Tom in Casper, Wyoming has a great pair of kits — a Manta Montage and an Aztec — that he’s planning on starting to work on in earnest this spring. The Manta is on a factory modified VW Beetle frame, which he plans to put under the Aztec (his favorite car since he was a high school student in the sixties), and then an Eric Martin frame under the Manta, unless he ends up finding a newer VW chassis for the Aztec since the current one has decayed to the point where it’s not worth restoring. Nonetheless, lucky guy!
Here’s an update on Jim’s “X-Prize Aztec” — looks like three new front-wings have been added… I mean no offense to Jim’s honest efforts, but as I understand aerodynamics, wings increase drag as a part of increasing downforces, which is the exact opposite of what you’d want to do if your goal is a high mileage vehicle.
Richard (tvr_vixen_2500@yahoo.com) recently picked up the red Aztec that was posted here for sale a while back… He writes, “it’s a decent lil car and believe it or not the engine wasn’t seized.” He’s also looking for advice in getting the tilt top working nicely, so drop him a line if you’ve got tips*. He recently rebuilt a TVR, so I’m putting good odds that this car will find itself back on the road when he’s done with it.
* Oops, when I first wrote this entry I read his query as “tilting” but he actually said “titling”… He bought the car with a bill-of-sale, but no title, and is looking for advice getting it titled for use in Illinois. Drop him a line if you know about that.
This beautiful — if a little damaged — 1966 Fiberfab Aztec flip-top is currently for sale by Keith (keithd—-@—-.com) in Kankakee, IL (near Chicago) for a scant $1,000. The thing I love about this car is how much it looks like a Hotwheels car, blown up to full scale! Keith has owned the car for eighteen years, during which time the car (mounted on a VW pan of course) has never run. So it’s going to be a fair amount of work for the person who takes over the project, but it has such incredible potential… The Aztec is one of my favorite classic kits and a very important part of US component car history.
PS. Wondering about the last photo? Keith explains, “I also included a photo of the car prior to spending $5 on a can of red spray paint…” Seriously though, this car could be amazing if someone wants to put in some real effort.
David (david.j.dunbar@us.army.mil) just picked up this flip-top 1966 Fiberfab Aztec GT and was hoping to get in touch with other owners and enthusiasts. The car currently has a Corvair engine that is “junk”, so he’s planning on putting in a VW engine and building it to the point where he can crack a 10-second quarter mile. Ambitious!
As far as he knows, he’s the third or fourth owner, and says that every time he looks at it he finds another thing that a previous owners did “half assed”, so his current plan is to take the whole thing apart and rebuild it the right way… He’s said he’ll keep us updated!
Jim’s (jameswlinck@hotmail.com) got an interesting first-generation Fiberfab Aztec for sale, with an asking price of $3,000. If you’re wondering why the wheel wells are filled in, he was prepping this car to compete in the automotive X Prize (building a high MPG production vehicle). He decided to drop out though, explaining,
This car is an early Aztec which claimed 100 mph on 40 bhp. It has a very low drag factor and with some extreme clean up is as good as anything entered in the Xprize with the same frontal area. It is well known that a conventional car that is very light and clean with a small motor will get over 100 miles per gallon. One established that at 114 miles per gallon in 1984 and is entered in the Xprize. I can’t decide to spend the time and money to enter since the rules are not established and they can easily favor hybrids or battery power cars, meaning you can not win with a conventional car, which makes the contest look foolish. I have an experimental water lubricated/cooled carbon motor concept I wanted to try and demonstrate in the contest, but its getting too late to throw all of this together without the formula. So I am thinking about selling the car and just making a proof of concept motor and letting it go to patents, which it has to at some point anyhow.
He’s located in Atlantic Beach, Florida. The car is on a VW pan with the Fiberfab subframe, but does not come with papers and is not currently running.
This is a slightly more recent Aztec than the one in the previous entry (if you go to the categories page you can see I have two models listed) — you can see it’s got a different rear design, and this one has gullwing doors rather than the fliptop (although this one is a spyder, so if it was me, I’d just glass them in and skip having doors). Personally I prefer the older one, but they’re both quite beautiful cars, this one being a little closer to the Ferrari 330 P2 that the seller has mimicked.
As with all Aztecs, this one is on a VW chassis. The engine is a 1600cc dual port, although the carbs have been removed if you’re wondering where the top half is — the buyer will have to complete the build. The car comes with two titles, a homebuilt title from West Virginia, and a ‘62 Chev title from Maryland that it’s currently on. It needs work across the board but is a good start (and is decidedly less work than the previous one), and is for sale on eBay in Charleston, South Carolina (#290245553954) for a starting bid of $2,000.
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