A Bricklin SV-1 went up for sale on the Bring-a-Trailer website.
Those of you a little longer in the tooth will recall the brief but colorful heyday of Canada’s very own gullwinged “sports” car, the Bricklin. Conceived and produced in New Brunswick in the 1970s, the car was bedeviled by any number of issues related to quality, performance and, well, you name it.
The man behind the project way back when was Malcolm Bricklin, who had an interesting pedigree in the industry even before he got the notion to build a unique and daring-looking car in the Canadian Maritimes. Bricklin had actually founded Subaru of America, and he later brought the Yugo to the U.S. as well.
But the company carrying his name and the Bricklin SV-1 (for Safety Vehicle 1) that it produced were in a category of their own. And a centerpiece of the car were the gullwing doors, which were a very rare sight on North American roads. Those doors opened via an electric motor, but presciently, Bricklin had a manual release placed inside that would allow occupants to get out (though with a lot of muscle power) if that battery conked out. And conk out it did, if the user were, for instance, to attempt to open one door whilst closing the other.
Malfunctions of the sort were rampant and indeed became legendary with the Bricklin SV-1. And for a sports car, it wasn’t all that sporty. Initially the model had a 360-cc (5.9L) AMC V8 engine mounted under the hood, good for 200 hp, but by 1975 – the year of this model recently up for sale on Bring-A-Trailer – the engine running the Bricklin SV-1 was a Ford 351 (5.8L) unit able to muster only 175 hp. Getting from 0-60 mph took 8.3 seconds. According to Car & Driver, which tested out the model at the time, it offered lousy headroom, a lousy driving position, lousy visibility and the handling of a very run-of-the-mill sedan.
In the end, Bricklin sold only about 3,000 of the SV-1 before putting it out of its – and its own – misery.
That’s a small total, but the Bricklin SV-1 is actually not a stranger to the Bring-a-Trailer website. A Safety Suntan-coloured SV-1 sold on the site back in August (for $18,250 USD), and just last month, a yellow model sold to a buyer ready to pay $25,001 for it.
As for this car, it was being sold by the person who had owned it since 2004 and had had it refurbished over the years of ownership. That included switching out the original engine for another Ford 351 V8. It also features that Safety Sunset exterior finish and matching tan vinyl and fabric upholstery. Selling price? It went yesterday to a bidder ready to fork over $26,200. Seems this car gets more lovable as the months and years go on.
