10 car makers that didn’t just make cars

Behind the scenes

Today, exotic cars have to be a commercial proposition just like anything else.

More buyers, higher volumes and much less labour-intensive manufacturing techniques have made the modern business of building supercars a properly costed, hard-nosed exercise in healthy profit margins and pure bottom line.

However, 50 or 60 years ago, the market for fast, exotic cars was smaller yet new names seemed to be emerging all the time. 

Their notoriety was sometimes fleeting and few had the staying power to weather the fuel crisis of the early ’70s. Glory and big egos rather than profits where what caused these cars to be made.

That they happened at all was almost always because, behind the glamorous image, the maker earned its real money another way, making something tedious but necessary – so let’s find out what these were.

1. AC Cars

Think of AC and a Cobra or something like this lovely-looking AC Ace-Bristol probably comes to mind, right?

Building Cobras was the glitzy shop front to the activities of AC Cars. Through the ’50s, AC four-wheelers had become increasingly incidental to a contract to supply three-wheeled invalid cars – the AC Invacar – to the Ministry of Health, a department of the British government.

The ice-blue, glassfibre tricycles, leased to disabled drivers as part of their disability benefit, were a familiar part of British life in the ’60s and ’70s, often to be seen parked along the touchline at football matches when they weren’t careering around the streets.

AC Cars (cont.)

Terrifyingly, the later 500cc versions could top 80mph, so it was just as well they were not allowed on to motorways.

Safety concerns and the idea that they rather stigmatised their drivers meant that the Invacar wasn’t popular with everyone.

Graham Hill was involved with a campaign to have them withdrawn – the last ones were built in 1977.

The government destroyed them at the rate of 50 a month in the ’80s and ’90s, and since 2003 it has been illegal to drive one in the UK.

2. Iso

The Iso Grifo was one of the most credible of the American-engined GT cars that emerged in the 1960s, but its progenitor, Renzo Rivolta, was no Enzo Ferrari.

Before the war he made his money building fridges, refrigeration equipment and boilers.

From 1940 his Milan firm made scooters and later a scooter-based pick-up called the Isocarro.

Iso (cont.)

His Isetta was really the first true bubble car, but the Italian public didn’t warm to it and Rivolta did better selling the manufacturing rights to BMW, and other firms in France and the UK.

In fact, it was with that money that he went into the supercar business, in 1962, with the Iso Rivolta.

3. Facel Vega

It is unlikely Jean Daninos made money on his Facel Vega cars.

They were a crowning glory to an industrial empire that made its money out of pressed steel, be it aircraft-engine covers, office furniture or kitchen sinks.

Facel Vega (cont.)

A playboy who, during the Second World War, invented the ice cube-making machine, Daninos specialised in fabricating products out of stainless steel.

The cars, among the most expensive on the road, where a kind of hobby, but took on greater significance when Daninos tried to build a smaller Facel in volume – and destroyed his company.

4. Maserati

The Maserati brothers set up shop making spark plugs long before they were racing a car under their own name.

When the Orsi group absorbed the operation in 1937, it was the successful spark-plug making business, not the racing cars, it was after.

The brothers were only permitted to continue racing because it was a good way of promoting the spark plugs. 

Maserati (cont.)

During the war, batteries (accumulatori), machine tools and bulbs were added to the inventory, and Maserati even built a few small three-wheel trucks.

When the firm started building road cars in the late 1940s, the electrical business was separated from the car making, although they shared the same trademark.

Maserati briefly put its name to pedal bikes and 125cc motorcycles, too.

5. Jensen

That’s right, the Jensen brothers made their money building bodywork for other people, rather than for themselves, and were capable of mass-producing runs of specialised coachwork for BMC.

They built some trucks, too, but most famously were responsible for finishing off the bodywork of the early Volvo P1800 series.

Jensen (cont.)

The truth is, the cars were so badly built that Volvo took all the work back in-house to Sweden.

However, Jensen can’t take all the blame, because this was more to do with the quality of the shells supplied by Pressed Steel than anything else.

