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8 Mostly Modern Coachbuilt Takes on Production Cars
If you aren’t quite sure what “coachbuilding” means, or what a coachbuilder does now that no one drives, y’know, coaches, think of hot-rodding. To make a hot rod, a builder pulls parts and pieces from anywhere he likes to realize his vision for a specific, one-off car. A coachbuilder is a company that starts with a production car or chassis and builds a series of models (rarely, just one) to realize its vision for that model. (In both hot rodding and coachbuilding, of course, there’s a lot of fabrication involved, too.)
Sometimes, especially if the coachbuilder is famous in its own right, the coachbuilder works in concert with the company that built the original car, and the car has the blessing of the factory. Other times, the coachbuilder picks up where the factory left off, and the two never interact.
Coachbuilt vehicles are a whole world unto themselves. They scratch an itch for enthusiasts whose imaginations take them far beyond what their favorite manufacturer would ever approve—or afford. Between us, we have favorites from the 1930s through the 2010s, and they all have one thing in common: Their designers drew outside the lines drawn by the factory.
Take a glance at the list, and then let us know what’s your favorite coachbuilt classic!
Zimmer Quicksilver
While I clearly have a bias in the matter, there’s no doubt that the Pontiac Fiero was the best platform for custom-body coachbuilders, and Zimmer was primed to make something perfect given their skills in lengthening wheelbases for maximum curb appeal. — Sajeev Mehta
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Callaway Speedster
I don’t know if this is enough of a departure from the original material to be considered coachbuilt, but the C4 Callaway Speedsters always struck the right chord for me. The reworking of the front and rear fascias are aggressive but still Corvette, and the chopped windshield looks just right. Find one in a shouty ’90s color, and it’s the perfect blend of concept and production looks.
The LM Speedster is probably closer to “coachbuilt” in that it’s dramatically different than the original. I prefer the non-LM’s looks, but that TVR-looking Corvette is about as wild as a C4 can get. The Le Mans influence only adds to the appeal. — Eddy Eckart
Abarth 750 GT Zagato
The obvious answer here, at least to anyone who has spent face time with me for more than 20 minutes, is the Abarth 750 GT Zagato. This car is a suitcase nuke of personality. In a tiny Italian package you’ve got a rear-engine, racing-pedigreed dynamo with a double bubble roof and some of the most outrageous styling cues you can imagine. The covered headlights are a little alien and kind of adorable. The hump over the engine in the rear, raised to accommodate the taller 747-cc engine based on that of Fiat’s humble 600, looks cartoonish in the best possible way. The cockpit is tiny, perfect for my 5’2” frame. I’m not usually an Italian-car obsessive, but if I ever get to drive one of these I will be like a pig in shit. — Eric Weiner
Lynx Eventer
The story goes that the little British company Lynx hoped to sell its shooting brake XJ-S design back to Jaguar, but, when the big boss Sir John Egan refused, Lynx went ahead with converting cars anyway. In 1982 it would have cost £6950 to turn your donor Jag into an Eventer—almost as much as the original XJ-S. By the time production ended almost 20 years later you’d have to pay close to £50,000 for the privilege. Nonetheless, 63 were built—all of them gorgeous. I’ll take mine in green over tan, please. — Nik Berg
Blue Train Bentley
Honorable mention to Pininfarina’s Corvette Rondine, but I’m giving the nod here to former Bentley chairman Woolf Barnato’s Blue Train Bentley, so called because he raced the famed French Blue Train with it one night in 1930—786 miles from Cannes to London (or Calais, in the case of the train). But the name is a misnomer applied long after the fact, because he didn’t, in fact, race the train in this car. He raced it in a different Speed Six Bentley, one with regular old saloon bodywork, which was still a mean feat. But the car we call the Blue Train Bentley today, Barnato’s Gurney-Nutting–bodied Speed Six coupe, is and always has been a stunner. It looks like no other Bentley of the period, and it really is just as easy to imagine him trouncing that train with it through the darkness of the French countryside all those years ago. — Stefan Lombard
Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Shooting Brake
For most people, high performance plus perceived practicality equals crossover. Too bad, because station wagons—or, as the UK calls them, shooting brakes—are just so much better looking (and better driving). Take, for instance, the C7 “Aerowagen” built by Callaway, or the Vanquish Shooting Brake built by Zagato for Aston Martin, based on its Vanquish coupe.
