Tag: Carrozzeria Frua

Book of the Dead – Glas

Memento Mori.

Goggomobil Sedan. Image: the author

In well over a century since the birth of the automotive industry, many scores of automobile manufacturers have been established, with just a tiny minority of them ultimately surviving to the present day. This series aims to provide compact accounts of a selection of nameplates that have fallen by the wayside, starting with Glas. This is the story of how overambition fatally undermined a healthy company in the space of little more than a decade. Continue reading “Book of the Dead – Glas”

Rooting in the Parts Bins – Again…

It’s always the way. You wait ages, then two incidences of Citroën SM’s tail lamp units crop up on the same week – on two vastly different cars.

Those SM tail lights again. Frua's Phantom Drophead. Image: onlycarsandcars
Those SM tail lights again. Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead by carrozzeria Frua. Image: onlycarsandcars

Firstly (as we saw earlier) on Maserati’s 1976 Kyalami, and now here on Frua’s 1977 Rolls Royce Phantom VI Drophead. Of course the common strand here is Frua themselves who plainly had a job lot of SM lens units knocking about. Regardless of the merits (or otherwise) of this vast open tourer’s aesthetics, it’s interesting to see how adaptable a humble lens unit such as this can be. I can’t help feeling I’ve seen the SM tail lamp elsewhere. Any thoughts? Continue reading “Rooting in the Parts Bins – Again…”