6. Monteverdi

Okay, we are cheating a little here, because with Monteverdi, it’s a case of little-known cars, rather than different products altogether. We’ll explain…

From his Swiss garage, Peter Monteverdi sold most of Europe’s most expensive cars including Ferrari. However, he fell out with Ferrari when Enzo wanted him to take more cars than he thought he could sell.

He thought he could do better, anyway, and set about making his own GT supercar with Chrysler power. And his cars weren’t bad looking, either, as this 375L proves.

Monteverdi’s cars enjoyed a brief moment of fame in the late 1960s and early ’70s, particularly the mythical mid-engined Hai, but when the fashion for thirsty, American-powered, Euro GTs fizzled out, he needed other projects to keep his workshops busy.

Monteverdi (cont.)

One notion was the Monteverdi Safari (pictured), an International Harvester rebodied to look like a Range Rover. He also offered a five-door version of the Range Rover from 1979.

These cars were hugely expensive and he didn’t sell many, but British Leyland was so impressed it bought the rights to his design and put it into production, paying Monteverdi a royalty on every one.

7. Lamborghini

It was tractors, not cars, that made Ferruccio Lamborghini a rich man.

After the Second World War, this talented mechanic saw that farm machinery was scarce in Italy, so built the tractors the farmers needed.

Lamborghini (cont.)

With government investment in the 1950s, he built a new factory that produced advanced air-cooled tractors with direct-injection diesel engines.

He topped up his fortune in the early ’60s making air conditioning and fuel-oil heating systems.

8. Aston Martin

Think Aston Martin and this is likely what comes to mind.

Maybe the marque’s greatest days are yet to come, but there can be little doubt that it was under David Brown that the manufacturer had its most colourful period.

He bought Aston Martin in 1947 (and Lagonda a year later) for a total of just over £70,000.

David Brown, later Sir David Brown, was the heir to the David Brown gear-making empire his grandfather had established in the 1860s in Yorkshire. Brown the younger had started the tractor-making division in the 1930s.

Aston Martin (cont.)

The firm had made lots of money during the war and although Brown was famous for not throwing his cash around, he was a great car enthusiast.

He worked out that his company could afford to carry Aston Martin and justified it as a great way of promoting his gearboxes and tractors.

If there was ever any profit in the cars, Brown must have spent it many times over racing them in the 1950s and early ’60s.

9. Alfa Romeo

Here’s another which is more a case of forgotten wheeled projects, rather than a manufacturer delving into a totally different industry.

The Nissan Cherry-based Arna (pictured) isn’t quite Alfa’s greatest moment of shame. Long before, the marque was building Renaults under licence.

From 1959 until 1964, the rear-engined Dauphine was assembled in Milan and sold as the Alfa Romeo Dauphine, an entry-level car below the Giulia.

Alfa Romeo (cont.)

Then there was the 1900M or ‘Matta’ (Mad) off-roader (pictured).

Alfa built 2200 of these twin-cam-engined Land Rover challengers between 1952 and 1954. They were pretty good, but probably too good for the army.

A few 1900Ms were sold to civilians and kits were available to transform the car into a snowplough, fire engine and a crop duster – or even a combine harvester.

Bizarrely, Alfa Romeo entered a Matta in the 1952 Mille Miglia. It came first in the category for military vehicles, against feeble opposition.

10. Zagato

The world-famous, Milan-based coachbuilder Zagato usually bodies other people’s exotic cars.

We’re thinking the Ferrari 250GTZ, Fiat 8V Zagato, Lancia Fulvia Sport Zagato (pictured) and the Aston Martin V8 Zagato, among many others.

Zagato (cont.)

But the Zagato Zele was an attempt to build a car of its own, a sort of four-wheeled Portaloo powered by a 49V Marelli electric motor.

It was a six-foot-long two-seater that Zagato said would do 30mph and 37 miles between charges.

Bristol Cars, which had good connections with Zagato, marketed it in Britain, but couldn’t persuade anyone it was a good idea. However, sales elsewhere continued until the early 1990s.