Even seen a Bricklin?
No? I’m not surprised.
They only made 2854 between 1974 and 1976. About 600 still survive today.
The car was created by Malcolm Bricklin.
Brickin is a fascinating automotive entrepreneur, who established the Subaru franchise in the USA in 1968.
He envisioned a combination of sports and safety car and called it the SV-1 — for Safety Vehicle 1.
It had a built-in roll cage, side guard rails and shock absorbing bumpers bars.
At the time it exceeded US safety regulations.
Bricklin did a deal the Canadian province of New Brunswick.
The province, really the taxpayers, financially supported the project and advertisements claimed over 700 Canadians were employed in the car’s production plant.
The car was designed by Herb Grasse who had a fascinating career.
While working for customiser George Barris in 1964, he was part of the team that converted the Ford Futura concept car into the television Batmobile.
From 1968 to 1972 he worked in Chrysler’s and Ford’s American design studios.
He then established his own design consultancy, and one of the first contracts was to shape the production Bricklin.
In 1976 he moved Australia where he helped style the XD Falcon and other Fords of the era.
Bricklin was then hired by Nissan Australia.
In 1988 he headed back to the USA and reopened his design consultancy.
He died in 2010.
The most striking feature of the Bricklin is its gull-wing doors.
The second distinguishing design feature is the acrylic body.
A vacuum forming process bonded colour-impregnated acrylic to each fibreglass body panel.
The car came with two different motor and transmission combinations.
The first 155 were powered by an American Motors Corporation (AMC) 360 cubic inch/5.9 litre V8 that was coupled to a four-speed manual transmission.
Later, AMC’s three-speed automatic transmission replaced the four speeder.
In 1975 Bricklin switched to a 351 cubic inch/5.7 litre Ford V8 and automatic transmission.
Standard equipment included air conditioning, an AM-FM stereo and a digital clock.
In the end, the low volumes, the high price (US $9000), poor quality, inability to source motor and transmissions and New Brunswick ending the tax payer financial support saw production cease in 1976.
Malcolm Bricklin went on to import Yugos into the USA, and we all know how that ended up.
In 2004 he was championing the entry of Chinese brand Chery into the USA.
That venture did not work out either.
Bricklin then became involved in EV development.
In 2009 I saw what was believed, at the time, to be one of only two Bricklins in Australia.
It had the AMC 360 engine and automatic transmission.
The owner, who lived in the Blue Mountains area of NSW, was a restorer of toy pedal cars.
He had the Bricklin stored in his garage waiting for “the right buyer”.
I took two photos of it.
I understand that it was sold in 2012 to the owner of the other Australian Bricklin.
David Burrell is the editor of retroautos
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