Apollo GT - The American Ferrari | The Bad Blonde Car History This story begins with International Motor Cars and a dream to create the American Ferrari. To paint a picture of the times, 50s-60s enjoyed a flood of European sportscars and roadsters. Though the difficulty of finding a corner station mechanic that could work on your import was few and far between. A genius solution to that? Hybrid. European body with American power. For example, the Cobra, the Sunbeam tiger, Bizarrini, Jensen Interceptor, Iso Grifo and Italia. A young California engineer, Milt Brown wanted to create the American answer to the influx of European sports cars of the times. (Little photo of Milt and I harassing everyone’s ears at the Quail about the Apollo). While on his honeymoon and attending the 1960 Monaco Grand Prix, Milt Brown was on the search for a coach builder when he met Frank Reisner of Intermeccanica in Turin Italy. Turin Italy was a veritable hot bed of coachbuilders. Three years later the first Apollos where hand formed and shipped by sea to Oakland California to be installed with a powerful and reliable Buick V8. The beauty of this, you could take your Apollo to your local Buick dealer and have it worked on. Initial concept was drawn up by Ron Plescia but would be honed and finalized the Franco Scaglione. When International Motor Cars would decide to build a spider prototype to grab attention at the 1963 San Francisco Auto Show they would employ Scaglione. Only 5 spiders remain in existence. Base price was $6,000 and that low price would be what would eventually lead to the fall of International Motor Car. I have four episodes of radio show interviews with George Finley who had jumped ship from Ford/Lincoln to steer the sales and marketing department of this exciting start up. George once told me he was making a deal to sell an Apollo to the head of Mattel at the time, and the gentleman told George if this is hand built in Italy you better raise the price. Ned Davis’ theory behind the price tag was to be close to the Jaguar XKE however, the XKE was mass produced as opposed to the handmade Apollo. International Motor Car company would complete 42 cars before financial strain ceased production. The fall of Apollo according the George happened quite quickly, he was out on a test drive with an Apollo making a sale when he made a phone call to the office. Ned Davis told him to not come back with the car. Milt was in Turin Italy with his family, goes to pick up his American Express airline ticket and they say his card has been canceled and tickets invalid. George sold the car and sent 4 grand of the sale via Western Union to help get Milt and his family out of Italy. Through contract with IMC, Reisner was allowed to send chassis to Vanguard Industries in Texas to be sold as the Vetta Ventura. 19 bodies went out but only 11 cars were completed, the remainder being built up by a garage called Precision Motors as late as 1971. Then Apollo International Company would attempt to carry on the Apollo name. 24 bodies were shipped to Pasadena, but only 14 were built up; six were purchased and constructed by the shop foreman and the remaining four, left unspoken for at LA docks, were sold off in a customs auction. In total, 76 coupes created and 11 spiders, likely half that in existence.
