Hi Gang…
Here’s another interesting publicity photo I found recently – and I had to look at it “thrice” to make sure it really was – what I thought it “was.” Shown on the wall of the exhibition was a late 1950s fiberglass Enzmann sports car body on display. How fun and creative this looked – as you can see by the person peering inside of the car body.
What confused me was the caption and the text that accompanied it. It identified the subjects in the photo as a “car” and a body for a motorboat. I caught on fairly quickly, compared it to my Enzmann photos and confirmed the obvious – it was a fiberglass sports car body mounted on the wall for display – as I originally thought. For reference purposes, let’s look at a nicely restored Enzmann. Here’s a photo of our fiberglass friend Erik Ouwersloot from California with his wonderful, sporty Enzmann 506:
So let’s have a look at the publicity photo and the short caption too.
Exhibition of Plastic Material
Stuttgart, Germany
January 25, 1958
In Stuttgart, Germany was an exhibition opened where you could see lots of items made out of plastic. Here you see a car and the body for a motorboat [sic].
Summary:
By the way, since the show where the photo was taken was a show on “plastic,” I wonder what the sports car shown in the foreground was? Perhaps another lost concept car of its era? Go get ‘em Forgotten Fiberglassateurs and let us know your thoughts in the comment area below.
Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…
Glass on gang…
Geoff
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~ i remember your article about Erik’s Enzmann 506. i knew of no other Swiss automobile manufacturers besides Monteverdi. after some reading i learned there have been several, from the very early days of the industry through the present.
. whoever captioned the photo must have x-ray vision. i can’t tell if the young lady has a body for a motorboat.
Monterverdi aquired the molds for the 1964 British Herron Europa in the late 1960s and built a few. It was a Lotus like coupe set up to use Truimph spitfire chassis bits and a UK Ford engine. I had tried to contact them in the early 1970s for windshield info and got no reply. It was very close to a Karmamm Ghia windshield.
That’s a super cool photo ! That is indeed an Enzmann 506 “hanging on the wall” and the car in the foreground is possibly a Buetler – another “Coach Built” car. Buetler built a lot of Porsche 356 bodies too. A friend of mine has 2 Buetlers here in Los Angeles, in absolute top condition.
My Enzmann 506 on the photo with the blue stripe, is now restored and the blue stripe is gone. A funny story on that stripe: it was put on in 1959 as part of a try-out with different paint schemes and patterns. The car got sold to a relative and was used little.
Than a long and funny story goes by and the car ends up in Tacoma, WA. I find it there in 2006. That stripe was still on. In my drive to get it restored I visited Dr. Emil Enzmann, in Switzerland, in 2007. I showed him the photo of my car and he started laughing, imagine he is now 93 years old, he said “is that ugly stripe still on that car ha ha ha ” he rememberred it well putting it on, but never dreamed it was still on that car some 50 years later.
Tell you more later. Greetings Erik
The car in the foreground: The wheel looks similar to Porsche wheels in the
50′s and 60′s.
The car in the foreground is an early DKW Monza. The early Dannenhauer & Stauss-built Monzas had that indentation behind the side windows (which is apparently not a vent, but looks like one). Later cars have the chrome spears but not the indentations. The Monza was built by a string of third parties, not DKW and DKW appear to have denied its builders chassis once their 1000SP was in production. See http://www.DKWMonza.de for more information.(The site is in German and English.)
Hi Geoff,
We do have articles on the car in the forground that is indeed a DKW Monza.
http://www.zwischengas.com/de/FT/fahrzeugberichte/DKW-Monza-populaerer-Plastikrenner-und-Weltrekordjaeger-der-Fuenfzigerjahre.html
And we do also do have a blog on the MBM Tourismo from Peter Monteverdi, mentioned in the comment by Scot.
http://www.zwischengas.com/de/blog/2012/10/31/Heron-Europa-und-sein-Verwandter-MBM-Tourismo.html
Interesting for you might also be that we will organize an international meeting for fiberglas cars in Lucerne/Switzerland this May. We’ll hope to have a substantial share of all fiberglass cars ever produced there, around 200-300 we estimate. For this occasion we will also publish a book on the Fiberglas Era with focus on the 50ies and 60ies and of course the European population of cars, but of course including the US and Aussie cars as well.
Best regards,
Bruno