GSM Flamingo: early bird

By Charlie Calderwood

| 7 Mar 2023

Classic & Sports Car – GSM Flamingo: early bird

The South African automotive industry is best known, in Europe at least, for its fondness for creating larger-engined versions of European cars – think Ford Capri Perana V8, BMW 333i, or the Ford Taunus 30M RS featured in our September issue.

That, and for keeping cars in production long after they have left European showrooms, with the likes of the Volkswagen Citi Golf, a Mk1 Golf sold until 2009.

Neither of these approaches screams of sophistication, but a streak of bright yellow residing in the Cotswolds tells a very different story.

The Flamingo name is bilingual – it works in both English and Afrikaans

The race-bred engineers of GSM, one of South Africa’s few native car makers, built their first car, the Dart, to out-handle the Austin-Healey Sprite. Which it did.

Then came the Flamingo, which, with its closed bodywork, would compete with mainstream Europeans as a lightweight sporting GT – or it would have done, had mismanagement not pushed both the company and the car to an early grave in 1965.

While the Dart (also known as the Delta) gained a higher profile in Europe, with a short run of cars built in Britain, the Flamingo was born of European demand.

Owner Glenn Loxton with his classic cars – a GSM Flamingo (front) and Dart

GSM’s British sales team believed a closed coupé would sell better in rainy England, and they wanted a car to rival the Porsche 356.

The Flamingo would never actually be sold in Britain, but the impetus was enough to set the course for the new car, with GSM keen to put the lessons from four years of Dart production into a new clean-sheet design.

Like the Dart, the Flamingo leaned heavily into the tailfin trend, which was still fashionable in the early 1960s.

The GSM Flamingo is comfortable enough on the road

Its most distinctive feature is the swept point that splits the rear window into two pieces, creating a dramatic, double-dished rear end.

The fin, which was controversial even among GSM employees, was the flourish of a necessary structural feature, not a purely stylistic element, and was the second attempt at a rear end, the first more of a ‘breadvan’ style.

Glenn Loxton’s ’64 Flamingo 1500, nicknamed the ‘yellow banana’, is the final version of the model.

A ‘breadvan’ style rear end was also trialled during the Flamingo’s development

GSM swapped Ford of Germany for Ford of Britain under its bonnet, replacing the 1760cc Taunus unit used since the Flamingo’s 1961 launch with Ford’s then-new 1498cc Kent engine, introduced in the Cortina just a year earlier.

Despite the drop in capacity, reviewers praised the change because the British engine proved lighter, happier to rev and ultimately more potent.

GSM was never fully satisfied with the performance of either, however: the original plan had been for a Ford Essex or Cologne V6, but these were pulled from South African production at the last minute, leaving the car with a much larger engine bay than it needed.

This example, however, is the Flamingo 1500 GSM would have made had the firm stayed in business just a year longer.

The Flamingo’s black interior lacks niceties such as heating, but the dials are comprehensive

The ‘crossflow’ variant of the Kent engine arrived in 1966, to become the darling of racers, kit-car builders and low-volume sports car makers.

It would have gone straight into the Flamingo, and indeed it has in Glenn’s car, which features the later addition of a 1599cc Escort unit.

New though it was to Ford, the crossflow ‘four’ was still far from a high-tech engine in 1966, and that’s certainly the feeling when the Dagenham-derived motor is fired up.

It’s lumpy, and you can almost feel each stroke of the pistons through the steering wheel and the base of the seat as the car vibrates.

There’s an impressive amount of luggage space behind the seats in this classic car

Out on the road, though, it’s a responsive unit, lunging forward in a slightly uncouth but exciting way.

With so little weight to pull along – just 739kg unladen – it’s lively if falling short of fast.

The extremely low driving position and loud, gruff sound of the engine accentuate the sense of speed.

It’s actually the transmission, taken straight from a Cortina, that limits progress the most.

The Flamingo’s stubby gearlever is easy to use

It has the classic 1960s Ford short first and second gear ratios, which have to be dispensed with quickly, but that is made no easier by the long-travel clutch.

A stubby gearlever shortens the throw, and once the driver is familiar with it, the gate can be navigated quickly and satisfyingly.

It’s a thrilling experience down a back-road, putting you in mind of a rear-wheel-drive Mini – which isn’t that far of a reach given that the front suspension makes use of rubber cones lifted directly from the Issigonis icon.

The little GSM Flamingo is great fun on the road

This gives the car that slight front-end bounciness with which Mini owners will be familiar, as well as a harshness over broken surfaces.

Indeed, potholes can be positively violent, but the payoff is impressive agility and near-flat handling.

As long as the road surface is half-decent, the Flamingo encourages enthusiastic cornering.

It’s well balanced, set up for a hint of understeer that leads to a washing wide of the nose at speed.

GSM had big ambitions for the Flamingo in Europe, but plans never materialised

Unusually for a low-volume car company, safety was a priority at GSM, and the friendly road manners and mild understeer bias were part of that commitment.

The Mini-derived suspension and the Ford engine, the latter not exactly renowned for its smoothness at high revs, both make for a busy atmosphere inside the Flamingo, as does the gearing.

That’s at odds with the claims to this being a GT car, but, within the context of the marque’s limited resources, the Flamingo’s coupé credentials are more angled towards creating something that an enthusiast owner could use daily and in which they could travel long distances, while still fulfilling the role of a weekend sports car.

Flamingos sit higher on their chassis than intended, thanks to a measurement error in the moulds

It’s not a GT of genuine polish among its contemporaries, nor is it one for mainstream motorists.

With that caveat, comfort and equipment are impressive: there is a padded dash, it’s fully carpeted and there is plenty of luggage space behind the front seats. The instrumentation is comprehensive, too.

