At the London Classic Car show last year, I saw a car that I’d heard of but not previously seen in the metal – or fibreglass, to be more precise. A bright orange wedge, it could hardly be more ‘70s, and would attract attention anywhere. So what was it?
Turned out it was a Bricklin SV-1, which was built for only a short time – just two years from 1974 to ’75. It had a number of unusual features, starting with where it was built – Canada, not renowned as one of the world’s major motor manufacturing countries.
It featured gull-wing doors, last seen on a production car on the Mercedes 300SL in the late 1950’s (although the German company also featured them on their extraordinary C111 prototypes) and half a decade before Delorean did the same… oh, and pop-up headlamps, too.
The body was made of a fibreglass and colour-impregnated acrylic resin composite surrounding a steel cell that included integral roll-over protection and special shock-absorbing safety bumpers, which were designed to absorb an impact of up to 20km/h with no cosmetic damage to the car.
Indeed, safety was such a strong theme of the car that the letters in its name stood for Safety Vehicle 1. Even the five colours that the Bricklin came in were given “safety” names – Safety Red, White, Green, Orange, and Suntan. As if this wasn’t enough, because Malcolm Bricklin disliked the idea of smoking in his cars on safety grounds, there was no cigarette lighter or ashtray, either.
Not your average sports car, in more ways than one.
Nor was everything as it seemed. To begin with, although the Bricklin – named after company founder Malcolm Bricklin – was built in Canada (New Brunswick, to be precise), the company HQ was actually based in Phoenix, Arizona. Foreshadowing what happened with Delorean in Ireland, the Bricklin was built in Nova Scotia thanks to an initial provincial government incentive of $4.5 million, which over time became $23m before time was called on the venture. Intended to assist production, the money was used instead to pay development and salary costs – when this came to light, political scandal ensued, but that was later.
The first prototype was created from a parts bin mixture from a wide variety of cars – for example, the engine was Chrysler six-cylinder, rear suspension came from the Datsun 510 and various bits and pieces were borrowed from Toyota’s, Opel’s, and other Datsuns. Intriguingly, the tail lights came from the De Tomaso Pantera.
The bodywork was a complicated affair, and its development was fraught with difficulty, not helped by its assembly requiring the putting together of no less than 22 separate panels. The panels themselves failed to pass muster, mainly due to bonding issues – initially as many as 60% failed, and later improvements still only reduced the failure rate to c.20%, adding considerably to overall production costs.
Eventually, the Bricklin SV-1 was previewed in Las Vegas and officially launched at the Four Seasons hotel in New York, but this was not the start of a success story, despite Malcolm Bricklin’s claims to have signed up 247 dealers and generated $100 million of orders.
Although a Chrysler engine was used in the first prototype, V8’s were used in later ones and the first production cars were fitted with a 5.9-litre V8 from AMC producing 220bhp, while 1975 cars were built with a Ford V8 of 5.7 litres but considerably less power, just 175bhp.
Despite these changes and improvements (except in power output), and high-profile PR exercises such as loaning Arizona police a handful of SV-1’s to use as patrol cars, the Bricklin was beset with problems that went beyond just production issues, which in and of themselves resulted in the company having to increase the price of the car substantially on an ongoing basis.
The gull-wing doors were heavy and electrically operated, which meant they were a drain on the battery and failures of both doors and batteries were common; even when they worked, they took up to 12 seconds to open or close. The signs were not good when manual operating options were included right from the start.
Nevertheless, the car was reasonably well received by the press. In 1975 Car and Driver did a comparison test with the only other plastic-bodied car on sale in the US at the time, the Chevrolet Corvette C3, and considered the Bricklin as “a tangible threat to the Corvette”, with both cars evenly matched, at least in performance terms, despite the Corvette being capable of 129mph compared to the lighter Bricklin’s maximum of 118mph. However, they criticised the difficulty of getting in and out of the car – despite enjoying the visual impact of the gullwing doors – and felt that the interior was beset with issues such as very limited headroom, poor visibility and uncomfortable seating that ultimately made the Corvette a better, safer option.
So despite initially making favourable comments about the Bricklin, in the end, most of the excitement was based on its novelty – even its safety elements were deemed to be not that special. You can read the entire test here .
Ultimately, steeply rising prices – in the two years of production, the Bricklin’s price doubled – and no end to quality issues resulted in just 2,854 cars being built before the business was put into receivership in 1976 – another failure in a long list of independent manufacturers trying to take on the big three.
Perhaps suprisingly, of that 2,854, over half are believed to still survive and the car has quite the cult following, though very few are in the UK – the only one I’ve ever seen was that one at London’s Excel. Many of the survivors have been modified in various ways, not least the spectacular but untrustworthy doors.
For such an unusual car, the Bricklin has had more media coverage than you might expect, much of it after the car stopped being made. It’s been the subject of documentaries, a satirical – but not very good – song, and even a funk musical – The Bricklin.
I did find one, believed to be the sole example on the road in the UK, currently for sale for a hefty £32,500 (there is also one in Begium for half that price) – some of the photos we’ve used are from the dealer website. I have to say there are many cars I would buy for that money before I considered this, but there’s no doubting that a Bricklin SV-1 is very different, especially in Europe, and you’d be enjoying an intriguing slice of motoring history.
