Cars that time forgot - Panoz AIV Roadster

"themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles" (themanwithsauce) 08/09/2013 at 09:35 • Filed to: Cars that time forgot, Panoz, AIV, Ford, Panoz roadster, Roadster

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Continuing in this series, today I want to highlight a much smaller brand than the previous two. I also wanted to do a bit of proper 'MURICA chest thumping (not that a proper German car like !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! isn't one of the best damn cars ever!). Many of us gear heads are familiar with Panoz as one of those "little automakers that could" with their Esperante road car and ridiculous Esperante GTR "Batmobile" prototype for le-mans and other series in the GT1 category. But there was a particular car they made in the 90s that was, surprisingly, one of the more advanced cars of its day. Ladies and gents, the AIV Roadster.

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How is a car forgotten?
Before I get too deep into this, I want to bring up one of the criteria I'm using for these cars - Exposure. I think that's part of how these cars just fade away into our memories is a lack of media exposure. Take a "foreign" (note - I'm in the USA) brand like TVR, for an example. Despite being a british brand that rarely had any cars exported to America and really outside of Europe, there are a surprising number of models present in the latest racing games such as the Gran Turismo series. Couple that with the various appearances on a show such as Top Gear and there are ways for that brand to stay alive for quite a while and be recognized by the world instead of just its home nation of Britain. Another example, outside of Japan the AE86 was threatened to become a car like this until initial D, combined with the fast and furious boom, caused its popularity to skyrocket back to the mainstream everywhere. So when compared to a car like the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which has little to no extra exposure in TV or games or motorsport, it's easy to see how some of these cars can slip through the cracks as time goes on. Thus, I picked this car to do my part to hopefully give it some much needed exposure.

AIV - Your acronym for the day

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AIV stands for Aluminum Intensive Vehicle. I am not sure who used the term first, and I can guarantee you it wasn't panoz. Weirdly enough, this will be the first in a handful of tie-ins this car has with ford. In the early 90s, mercury experimented with using aluminum in their cars to reduce weight, increase performance, increase fuel economy, reduce rust, and in general make their cars better. While these aren't *that* well known, and jalopnik has an article on them !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , it is a notable moment in the history of both the SHO and ford in general. Going deeper into the random tidbits, the Mercury Sable AIV program turned out about 40 hand-built examples in a canadian ford plant for testing. The use of aluminum for the body panels and a few other assorted bits led to a 300+ pound weight shedding. One such example is shown below. In particular, some of them left with SHO V6s under the hood of their aluminum sheet metal. But the panels and suspenion were the extent of the aluminum program. That alone yielded some impressive gains on what was still just a passenger sedan with a fancy engine.

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Now how does all of this relate to panoz? Well when they first started making the roadster, it was a traditional steel based car. They were a small outfit so what do you expect? But not long afterwards, they began using aluminum for the body and the chassis . Keep in mind, that Ford was only replacing the body panels in their experiment and they had exponentially more ability to do an experiment such as an AIV. So to replace both the chassis and body with aluminum when you're the size of....well, panoz, takes balls. To give you an idea of how crazy this is, panoz only delivered 44 steel roadsters and 176 AIV roadsters. The original models just had a defroster for "creature comforts" and only because that was required by the DOT. No heater, no radio, no A/C (all of which were added later, especially after the aluminum diet saved a ton of weight). And yet, this company managed to successfully engineer and manufacture a car that is 70% aluminum in construction. That is absolutely incredible and goes to show that panoz was going to be a genuine threat in the racing world despite their small size. They had some serious skill to pull off something like that and the fact that this car seems relegated to some occasional footnotes here and there is a crying shame. Doubly so as this is an American company and we were (and sometimes still are) stereotypically known as cheap car makers who sell dinosaurs compared to the rest of the world.

But the good news keeps on coming. Take a look at the car and guess what would be powering it. If you guessed Mustang V8, you're correct! Panoz were a big fan of the 5.0L V8s and even managed to secure Cobra spec engines for the AIV roadster. What did this do for the performance? Well the 305 hp propelled the 2570lb car to 60 in 4.3 seconds and onward to 140 mph. 1/4 mile performance was tested in the mid 13s at just shy of 100 mph. Plus, take a look at that beefy suspension, then combine it with that weight number and you'll see that this car could hustle down any back road you can throw at it with ease. There is but one way to sum up this car in terms of speed - a caterham with rabies. Take one look under the hood and you'll know this car was not a limp wristed poser car, like so many "retro" designs tend to be.

Why was it forgotten?
Well there are a myriad of reasons (like always) so let's get started. Little more than 200 examples of the roadster were made, and only 176 of those were AIV. Panoz is also very tiny so a traditional dealer network is non-existing. The brand in general is only known to gearheads.....but the Roadster was never really a race car at the national level like the esperante, nor was it on the main stage of an international race like Le Mans. I can only think of a handful of racing games it was in and all either didn't include it in their sequels or have not survived to this day and age. And I think there is another very BIG reason that ties into the next segment. In fact, I think this reason is enough that a picture of this car should be hung in the office of every higher-up at GM and Chrysler. Look at the roadster for a bit. What other cars does it remind you of? The caterham replicas come to mind, however this thing is rather large compared to the flea that is a super-7. But the prowler? And the SSR? That "retro" look that was all the rage in the last decade is certainly present, especially in the rear view as seen below. But the funny thing is, this car was not a product of the "retro" craze......

