El Tiburon Roadster (aka The Shark)

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The 1962 El Tiburon Roadster (The Shark) was created by Henry Covington, an engineer at American Fibre Craft of Cupertino, CA. Most fiberglass sportscars of the day were Volkswagen-powered. But Sharks were motivated by the 845cc OHC engine used in the Renault Dauphine Gordini. This made them a bit less reliable than the Dub-based cars, but considerably more interesting.

While the smooth road hugging shape and extraordinarily advanced underbody ground effects are more reminiscent of a catfish than a shark, naming it after the latter rather than the was probably the smarter marketing move. Even so, only about two dozen of this breed of Shark ever saw life on land.

The Guanci SSJ

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The Guanci SSJ

The man behind the Guanci SSJ was John Guanci, a Chicago businessman and certified Car Guy. When in the mid-1970s Guanci surveyed the landscape of high performance cars, he decided that America could do a whole lot better. Even though the 3rd generation Chevrolet Corvette was now 8 years old, a new mid-engined, rotary powered Vette had just been shelved. There was no replacement in the pipeline. The title of America’s Sports Car looked to be up for grabs.

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The Tale of the Dale

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The Tale of the Dale

The Dale automobile was revealed to the world in late 1973, and the world was interested. It was a time when the U.S. car industry was in turmoil, struggling to absorb the triple wallops of fuel shortages, new emission and safety regulations and a brutal recession… and doing it all quite clumsily. Things got so bad that industry observers had begun wondering aloud if America’s Big 3 dinosaurs would even survive. The time was surely ripe for a new way of approaching the automobile. On cue, a colorful collection of salesmen, dreamers, and scalawags were lining up to make their pitch. Malcolm Bricklin’s gull-winged safety sports car had potential. If Bricklin had been as good at making cars as he was selling them, he might have made it. Bob Beaumont’s electric powered CitiCar might have single-handedly saved the nation from a couple of energy crises, had only period battery technology been up to the task. But the most interesting of them all may have been Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael, president of the 20th Century Motor Car Company. She promised a space-aged plastic 3-wheeler called the Dale, that got 70mpg and cost just $2000. As it would turn out, the car, the company, and their creator, were not quite what they appeared to be.

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The Eclectic Electric Sparrow

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The Eclectic Electric Sparrow

As we close the books on the second decade of the twenty-first century, electricity’s role in personal transportation seems assured. The market share of electric vehicles in the industrialized world approaches 5% in some regions, and is expected only to rise from there. This was far from the case 20 years ago when the electric powered Corbin Sparrow made its debut. Then, EV sales were lucky to register in the hundreds annually. But this was also the height of the dot.com frenzy. Entrepreneurs everywhere were promoting their vision of what lies ahead. It seemed quite reasonable then, that this tiny one-seat electric pod might one day carry us toward a utopian future of personal transportation. Like countless other brainchildren of that age, the Sparrow’s flight was as brief as it was bright.

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Henney Kilowatt: Re-Sparking the Movement

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The drive to electrify the automobile is in the assent. The U.S. EV market in 2020 surpassed 5% of car sales in some regions. The Tesla Model 3 is currently the #12 selling car in the nation. If you are a fan of plugged in propulsion these are pretty exciting times. But if you look back, way back to the turn of the previous century, electricity was actually the number one power source for cars in 1900. But the buzz wouldn't last. In 1912, General Motor’s brilliant chief engineer, Charles Kettering, changed everything when he introduced on a Cadillac the first workable electric starter. It eliminated the need for the difficult and dangerous hand crank, and thus swept away electricity’s #1 selling point. Over the next half dozen years, electric car sales ground to a halt…or quietly stopped, since EVs don’t grind.

But about halfway between then and now we discovered air pollution. Soon its roots were traced to CO2 spewing automobiles, and we began to cast about for cleaner ways to get around. In 1959 Emerson Radio of all people thought they had found that way. They teamed up with the Henney Body Company to make the first serious attempt at an EV comeback. Well, maybe it wasn’t all that serious. The Henney Kilowatt was based on the Renault Dauphine (at that time the #2 selling imported car in America) The Dauphine’s clattering little 4-cylinder engine was replaced with a 36V motor that could propel it silently for 40 miles on a charge.

The Killowatt was about half the size of a typical American car but cost twice as much to buy. So maybe it isn’t surprising that only about 50 of them were sold - mostly to utility companies for research or promotional duties. By the close of 1961, the lights had been shut off on Henney Motors… and Renaults went back to being noisy.

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