Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post: One Worth Replicating: The Chrysler Norseman Concept by Ghia Continue reading the Original Blog Post
Marty Martino had completed the fibergl*** body last I saw pictures of. I know of no surviving engineering drawings. Chrysler said at the time of the sinking though it was fully insured it would take too long to replicate it. Thus would look outdated if another one was to be built. That’s why Chrysler never had it replicated. I myself think it was a damned shame they didn’t. I don’t think it would have looked dated at all.
"Great, one of my cars went down in a big famous shipwreck." -Virgil Exner Minichamps has a really nice 1:18 Norseman.
A good chunk of that time went into building the body buck, wonder if that was kept of turned into firewood?
like many i long admired this car and immediately upon reading about its fate those many years ago i wished someone would build a replica. i'm kinda surprised ghia didn't have drawings but then again... the italians. anyway, i suspect there were at least for a time some drawings in their files.
One of my favorite " dream cars", ever since reading that old Motor Trend article on missing vehicles. The '58 Chrysler D'Elegance kind of favors it, front end wise.
While the Norseman is much more stylish, I've always felt like whoever designed the Rambler Marlin must've been inspired by the Norseman's roofline.
It amazes me that with the number of dives that have taken place on that wreck nobody has come back with a picture. Many have looked for it, but no one has seen it.
Just because a TJJ Blog (and its resultant H.A.M.B. thread) can never have too many pics : Colorized photos (by Imbued with Hues) Interior photos another photo of the buck the (circa 2004) photos of Marty Martino's fibergl*** recreation artwork
Very interesting design. Had never heard or seen of it before. Damn shame what happened to it. Would seem the 66-67 Charger picked up on some of the design cues. In the second last pic that @Jive-Bomber posted, it looks like kids working in the background. Lol!
Any idea how the headlights opened? Did they rotate or flip? Oddly, until really studying it, I thought they were like Wood lights.......
50,000 hours smells like hype to me. 50 workers full time for half a year? 10-20K seems more realistic.
The styling of the car looks three to five years ahead of GM and Ford . Whose cars in 1956 were still large , rounded and tall . Thank You for sharing JB
One of the advantages of the Italian custom body shops was that they could work from a few perspective drawings, they did not require complete blueprints. This used to be common in the custom body world but by that time, all the old line custom body shops in the US were long gone. What Chrysler provided I don't know but it is possible they sent over a handful of stylists renderings and they took it from there. Another advantage was cost. They could do the work for a fraction of what it cost for union labor in Detroit. In other words the design work was done in Detroit the execution in Italy. It is a mistake to give design credit to Ghia for work they did not do. I don't know if Chrysler has any of the original drawings but doubt it, especially since Chrysler has changed hands so many times since then.
it may likey be the rule as you suggest that the italians worked typically from the most basic of drafted designs but i recall reading about at least one company whose name i can't recall had managed to hold on to many of their drawings that seemed detailed enough from what i saw. still, i'm no designer and i'm going from vague memory so maybe they were more rough than anything. interesting point you made about the cost benefit being a factor going to italy. coach building was still healthy there and labor much cheaper.
SS327, as once a recreational S.C.U.B.A. diver, I can tell you why no pictures have ever been taken of the Norseman. The Andrea Doria is about 250 feet down in extremely cold water. The currents around the ship are treacherous and can change with out warning. The car was crated and stowed in the cargo deck that was located in the very bottom of the ship, getting to it is virtually impossible. Specialized diving gear is required and this is not a dive for recreational divers, 15 experienced diver's have lost their lives diving the ship! If you are interested, you can find pictures taken by professional divers of what the ship looks like now, on line.
With the technology available today it would be a lot easier to recreate some of these concept cars. I watch a YouTube channel from a shop called Retromotive in the UK that does high end restomods; they recently created a buck for a new valance on one of their cars by drawing it up on a computer, then taking 'slices' out of the computer design, sending them to a CNC controlled router, and then cutting out the individual pieces of the buck. The whole thing took less than a day and the buck was ready for the metalworkers to use.
Even though it's inaccessible I wonder how much it's deteriorated. Since it's in very cold water it may in better shape than a person would expect.
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