"Jim Spanfeller" (awesomeaustinv)
01/15/2020 at 17:01 • Filed to: car you've never heard of
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"Jim Spanfeller" (awesomeaustinv)
01/15/2020 at 17:01 • Filed to: car you've never heard of | 2
| 8 |
The Zar is a fascinating and obscure Canadian car whose origins are shrouded in mystery. This wasn’t some one-off custom car, but a car built by an actual company that intended to mass-produce the things. They/it were/was based on Fiat 600 mechanical components with a fiberglass body. No one knows how many Zars were built, but at least one survives. Around 2008, a man named Brent Meyers discovered the car and despite being unable to find any information about it, decided to restore it.
Since then, various people on the internet have been intrigued by it and slowly, fragments of the car’s story have been dug up. It appears that the company was started by a man named Leo Finnigan, and there are two theories as to why the company vanished. The first theory is that Leo Finnigan had a gambling problem and lost all the company’s money, and the other theory is that GM bought the company for $180,000 so they could use the fiberglass technology on the Corvette. A quote from a Road & Track magazine says that “ Production planning is well under way for a fiberglass-bodied compact car to be built by Zar Car of Canada, Ld., Windsor, Ontario. The Zar will have an 83.5 inch wheelbase, weigh about 1500 lbs, and will carry a 4 cylinder 28 horsepower engine in the rear. Top speed will be 69 mph, and the price will run about $1500.”
More information about the car can be found here:
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> Jim Spanfeller
01/15/2020 at 17:12 |
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>Canadian car
>Looks kind of like something Ricky and Julian would build if soberish and gainfully employed
Checks out.
HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles
> Jim Spanfeller
01/15/2020 at 17:12 |
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If you told me this was designed in the game Automation if believe your. That has to be the oddest headlight/grille arraignment ever.
Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Jim Spanfeller
01/15/2020 at 17:26 |
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Nope.
Future next gen S2000 owner
> RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
01/15/2020 at 18:38 |
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Need to watch some TPB tonight. Good call.
ranwhenparked
> Jim Spanfeller
01/15/2020 at 20:19 |
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Just want to point out that $1,500 CAD in 1959 is over $13,000 today. That was pretty cheap - a Studebaker Lark started at $2,355, a Rambler American was around $1,835, and a Metropolitan was around $1,600. Though, honestly, it would have probably been well worth it to go over to the American Motors dealer and spend the extra $100-$200 dollars even if the Z ar had hit the market.
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Jim Spanfeller
> HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles
01/15/2020 at 23:35 |
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Yeah, it looks like someone told the car to turn its frown upside down and it interpreted it lit erally.
Only Vespas...
> Jim Spanfeller
01/16/2020 at 01:01 |
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I’m moved. O ogled cars since kinderhood but OMG that c ar? And it’s not Eas tern Block...? What does ZAR mean? The rear fins and the canopy/roof. Heart be still!
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Jim Spanfeller
> Only Vespas...
01/16/2020 at 09:53 |
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Better yet... there might be more of them. No one knows how many were made before the company vanished, and some people claim to have spotted others well outside of the area where Brent Meyers found this one... As for the name, my best guess is that it’s a phonetic spelling of “Tsar” or maybe an acronym. “Zippy And Raceable”, perhaps?