A difficult time for specials
Over time, many racing and sports car drivers built themselves a Special, or had talented craftsmen build one for them. Whatever was available was used as components. Self-supporting chassis served as the basis, engines and suspension components were taken from production or sports cars. The bodies were either made by hand or, from the 1950s onwards, they came from manufacturers specializing in plastics such as Devin, LaDawri, Microplas or Ashley.
One example of this was the Acriero Special, which Frank Arciero built in 1958 on the chassis of a Ferrari 375 MM (0362) using Ferrari and Jaguar suspension components. The engine came from an Indy 500 racing car and was a powerful Maserati DOHC unit with eight cylinders and a displacement of 4.2 liters. Frank procured the plastic bodywork from Sports Car Engineering for USD 345, which was the Mistral design developed by the English company Microplas.
The Arciero Special was driven by none other than Dan Gurney, alongside Bob Bondurant, Bob Drake and others. The car is said to have been good for 180 miles per hour and could even be seen in films (e.g. Roadracer from 1959).
And what about these specials today, especially if they were perhaps less prominent? Well, the components often became more valuable over time than the whole car. In cases of doubt, hundreds of thousands are paid for the Ferrari 375-MM chassis, as well as for the chassis of a Jaguar C-Type or another rare sports car. Many of these specials were later "dismantled" and only a few survived in their "original" form as specials. And if they have survived, then they could well have a leg up when it comes to registration, because these cars are not well known to either the FIA or the FIVA and the vehicle documents, if they exist at all, provide little background as to what the vehicle may actually have looked like.
All the better when original, simply built specials with the plastic bodies of the time are still alive and maintained.
We recently published a report on an MG Mistral special .
And they are all welcome at the international plastic vehicle meeting "Fantastic Plastic" on May 18 and 19, 2013 ....