Around 2017, Aston Martin commissioned Zagato, with whom it has a long history, to build 325 cars in four different body styles: a convertible (Volante), a roofless speedster, a coupe, and a wagon. The arrangement was meant to attract collectors who wanted a full set, but I’d be quite content with one of the 99 wagons—preferably in green. You won’t be fitting any Billy bookcases in this wagon: It’s a luxury vacation-mobile for two, with a body made of carbon fiber, a V-12 with nearly 600 hp, some of the coolest taillights I’ve ever seen, and a profile to die for. It’s … fabulous. If I had half a million dollars, and a copy of Nik’s road trip book, you might never see me again. — Grace Houghton
Ferrari 250 GT SWB Breadvan
Coachbuilding isn’t something I’ve paid much attention to, but it’s hard to ignore the Ferrari 250 GT SWB Breadvan, built from a 1961 Berlinetta to compete against the newly minted Ferrari 250 GTO. Count Giovanni Volpi inherited a fortune from his late father, and did the right thing with the money: Invested it in auto racing, including a Formula 1 team. He also raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and tried to buy some GTOs from Ferrari, but was refused, because he had pissed off Enzo. So Volpi hired designer Giotto Bizzarrini to modify the Berlinetta to make it a GTO-beater. It was faster than Ferrari’s own GTOs at the 1962 24 Hours of Le Mans, but broke. The point was made, though, just as it was when Ford beat the Ferraris with its Ford GT: Annoy stupid-money millionaires at your peril. — Steven Cole Smith
The Zimmer and the Callaway were really not coach builders. They just were rebodied molded composite bolt on panels.
The others here are hand formed masterpieces. That is true coach built.
Zimmer added over a foot of wheelbase to a Fiero in the hardest part (between the cowl and front wheel, where all the steering stuff happens) and that isn’t Coachbuild-y enough?
I am well versed in the ZImmer since the primary dealer was her in Ohio.
The stretch of the Fiero chassis is not really that difficult. Most Kit Car guys did it at home make a Ferrari or Lambo kit.
The ZImmer is more a factory kit car vs Coach Built. It was like the Mera or even the companies that made the Fiero convertibles.
Coach building is more like what Ferrari., Alf, Rolls and Duesenberg where they would provide a chassis and a grill. Then the buyer chooses a shop and they hammer out a new body to your spec.
Coach making is consider metal work and hand hammered out. It is a skill few learn and even less have today. Italy still has the old school hammered bodies
I think it is called Metal works in California that hammers out many show cars for the automakers.
If you bleed and have lost a finger nail to an English wheel you are a coach builder or true metal man.
One is modified and the other is fabricated.
Not being argumentive. But I own a highly modified Fiero. Yet I do not consider myself a coach builder. There is just a lot more skill in real coach building vs bolding on molded parts and some under body modifications.
The Corvette at the start of the story with a fully hand hammered steel body Vs the Calaway is a good example modified and created.
Understand completely, and I believe we discussed the ZQS back in the days of the Hagerty Community Forum.
For me, just because you hang new, longer fiberglass panels on a Pontiac to make a neoclassic doesn’t exclude you from the coachbuilding clique. And making the world’s only Fiero with power steering (correct me if I am wrong) is also a bit of an engineering feat in my book.
Actually there are a handful of 1988 GT’s that did get the electric power steering. The units show up on E bay now and then and sell for about the price of a used 2M4.
It is the same unit used on Saturn and the Cadillac Seville. It was all electric. It is still used on much of todays cars.
I agree engineering to build a car like the Zimmer. But not Coach building.
Coach building is all about metal forming and more art and design than engineering.
Let put this in Lincoln Terms.
1937 Lincoln K Sport Sedan by Derham Look this car up. It was a chassis that was delivered to Derham and they designed and fabricated from metal this car. The engineering was all Lincoln but the styling and design were all hammered out by Derham.
This is a perfect example of Coachbuilding.
If you like you can even include a Blue Bird bus as GM would deliver chassis and they would fabricate those art deco Aluminum bodies back in the day.
Bolting on body panels is kit car. I have done that and that and i’m no Coach builder.
Thanks for the Lincoln example, that makes it more fun. 🙂 And I didn’t know EPS made production at the end! The Fiero was truly a tragic hero of an automobile, even moreso than I knew!
Sorry, but I don’t see the issue with Zimmer hiring Don Johnson to create a new body for the Fiero, and hiring craftspeople to turn his vision into a fiberglass reality in the coachbuilding tradition. I have never seen a definition of coachbuilding that excluded non-metal materials, or even mentioned the material choice. If you know of a definition outside of your valid references that does make such an exclusion, I would love to be proven wrong here.
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/whats-a-coachbuilder-exactly-what-makes-a-car-coachbuilt.10184/
As you can see this is a debated topic in other forums too.
I used the Lincoln as I thought you would enjoy it.
The one point I did not post was most coach bolt cars are one off cars. They are built to the buyers request. Not production or even limited production.
It is a topic that will remain debated.