The earlier, Taunus-powered Flamingos were fitted with more elaborate dashboards than Glenn’s car, which offers a sea of black vinyl and carpet, with the dashboard switches’ adhesive labels greatly adding to the race-car feel.

‘The Flamingo’s coupé credentials are angled towards creating a car that an enthusiast owner could use daily’

The car’s South African ancestry is clear in the lack of dash-mounted ventilation or heating – the winding windows can be opened, but this creates problems of its own in the rain, while the dramatic split rear window has no heating element and fogs up easily.

This is a fair-weather car, then, the driver warmed only by the fairly minimal heat soak from the engine – although had GSM reached the point of selling the Flamingo in Britain, a heater would surely have been offered.

That rear window, fantastic though it looks, is a bit of a problem in practice. Drivers of even moderate height will find themselves close to the ceiling of the Flamingo, forcing a relatively reclined, arms-out driving position.

The crossflow Ford Kent ‘four’ is fitted with a tubular manifold, but Flamingos otherwise ran engines in standard tune for longevity

From this vantage point a look behind gives a view primarily of the sloping roof, and the windows only reveal what is immediately behind the car. Great for parking, but not much else.

The ’screens needed to be higher up the sloping tail to be truly useful, which would ruin the car’s looks.

Ironically, the opposite is true of the windscreen, which offers fantastic vision and, if anything, looks too large for the car, having been lifted straight from an Austin A40 Farina.

The double-dished rear end creates a very distinctive shape

There are a few other inconveniences in the Flamingo, laying bare the car’s small development budget.

The turning circle is very poor, for instance, while the pedals are so far offset that, much as you’ll find in many TVRs, you feel as if your feet are somewhere in the front wings rather than ahead of you.

Yet all of those niggles, while potentially disastrous for a family car, are things an enthusiast can easily overlook in the pursuit of driving purity.

Indeed, Glenn’s car was previously owned – and imported to the UK – by McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray, a man known for his dedication to the pursuit of lightness.

Mild understeer was engineered into the Flamingo to make it safer on the limit

Gordon bought the Flamingo in 2002 and owned it for five years; his collection still houses another Flamingo and a Dart.

GSM was keen for the Flamingo to find favour with buyers who weren’t native South Africans, though, and in 1964 an example made its way to England to be driven by none other than Stirling Moss.

The Grand Prix legend is said to have enjoyed the car, but couldn’t see what it offered over an AC, Ginetta, Lotus or TVR.

‘That rear window is a problem in practice. The opposite is true of the windscreen, which offers fantastic vision’

GSM had been at the cutting edge of the new opportunities opened up by glassfibre with the Dart in the 1950s, getting its car to market before many of those more familiar names had fully got into their stride.

By the mid-’60s that had changed, and countless small British manufacturers were offering similar cars, often with greater financial backing.

With no buyers found for the Flamingo in Britain, the money dried up at GSM, which had gambled on access to a larger market than its native South Africa.

Glenn Loxton’s GSM Flamingo 1500 is affectionately known as the ‘yellow banana’

The great tragedy of this was that not only did the Flamingo miss out on the crossflow Kent engine, but a Ford Fairlane V8-powered Flamingo never went beyond the prototype stage.

In the process, the world lost what could have been a thrilling alternative to a TVR Griffith or an AC Cobra.

Images: Will Williams

Thanks to: Glenn Loxton and Legends Automotive

Glass Sport Motors, 1957-’65

The classic GSM Flamingo is a rare sight

Bob van Niekerk and Willie Meissner built and tuned racing cars based on Austins, MGs and Peugeots in order to take part in South Africa’s clubmans scene in the 1950s.

They thought they could create a better affordable sports car than those on offer at the time, but also knew South Africa didn’t possess the industrial ability to produce the lightweight bodywork they wanted.

Then Meissner visited the UK in 1956 and discovered glassfibre.

Meissner and van Niekerk realised that the material was perfect for a low-volume sports car maker, and van Niekirk came to the UK and lined up Rootes designer (and fellow South African) Verster de Wit to help style the new car’s body.

GSM’s first car, the Dart, was designed to take on the Austin-Healey Sprite

The sports car, which would become the GSM Dart (above), had its body styled first, with van Niekirk and Meissner needing to complete the moulds before returning to South Africa.

The Dart was built on a twin-tube steel chassis with Ford running gear. It proved popular enough to attract the attention of British investors, leading to the foundation of UK sister firm GSM Cars Ltd, which built around 70 Darts – marketed as the Delta – in Kent.

GSM’s second and final model was the Flamingo, a neat closed GT designed to complement the Dart. It bore some resemblance to the roadster, but the body and chassis were all-new.

Sadly, over-expansion of the South African business meant more cars were produced than GSM could sell, and in ’65 the firm folded, having built 116 Darts and 128 Flamingos.

Factfiles

GSM Flamingo 1500

Sold/number built 1964/128
Construction steel chassis, glassfibre body
Engine all-iron, ohv 1498cc ‘four’, single twin-choke carburettor
Max power 83bhp @ 5200rpm
Max torque 97lb ft @ 3600rpm
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension independent, at front by double wishbones, rubber cones rear live axle, trailing arms, Panhard rod, coil springs; telescopic dampers f/r
Steering worm and peg
Brakes discs front, drums rear
Length 12ft 4in (3760mm)
Width 5ft (1537mm)
Height 4ft 1in (1245mm)
Wheelbase n/a
Weight 1630lb (739kg)
0-60mph 9.7 secs
Top speed 100mph
Mpg 28-38
Price new R2500
Price now £15-30,000*