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Why should I remember it?
Take another look at the panoz and take a guess when it was made
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Nope, you're wrong. Try 1992 (panoz claims 1990 on their website but 1992 seems to be the earliest customer model made) for the start of steel roadster production and 1994 for AIV roadster production. All roadsters were completed by 1999. This car PRE-DATES the prowler, even as an idea, by several years. Production completed just as the prowler's began. I've made no secret of my disgust for how the prowler was handled by Plymouth/Chrysler. It's just not a very good car. And the SSR, which came a full decade after the panoz roadster, is just as bad. So here we have some small little racing team making cars in some sheds that got it right. Retro looks, roadster fun, modern fast. It was not cheap, but they nailed it. Yet when two of the world's biggest and "best" automakers both copy the idea years later, neither one completely got the point. If I had my way, whenever engineers and execs were talking about retro designs, it would be corporate law to study this car for a minimum of an hour a day for all involved. You can see the influence of the old 30's highboys and hotrods. It's like American Graffiti meets a super-7 knock off. Want proof? Have some exhaust note!

I guess it's just one of those things where it wasn't *necessary* for this car to be huge. The esperante GTR prototype was quite successful and the esperante road car and GT cars that followed gave panoz almost a decade of racing victories and sales. No one really remembers their first vision of a great road car. One of the tragedies about this is its performance figures. Those 0-60 times beat most modern pony and "sports" cars even today. And those 1/4 mile times are enough to let it keep up with such muscle as the camaro SS which has an extra gear and 120 hp over the panoz. A limited number of roadsters had a supercharger equipped as a final sendoff. With modern tires and the extra horsepower from a supercharger, I can say without a doubt the AIV roadster would have no trouble running against cars 20 years its junior. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their history lesson and a bit of good old fashioned 'MURICA! chest pounding. As thanks for reading, have a bit more roadster porn!

With #3 in this series done, I am still looking for more suggestions for this series. I'm also planning on doing a collection of brief summaries of some oddballs in the future. Think 4 or 5 paragraphs, each dedicated to a car instead of a whole article for a car.

ncasolowork2 > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/09/2013 at 09:38

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Cars time forgot about? How about the Saleen S7

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > ncasolowork2 08/09/2013 at 09:44

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Too recent, and it got a lot of publicity via celebrity ownership and magazine spreads. It is a stunningly pretty supercar so it made great cover porn. Oh and the S7R had a racing career that had a victory as late as 2010 so not nearly enough time has passed for it to be "forgotten" just "not mentioned as much".

desertdog5051 > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/09/2013 at 10:34

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That was a great, informative post. Thanks.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > desertdog5051 08/09/2013 at 10:36

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Thanks! Slow day on Oppo isn't leading to fun comments this time :/

BarryDanger > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/09/2013 at 11:37

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Great write-up, I had to go find one for myself - http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/199…

$40k for this beast is not bad but does it come with a top?

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > BarryDanger 08/09/2013 at 11:48

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Nope. No top. No way to mount one cleanly either. But why would you drive this in the rain? And these are actually found on occasion on ebay but they haven't skyrocketed in price due to this lack of exposure and attention.

Sn210 > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/09/2013 at 12:59

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Nice write up! I've always been a fan of Panoz; I've got the Esperante on my bucket list. I'll try to think of some suggestions for you. How about the Lotus 340r or the 5.9L Jeep Grand Cherokee? Someone else posted earlier this week that they just discovered the DeTomaso Guara, that's a good one too.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Sn210 08/09/2013 at 13:05

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Ooooo the lotus limited editions or "_______ by lotus" cars might be good too. The esprit, elan, and elise/exige get a lot of credit but they made some really cool little cars. And actually I think I got inspired by this to write up about an even weirder one.

Did you know the elise was not the first lotus to have a toyota drivetrain component? It was actually a 2+2 coupe made in the 80s that combined the lotus inline-4 with a host of toyota components including the transmission and driveshaft out of the Mk. 2 supra.

It's amazing all the odd cars out there that seem to slip by. I remember my hot wheels car of the 340R was one of my favorites and it inspired me to learn more about it.

Sn210 > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/09/2013 at 14:17

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Yeah I think I discovered it through hot wheels too. I remember a clip online from either top gear or fifth gear or whatever reviewing one of these. They were taking it down a runway, did a 360, then kept going down the runway without skipping a beat. I think there's only like 8 in the US.? I remember one of them came up for sale a few years back

Built BMW Tough > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/10/2013 at 02:15

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How about the Isuzu Impulse?

Zipppy, Mazdurp builder, Probeski owner and former ricerboy > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/10/2013 at 04:24

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This was my favourite car in the Midtown Madness franchise.

spartangeckos > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/10/2013 at 22:01

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BMW Bavaria. US only, getting quite rare, and sounds like an old school racecar.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > spartangeckos 08/11/2013 at 00:48

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If I was to show my group of friends this picture, all of them would either have a hard-on or just outright need new pants. These things are very well respected these days and their rarity is reflected in their value. It would be a good subject for a historical post, but it is not something that time forgot.

spartangeckos > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 08/11/2013 at 20:59

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I just bought the one above a few days ago, and I'm head over heels for my E3.