I looked up Zimmerman yo see what they considered themselves. They claim a mfg and even used a production line.
Don’t you ever have to go to the bathroom?
Coachbuild.com offers the following definition here: https://coachbuild.com/index.php/about-coachbuilding/definition-of-special-coachbuilding
Additionally, Zimmer sold their cars through their own dealer network (never direct to consumer) and on their own MSO’s.
The Zimmer Quicksilver is funny to see at an AutoZone. A Fiero doesn’t give a lot of real estate to work with. What did it look like on the inside, stock Fiero?
The dash is heavily modified with a new center stack and a legit glovebox using Cadillac DeVille hardware. Still a Fiero for sure, but anyone can admire the effort to differentiate.
The photo is a prime example (of MANY) that need some judicious cropping.
Hagerty’s media/all-articles pages are rife with wasted space because of this.
The photo is a prime example (of MANY) that needs some judicious cropping.
Hagerty’s media/all-articles pages are rife with wasted space because of this.
Coachbuild.com offers the following definition here: https://coachbuild.com/index.php/about-coachbuilding/definition-of-special-coachbuilding
Where is the Cadillac Eldorado?
Those XJ-Ss with the dual headlights were absolute works of art.
Green over tan was always perfect!
The passing reference to Zagato should have explored a bit more. Zagato built a number of Zagato Porsche 356s recently, one of which is in Spike Ferensten’s collection. It is a “continuation” of a car that was not built in Coupe form. Gorgeous. Moreover, is a modified Rod Emory “outlaw” not the best example of coach built cars in America? Rod will take your beat 356 coupe and turn it into a stunning Speedster C. Is it a hot rod or Coachbuilt. I lean to the latter.
Eric, I owned a Abarth 750 GT Zagato straight from Italy, had it for two years. Yes, it was a thrill to drive and now I am so sorry I sold it. Got married had kids and the car had to go.
That Corvette Rondine is definitely channeling a 53 Studebaker Starliner coupe, especially the greenhouse.
But the Blue Train Bentley–now that’s a CAR! BTW, that’s a Weymann patent body–wood framed and covered with the 20s/30s version of vinyl–kinda like the doped fabric used on aircraft of the period. Made for a very lightweight body that didn’t squeak like wood-framed/metal clad bodies of the day. But in an accident…not to good.
I once had my Fiat Topolino in a display–the arrangers had a sense of humor when they posed a Speed Six Bentley touring car next to my Mouse. The Fiat’s roof was level with the Bentley’s window sills….made quite a comparison of the large and small cars of the 30s.
If you want a Bentley Blue Train, just get in contact with Petersen Engineering in the UK and they will build you one !!
With the exception of that Bentley, this is quite the assortment of Corvette Summer fugly.
Sorry, but these may be the saddest collection of misfits that I’ve ever seen (with the exception of the mean looking Bentley with it’s over-the-top louvers and absolute gangster appeal)! Perhaps the ZImmer is the most hideous of the lot—it weds virtually every bad design feature of the 70s and 80s. Let me guess, does it have the hideaway spare popping up from the rear bumper???
Agreed. Most are butt ugly and confirm that the manufacturers knew best.
Corvette Rondine in my opinion. Excellent body lines without being the least bit garish.
I have learned not to be surprised by a verbal volley about a Fiero.
I’m surprised that the work of Rick Dore and/or Terry Cook (DelahayeUSA) was not mentioned in this article. The choices made herein pale when compared to the work from the studios of these two metal guys.
If you included a one-off like the Bertoni Rondine, where was the Fitch Phoenix ?
Corvette Rondine looks like a ’53 Studebaker Starlight Coupe. Properly coach built, though.
Most of the pre war luxury cars, such as the Bentleys, were also coach built, often with a body or body features picked out from a coach builder’s catalog (My Grandfather was an expediter at a Cadillac agency, sitting with the local gangster as they picked out the body, special features and interior materials from the dealer’s catalogs, then making sure the the car was built as ordered).
Love the Zagato, and the Lynx (I have a soft spot for “shooting brakes”), as well as the Abarth (there were LOTS of special body Abarths, from Fiat, Porsche and Simca).
As for the more radical body Corvettes, well… That’s a mixed bag. The later Corvettes with their unique construction made it easier to replace the body. Some better looking than others. I thought that these special body Corvettes would be more popular, but I guess the idea of spending Ferrari money on anything but a recognizable Ferrari or Lamborghini sort of missed the mark. If nobody knew what one was driving, was there a point? And… It was just a Corvette?
I love the idea of bespoke coachwork, but between mandated pedestrian protections, crash standards and interior impact standards, and liability requirements, it’s just about impossible to build one offs.