October 09 2008
Safety buy: 1974 Bricklin SV-1
Over the years, there have always been wealthy businessmen who had a go at starting their own car manufacturing. Malcolm Bricklin was a millionaire who made his money from plumbing and from importing Subaru into the US. His factory though was never able to produce cars fast enough to keep the company going. Only about 2,800 cars were built and about 1,000 are believed to survive. This white one has come up for sale in Holland.
The SV stands for “Safety Vehicle” and a lot of the design incorporated safety features. It had an integrated rollcage, impact bumpers and side lights. A cigarette lighter has been omitted for safety reasons. The body is fiberglass and the car has gullwing doors that open up at the touch of a button.
This particular one is an ex-museum car and is still on its original tyres. The first cars came with an AMC 360 V8 engine, but after supply problems the cars were fitted with a Ford 351 V8 Windsor (5.8 liters). This one comes with the Ford engine and it has done only 25,000 miles. You can find it for sale here on marktplaats.nl in Holland for a very reasonable EUR14,950.
Please correct this webpage entry: This particular car is a 1974 with an AMC 360 engine. It was originally built as a Safety Suntan acrylic car and after a long life in a museum in the USA was sold to a buyer in the Netherlands and painted white. The ‘B’ emblems are not correctly located and the ‘SV1′ logos are missing. The last four digits of the VIN are 0209.
Here is an update for anyone who would like to see what this particular car looked like prior to being shipped to the Netherlands where it was painted:
http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk226/davlin1962/VIN0209beforeHollandbutafterMuseum2.jpg?t=1258319646
Cheers!
Thanks for that Dave!
Tom