Readers may recall a recent tongue-in-cheek article I wrote about a quirky blast from the past, the locally built Zeta, which was not exactly a runaway success, and suggested if may in fact have been the last card in the pack as far as the A-Z cars of 60s was concerned.
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Okay, we had a couple of “Z’s”, that fizzled out in the 50s. For example Mr Stanlin’s favourite, the ‘ZIL’, a grossly overweight Soviet copy of early 1950s Packards, thankfully vanished from the scene, as did Germany’s Zundapp Janus, a curious tiny‘bubble’ car, with a door at the front and one at the rear, made only from 1956-7, its short production run of 6902, probably saving 1000s of lives.
Then, right out of left field, in 1978 the Zimmer Motorcars Corporation, based in Syracuse, New York, is born as a manufacturer of neo-classic cars.
Over dinner Paul Zimmer and Bob Zimmer transferred a ‘thought bubble’ they evolved, into a sketch on a dinner serviette of what was to become the company’s ground breaking “Golden Spirit”.
Between 1978 and 1988 some 1500 examples were built and by the 1980s, Zimmer the company employed 175 people with sales of some $25 million per annum.
Built on a stretched Ford Mustang chassis and utilising the Ford drive train, both of which were supplied by Ford, a variety of custom built neo classic bodies were crafted by the company and mounted on the chassis’s to individual customer requirements, the Excalibur being a popular example.
Surprisingly, the Mustang VIN was retained as it met all the requirements of the then current US safety laws…. try doing that these days!
In 1988 brother Bob sold his share in the fledgling company and shortly after brother Paul suffered a major heart attack. Serious economic distress followed and sadly the company was forced into bankruptcy.
In 1996, a white knight appeared on the horizon, and one Art Zimmer (no relation to the original Zimmer family, would you believe?) became aware of the line of cars sharing his surname, and purchased the “Zimmer Motorcars” nomenclature, associated entities and materials. Just gotta be the ultimate ‘only in America’ moment!
The result was the Zimmer Motor Car Club and by 2001 there were over 500 members in the club.
Under Art’s guidance, the Zimmer Motor Car Company now builds 10-20 cars per annum to order from its headquarters in Jamesville, New York, with the largest distribution centre located in Amman, Jordon. Seems like you can’t keep a good ‘Z’ car down! Not too sure of that…. I might just take a snooze on that and see…….Zzzzzzz!