Back in the 1970s Gerrit (in The Netherlands) built himself a Bonito, but sold it and never was able to refind it… I know what that feels like!
Anyway, his Bonito is a polyester body on a VW Beetle chassis with a Golf GTI engine swap (radiator up front). He’s not the original builder of this one, but did a lot of repairs, including replacing the front axle, gear box (Porsche 5-speed), disc brakes, leather seating, with lots more planned — Gerrit says he’ll keep us updated with this ongoing project.
I have tons more photos from the Carlisle 1999 kitcar show, and I figured that since this year I’m finally going and it’s, oh, seven years later, I should share some VW-based exotics picture with you. Let’s start with a yellow Fiberfab Aztec 7:
Or how about this Bradley GT II, which should feel familiar to you:
And here’s a Riot by Thunder Ranch.
Finally, one of my favorite cars of all time, the Sterling (made in a wide variety of versions):
It’s built on a ‘66 VW chassis, and is relatively stock other than the custom paint job. If I recall correctly it ended up selling for about $1,500. Seriously folks, one of the reasons I got into kitcars in the first place is that I knew that it was the only way as a 16-year old (I didn’t have parents that bought me everything) I was going to get to drive a sportscar until I grew up.
My old friend (ok, I call everyone I talked to in the original days of PoHT my “old friend”) Nelson Weber started building this pretty Fiberfab Avenger in 1969 and finished it a year later.
He’s driven it about 25,000 miles in total, and since the original build he’s put it on a ‘73 chassis (which was about 10,000 of those miles). When he sold it for about two thousand dollars it was in good shape, road ready (and recently licensed), and still had all the original manuals.
Alright, I’m an overreacter. In my previous Aztec 7 entry, I mention that I let mine slip out of my hands because I couldn’t find a cheap windshield — turns out there may be sources in the $1000 range although I haven’t confirmed it. Anyway, here’s Rob’s car when he first bought it back in 1981, in trade for his Bugatti kit (and some case, and a lot of it for a poor college student):
Rob has a far less “easy to fix” story about his. Clearly, the previous owner had walked away from it, but it was still very much completable. Rob finished it off (well, it was just primered and had no real interior, but it was enough that he could drive at 180 kph and occasionally autocross it), and enjoyed the 1600cc VW-based kit riding on 205 and 225/60/15 BFGs immensely.
However, Rob was lucky to walk away alive from what eventually happened. At a bit over 120kph, the rear retaining bolts pulled through the fiberglass (always, always use washers or wood backing), and the rear bodywork went flying off the car, ripping part of the wiring harness off with it. Rob somehow didn’t crash, and unaware of either the sparking electrical short or the leaking fuel line, decided to limp the car home. Not much down the road, a “pop” noise, and he realized the rear end of the car was on engulfed fire. Even though he managed to get the fire department there in about ten minutes, as he says, “fiberglass burns fast”, and there really wasn’t a whole lot left for them to save.
State Farm Insurance were pretty pissed about it, given they thought they had just scored writing some fool a $7000 policy on a ‘69 VW, but after a bit of back and forth, they begrudingly gave him $6800 and sold the charred remains at auction. I doubt they got much.
So I received this email and I thought it would give an answer everywhere, because odd damage can make a kitcar purchase dramatically more expensive than ever expected.
Your site is one of the very few I've been able to find dealing with the Aztec 7 Kit Car... so I'm hoping you can help me out. I just purchased a 1979 Aztec 7 that has been sitting since 1982. It is currently under a fading red oxide primer, has no engine, most of the electrical system has been removed, and it needs a fair amount of work.The engine is no problem - any VW 1600cc will work great in it. The electrical is no issue, either, as I can do that myself with no problems. The body work that the car needs is fairly minimal, mostly due to the fiberglass construction.
What is a problem is the windshield. At some point during it's 24 years of sitting, someone vandalized the car, breaking the driver's glass, rear glass, and the front windshield. I have a good passenger glass, so I can have a glass company make a replacement for the driver's side by using the passenger side as a template. The back glass is simple flat glass, and should be easy enough to reproduce. The front, however, is a different story.
I know that many of the kit cars use existing car windshields in them, but because I can't find any real information on the car on the internet, I'm having problems trying to locate what kind of windshield it uses. Since your website features several Aztec 7s on it, I was hoping that you would have that information. Anything you can help me with at this point would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for your time!
First of all, let me show you a picture of my Aztec 7 when I was basically done building it. It was a dark pearl green, had a beautiful custom interior, a custom luggage case (it was a daily driver), and had been modified extensively to look more like it’s inspiration, the Carabo (including Bertone logos).
Unfortunately, some of the work had not been done well enough. While at first glance, it appeared to be one of the nicest Aztec 7s of all time, not long long after getting it back, the door hinges broke, the interior turned out to be poorly put together, and for some reason I had some stupid idea that required taking out the windshield. I took it upon myself take to it out myself. I cracked it, and then made the problem worse by trying to solve it on my own without the right tools. I had the window professionally removed (easy and cheap), but the damage was done and the windshield would have to be replaced.
Problem is, the windshield is from a farking Lamborghini Muira!!! Sure, when FiberFab was in business (they sold between 400 and 2,000, depending on who you believe), you could buy their clone for almost nothing… but to the best of my knowledge it is not available as a copy any more, so you have to buy it direct from Lamborghini parts suppliers — the price at the time was something like $4500 and only a few were available in the world. So here’s what I was left with:
I mean, still a fundamentally good looking car, but damaged to the point where fixing it was more expensive that buying a new one! And to be honest, at that point I was sick of it. I put it on eBay and got a fraction of what I’d invested — a tiny, tiny fraction! That said, what I proposed the new owner do to avoid the windshield problem was pretty cool:
Sort of a split between the Carabo and the Aerovette and Astrovette series? Sadly, I don’t think the buyer went through with it… It’s too bad though, I think it would have been cool, and would have been a really unique and stunning vehicle.
This actually got sold as a Devin (which it looks nothing like), but of course it’s a 60’s-era first generation Aztec by Fiberfab. This one is built with a three piece body (including a hydraulically actuated canopy) on a VW chassis powered by a Corvair 6-cylinder.
By the way, take the time to zoom in so you can check out the very cool headers exiting just in front of the rear wheels.
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