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Creating the Sonett I Roadster and the Sonett II Club Racer was tremendous fun and I wanted to add a SAAB Sonett III the collection. Looking at the Sonett III pictures on my hard drive for many months, I struggled to come up with an idea for the conversion. The inspiration finally hit when I found a picture of an old Indy car. Why not convert the Sergio Coggiola and Gunnar A. Sjögren designed four cylinder “sportscar” into a beast with a compact V8? I set to work and came up with the idea of relocating the wheel arches in order to fit some mighty race car rubber under the widened fiberglass body while lowering the overall height. To increase strength, the quarter windows behind the doors have been eliminated and filled in. The rear fenders are re-sculpted and flow into the ducktail spoiler, providing much needed downforce along with the front spoiler. I really like the 1970’s chrome accents on the otherwise more 80’s looking body and kept most of them. The paint scheme is more 70’s orientated: the blue and yellow paint scheme resemble the colors of the Swedish flag and the shape of the yellow stripe mimics the silhouette of a classic glider plane, to add the aeronautics reference typical for SAAB vehicles.
Click here to see the original picture.
13
The Lamborghini Espada is a vehicle with a very different design approach and reflects the adventurous Seventies very well. Nonetheless it is a beautiful or even sculptural vehicle with stunning details. Believe it or not… this Furgone Veloce version happened by accident. I just wanted to lower the Espada and remodeled the rear wheel arches to fit bigger diameter wheels. It looked horrible with the stock rear window. Consequently I had to design a new window and eventually came up with the idea to convert it to a panel van. Similar to the Citroën CX Tissier shuttling newspapers, it might have been utilized to get the Gazzetta dello Sport to the chiosco quicker.
If the diligent newspaper shuttle driver needed more space, he might have ordered a furgone veloce with even more space for cargo. This would have necessitated extensive drivetrain and frame geometry modifications, of course.