Getting off the ground… it’s not always easy.
Like many of his contemporaries during the 1950s, Milt Brown, a young car-mad engineer living in California, admired the European high-end sportscars he frequently encountered in this affluent region of America, those that hailed from Italy and England in particular being the object of his interest and desire. At times, Brown harboured thoughts of creating a sportscar himself but past efforts by others had demonstrated that this was no easy feat to pull off succesfully.
A few domestic entrepreneurs had tried their hand at creating an American Gran Turismo but the likes of Cunningham and Nash-Healey, for example, were hampered by respectively a very high price-tag and insufficient performance. The exotic European imports mostly did not suffer from lack of speed but, except perhaps for Jaguar’s XKE, they were only available to those with very fat bank accounts. Moreover, obtaining adequate service and maintenance for these frequently fickle exotics could be a problem as well.
Brown was certainly not the first, and would also not be the last to Continue reading “Oakland, We Have a Problem.”
Driven To Write 