Being agriculturally inclined to build barns in the country, we don’t expect barn finds to turn up in the middle of a high-turnover metropolis. Yet that’s been happening more regularly of late, and writer Michael Mraz has found another example in South Central, Los Angeles: a one-of-one Mercedes-Benz 1935 Caracciola 500K built especially for Silver Arrows race driver Rudolph Caraccioloa. It is pictured above in better days, after having been restored and displayed on the lawn at the Pebble Beach concours in the late 1970s.

What’s amazing about the Caracciola 500K, and tragic for car lovers, is that it has a good deal of company: in a piece called “Wheels of Fortune” in the February issue of Town & Country magazine, Mraz found scaffolds full of vintage metal in awful condition, rusting outside in a parts yard called Porche Foreign Auto. They include:

…a pair of one-off prewar Maybachs; one of two Iso Grifo Spyders (designed and engineered by Giotto Bizzarrini, who also has the Ferrari 250 GTO on his résumé); one of 29 alloy-bodied Mercedes Gullwings…; a couple of BMW 502s and 507s; a half-dozen or so Lamborghini Miuras, with their mighty V12 engines; and the last surviving example of the seven Horch 855 Spezial Roadsters ever built, a specimen once owned by Eva Braun that was for a time on loan to the Audi Museum in Germany. (Audi was founded by August Horch.) Parked one on top of the other are dozens upon dozens of Porsche Carrera carcasses….

Porche Foreign Auto was started in 1967 by a German butcher named Rudi Klein, who bought the Caracciola 500K after it was shown at Pebble in 1978. He took it to a Mercedes show in Newport Beach in 1980, and when it wouldn’t start he loaded it on a trailer and took it home. It hasn’t been seen since, outside of the parts yard.

Klein passed away, and his salvage yard is overseen by his sons, who won’t let any gawkers into to view the cars. Even Mraz was denied entry. But he spoke to folks who have seen the collection, and one said that there are vehicles people have sought for decades and thought had been destroyed. The head of the Mercedes Classic Center in Irvine believes the Caracciola 500K could be worth more than the 1937 540K Spezial Roadster that was auctioned for nearly million at last year’s RM Auctions at Pebble. But we might never know.

Town & Country doesn’t have a proper website, so pick up the magazine to read the piece and see what the automotive world is missing. There’s a sample of it in the attached gallery, but be warned, it’s not pleasant to see.

One-off Mercedes 550K barn find discovered in South Central, LA salvage yard originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HBH stands for Hermann, Brandt, Hartwig, the surnames of three Danes who have had hands in cars like the Kleeman GTK, Sondergard kit car and Zenvo ST-1. The partnership specializes in assisting other companies develop projects, but now HBH has one of its own: build a one-off, mid-engined concept based on the Aston Martin V12 Vantage.

It has no name yet, but it does have sketches. The rendering released last month, looking much like a Noble, is a touch more refined, a bit less bulldog than the newly unveiled chalked-out version, and we think we like the latter better. Speaking of bulldogs, Torben Hartvig mentioned the 1979 Aston Martin Bulldog concept when talking about a precedent for changing the engine layout of the V12 Vantage, and said that with the HBH car they want “to create a car that has the Le Mans racing pedigree but at the same time, from a styling viewpoint, is in complete harmony with Aston Martin’s design heritage.”

In addition to the new location, the 6.0-liter, 510-horsepower V12 will be supplemented by two superchargers of HBH design. That could be good for somewhere around 700 horses, enough to take the V12 Vantage from Roman candle to Bunker Buster. Only one car is slated to be made, but if (rich) people begin lining up, we image that number could grow. A little.

HBH sketches out one-off Aston-based supercar originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the latest hot Mustang, Fiesta and Focus models may garner most of the attention from Ford and its performance divisions, back in the UK, the Blue Oval gives delivery boys and construction workers something to dream about with the occasional souped-up Transit. The last such SportVan it rolled out packed a 18-inch alloys and white stripes over red paint, but only a 140-horsepower turbodiesel engine. The model you see here, however, is another beast entirely.

This one-off Transit SuperSportVan packs a 200-horsepower, 3.2-liter turbodiesel five with a six-speed into the short-wheelbase 260 chassis. Upgraded aero package, rolling stock and classic blue stripes over white body are also part of the package, all to show the competition who’s boss.

Unfortunately, just a concept, the Transit SSV was prepared for the Commercial Vehicle Show at the NEC in Birmingham, England. It follows a long line of hot panel wagons from Ford UK that traces back to the 1971 GT40-based Transit Supervan, the Coworth V8-powered Supervan II of 1984, the ’95 Supervan III that packed a 650hp Formula One engine and the Y2k Ford World Rally Transit complete with Martini racing stripes.

Follow the jump for the full press release, and scope out the photos in the gallery below.

[Source: Ford]

Continue reading Ford powers into Birmingham with one-off Transit SuperSportVan

Ford powers into Birmingham with one-off Transit SuperSportVan originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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