Quite a lot of stuff
11/17/2018
The Swiss are known to love their money. And they also give it special names. For example, a one-franc coin is also called a "Stutz". However, the same term is also used for money. So if you say that someone has a lot of Stutz, you mean that this person probably has a lot of money.
People like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. or Curd Jürgens, the German-Austrian actor who became internationally famous with the James Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me", were certainly all wealthy and therefore had a lot of Stutz. But they not only had money, they also liked to show it off and drove a Stutz.
Stutz was also a brand of car, twice in fact. In the tens and twenties, the Stutz Motor Car Company (of America, Inc.) produced fast sports cars that established their guild, so to speak.
In August 1968, a new company called Stutz Motor Car of America was founded, for which Virgril Exner designed the Stutz Blackhawk, which used GM mass production technology but had nothing to do visually with a Cadillac or Pontiac, which may have had the same engine under the hood.
Stutz cars were among the most expensive in the world, with six-figure dollar prices already being asked for them in the 1980s. But they were also very luxuriously equipped with leather and electrical aids for everything, and a drinks bar in the back was a matter of course in the limousines. They were called Blackhawk, Royale, Bearcat, Victoria and IV Portes. Elvis owned four of them, Curd Jürgens a Blackhawk from 1977, notabene without the side exhaust pipes that many other Stutz had.
You can still admire all this opulence at Retro Classics Cologne in Cologne until Sunday (November 18). The cars may not be to everyone's taste, but there was something special about them. Only 617 examples were built in 25 years, making them an exception in the 1970s to 1990s.
Around a dozen of them - in other words, quite a lot of (e) Stutz - are currently on display in the special show in Cologne, including Curd Jürgens' Blackhawk, of course.
