1974 Bricklin SV-1 Coupe

"The Bricklin SV-1 was a gull-wing door sports car assembled in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. The body panels were manufactured in a separate plant in Minto, New Brunswick. Manufactured from 1974 until early 1976 for the U.S. market, the car was the creation of Malcolm Bricklin, a Jewish American millionaire who had previously founded Subaru of America. Due to Bricklin's lack of experience in the auto industry, coupled with the fact that the cars were not properly designed or engineered, the Bricklin factory was not able to produce vehicles fast enough to make a profit. As a result, only 2,854 cars were built before the company went into receivership, owing the New Brunswick government $23 million. In an attempt to reduce production costs, Bricklin attempted to bond fiberglass to acrylic plastic--something the plastics industry had not perfected at the time--resulting in a high failure rate and high production costs (more often than not, the panels cracked while still in their molds). The result was a sports car of indifferent quality and disappointing performance that some dealers refused to sell. It soon became obvious that Bricklins claims of a ""high performance safety car"" were nonsense. Also contributing to the company's decline was Bricklin's tendency to assign inexperienced family members to executive positions on his Board. It is believed that fewer than 1,000 Bricklin cars still exist. The model name (SV-1), stood for ""safety vehicle one"". The original idea for the Bricklin SV-1 was a safe and economical sports car; however, due to the safety consideration of making the car heavier, it became more expensive. The Bricklin was designed for safety with an integrated roll cage, 5 mph bumpers, and side beams. The body was fibreglass with bonded acrylic in five ""safety"" colours: white, red, green, orange and suntan. The cars had no cigarette lighter or ashtray. Non-smoker Malcolm Bricklin believed it was unsafe to smoke and drive. The Bricklin is the only production vehicle in automotive history with factory powered gull-wing doors that opened and closed at the touch of a button (when they worked), unlike the later DeLorean DMC-12, which featured manual operation of its gull-wing doors. The power operation of the Bricklin's doors, however, was plagued with electrical problems. They also leaked, which caused problems for dealers who got little factory support in correcting these problems. Power came from a 360 cu in (5,899 cc) AMC 360 V8 for 1974."