For some reason, when we think of coachbuilt glamour, thoughts automatically drift to chassis that were handed off to British and Italian men armed with sandbags, snips, shears, shrinkers, stretchers, English wheels, and a variety of hammers. Pretty much every machine that takes home the big prize at Pebble Beach is “famed European marque bodied by famous/obscure coachbuilder.” But of course, we Americans had coachbuilding houses, as well. Budd, Brewster, LeBaron, and Fleetwood are all names you’re likely familiar with. Dutch Darrin, after working with LeBaron founder Thomas L. Hibbard on a coachbuilding venture in France, returned to the States in the late 1930s, glamifying automobiles for the Hollywood elite—perhaps most notably Clark Gable.
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Postwar, American coachbuilding died down, even as hot-rodding and customizing kept the nation’s most imaginative metalworkers busy. The Barris brothers moved down to Los Angeles from Sacramento and set up shop, ultimately making an indelible mark in TV and film. Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s creations stood as far-out mechanical cartoons. In the barrios, late-’30s Stovebolt Chevys were being turned into bombas, while 1930s Fords stripped of all extraneous panels tore up the dry lakes out at El Mirage. Southern California was the absolute epicenter of global automotive culture, while Turin, Stuttgart, and Detroit were mere satellites. By the end of the ’50s, America’s great luxury brands had largely died out, leaving only Cadillac and Lincoln standing. Fisher and Fleetwood had both been wholly subsumed by General Motors. And while the big Cads and Lincolns stood as statements of success, they were mass-produced machines.
-Into the breach leapt Virgil Exner. The man responsible for Mopar’s radical Forward Look cars of the late 1950s put some flights of fancy to page in a 1963 issue of Esquire. His thought exercise revived Stutz, Mercer, Duesenberg, and Packard. Rethinks of Jordan, Bugatti, and Pierce-Arrow followed. Called the “Revival Cars,” the concepts wound up being produced by Renwal as a line of plastic models.
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Some of Exner’s fanciful machines leaked into the larger world, beyond the realm of Testors glue and plastic sprues. The Mercer was constructed using Cobra underpinnings, while the Bugatti was built by Ghia on the last remaining Type 101 chassis, a leftover from Roland Bugatti’s attempted revival of the company his father built. Exner was involved in a program to relaunch Duesenberg as a full-fledged concern that nearly got off the ground but ultimately faltered. But his Stutz Blackhawk? Somehow, that one stuck.
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Launched in 1971, the Blackhawk was built on Pontiac Grand Prix underpinnings, which meant that the grandiose Stutz was more than a kissing cousin of the lowly Chevrolet Chevelle, as the Pontiac rode on an elongated version of its A-body platform. Originally built at Carrozzeria Padana in Parma, the car was quickly redesigned for 1972, with production moving to Carrozzeria Saturn in Modena. Following in Darrin’s footsteps, the revived Stutz marque found favor with the entertainment set. Elvis bought more than one. Sammy and Dino both had Blackhawks. Naturally, Evel Knievel drove one. And what other car could the mighty Wilson Pickett possibly drive?
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This particular example, from 1976, originally sold for a mind-bending $64,165. The seller notes that it was delivered new in California. Said seller claims this Blackhawk still wears era-correct blue license plates, but the photo shows later “sunset” plates, which didn’t enter circulation until 1982. The ad also claims that this car bears the original “Rocket 455” engine. Astute observers will no doubt be mildly perplexed by this. While Trans Ams in the late 1970s sometimes utilized the Oldsmobile 403 in place of the Pontiac 400, we hadn’t realized Stutz was using Olds 455s to replace the Pontiac mills. A look at the photos suggests that the seller has it wrong. That’s a Pontiac V-8 behind the Stutz-branded fan shroud.
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The interior of the thing is actually quite lovely, coming off as more powerboat than pimp. The only concession to ostentation over finery is the utilization of 24-karat gold-plated bezels. Outside, the Blackhawk is garish in the way that many an American personal-luxury coupe from the mid-’70s was garish. Although we might suggest that the Blackhawk actually inspired the fussiness later found on the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the Chrysler Cordoba, and yes, even the Grand Prix. Regardless, if you’d like to own this one, we can’t give you a price, as the dealer insists you get in touch. But really, can you put a price on Bicentennial, Exnerian glory of the sort that recalls the height of prewar glitz? We’d posit that you cannot.
-“The Spirit of ’76″ is C/D‘s 4th-of-July holiday-weekend series highlighting some of the most awesome cars for sale from our nation’s bicentennial year.
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