Cars: Fast, Sporty & Expensive

A big, sprawling international auto show is where you go to savor the future and sample-test what you can’t remotely afford. Manhattan’s Tenth International, which opened last week, is no exception. With Detroit in the middle of its 1966 Model Year, the U.S. industry had whipped up futuristic show models as crowd catchers, but as in previous years, the honors go to foreign imports, which tend to be fast, sporty and expensive.

Among U.S. show cars, the Corvette Mako Shark II, so new that it has yet to be tested, has such features as retractable windshield wipers, hinged roof and a louvered rear window that opens to let in air, closes to keep weather out. American Motors’ AMX Dream Car uses a cantilevered roof to do away with corner posts, boasts 240° visibility, and makes a stab at bringing back the old rumble seat with a back bench that uses the swing-up rear window as a windscreen. With busy businessmen in mind, Chrysler turned its 1966 Imperial Crown coupe into an experimental Mobile Executive car by installing a front passenger seat that swivels around for conferences, a folding table and typewriter for paperwork, a dictating machine, TV and two telephones.

Astro Couch. The foreign cars have obviously gotten the message of Ford’s Mustang: a sports car is now a family car. Germany’s Bavarian Motor Works showed a hot little $2,500 sedan, designed especially for the U.S. market.* Britain’s Jaguar introduced its XKE 2 + 2, nine inches longer than the two-passenger model, which it otherwise resembles. It has a minimal back seat that can accommodate two people in a pinch, costs $6,070. Aston-Martin went even further with a four-passenger DB 6 that has a full back seat and sells for $15,400. For the man who wants to take his wife and kids to the beach in a hurry—say at 150 m.p.h.—Aston-Martin has just the answer: the $22,500 Shooting Brake, certainly the snazziest station wagon ever built.

As always, the Italians were there with gorgeous Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis and Lancias, plus a wicked-looking newcomer: the Bizzarrini G.T. America, which does up to 175 m.p.h. on its Corvette engine, has bucket seats that look more like astro naut couches. Cost: $11,000.

Back to the Classics. Italians also pointed the way in safety, with two experimental cars: the PF Sigma, designed by the late Sergio Pininfarina, and the Secura, designed by the research branch of Quattroruote, the Italian auto magazine. Both cars have sliding doors that cannot spring open on impact, collapsible steering columns, heavily padded interiors, pop-out front and rear windows, and a body that sandwiches an extra-strong passenger compartment to absorb collision forces.

Antique-auto buffs who lack the patience to comb the used-car market for their favorite classics could rejoice in the sampling of newly minted replicas. Milwaukee’s SS Automobiles Inc., which last year began turning out reproductions of the 1920s’ doorless Mercedes-Benz SSK Roadster under the name Excalibur SSK, has added a four-seat Mercedes Phaeton. Price: around $7,500. The classic American Cord has returned as a scaled-down convertible (four-fifths original size) that, like its predecessor, comes with front-wheel drive. Included in the $5,950 price: a one-way plane ticket to the factory in Tulsa, Okla., where the customer picks up his car.

* And rented a live lion (the state symbol of Bavaria) to draw attention to its exhibit. B.M.W. got more attention than it bargained for when, in full view of TV cameras, the lion bit a pretty 23-year-old model on the leg —so severely that she had to undergo plastic surgery.