’s not really in the plans.

“I drive it at least once a week,” he says. “It gets a lot of smiles. I get smiled all the time and when I get passed people are pointing fingers and people wondering what it is. It’s kind of fun to watch people’s faces and you can see them mouthing something. ‘What in the world is that?’ [laughs]

“I’ve had other minis. I had another Fiat 500 in Italy. I don’t know, I just like little mini cars. Especially this one. We can go get groceries in this one!”

SHOW US YOUR WHEELS!

If you’ve got an old car you love, we want to hear about it. Email us at oldcars@aimmedia.com

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This is what Alan had to add about his Beetle…

“This car is a beautiful yellow, it has a black top as it’s a convertible with tan colored seats.  1979 was the last year they made the convertible. It sports a 1600cc engine.”

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