Quentin’s dazzled by the Ghia’s dashboard – and star-struck by its provenance
The Ghia L6.4 was once the preserve of Hollywood’s high-fliers. Now it’s Quentin’s turn to take the controls of this jet-age rarity
Blowing most of your pension on a Sixties Italian-american crossbreed that nobody’s heard of might not sound like a terribly good idea, but for one far-sighted enthusiast such a reckless act has turned into a total triumph. In less than two years the value of his unconventionally reinvested pension has grown by nearly 100%. This is a story of gut instinct overriding caution with spectacular results. Our hero is a man whose investment theology is simple – classic cars made in minuscule numbers with a special history rarely go down in value. A nugget of advice that should make us all pause for thought.
Graham (he’d prefer if I didn’t share his surname) has a collection of low-volume, special-body Fifties Cadillacs and a Facel Vega Excellence. But top of his collector’s dream list had always been one very special car – the mythic Ghia L6.4. Only 26 were ever made and only 17 survive, making it rarer than a Ferrari 250 GTO. A futuristically beautiful Mopar-muscle Italianate GT, it became the transport icon of the Hollywood and Las Vegas Rat Pack with roots stretching all the way back to Harley Earl and the GM Motorama experimental cars that thrilled so many millions of Americans in the Fifties.
And our story begins with one of those Motorama cars – Chrysler’s 1954 Fire Arrow IV roadster penned by Head of Advanced Design, Virgil Exner. Despite rave reactions from the 1.9 million visitors at the 1954 Motorama, Chrysler decided not to put the Fire Arrow into production. But Eugene Casaroll of the Dual Motors Corp (he invented the eight-vehicle car transporter) had a commercial relationship with Chrysler shipping its new cars to dealers. This inner-circle position allowed him to buy the rights to the Fire Arrow along with a supply of Dodge underpinnings. By 1955 Casaroll had struck a deal with Ghia in Italy to design, build, paint and trim a new body. The shells were then shipped back to the US for electrics and final assembly. In 1957 Casaroll launched the Dual-ghia convertible at $7646 and crossed his fingers.
‘Rarer than a 250 GTO, with low, sleek styling and no baroque Fifties finnery’
Even though it cost $200 more than a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Convertible, it didn’t take long for the Dual-ghia Convertible to become the hottest ride on the street – 1957 America was obsessed with space-age cars and movie stars. Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan, Peter Lawford, Desi Arnaz and Lyndon Johnson owned them, and when Dean Martin drove his in Kiss Me Stupid the Dualghia was America’s most lavish and expensive car. But that was part of the problem. Weighing in at 3600lb (1633kg) the 230bhp Dual-ghia wasn’t exactly light on its feet. Throw in Casaroll’s obsession with quality (each car took 1500 hours to build) plus a very limited market, and the numbers just didn’t stack up. Only 117 Dual-ghias were made between 1956 and 1958 at which point Casaroll’s failing health saw him ask Dual-ghia’s Vice President, Paul Farago, to step in and create a completely new model.
Enter the Ghia L6.4, launched at the 1960 Paris Motor Show. Low, sleek, conservatively styled with no baroque Fifties finnery, the L6.4 used crate Dodge 388ci V8s and Chrysler’s Torqueflite auto with a high-end cabin, bespoke instruments, a Nardi woodrim wheel, a polished metal dash and a deep centre console. If there was ever a design grammar for Las Vegas slot machines you’ll find it in the L6.4’s cockpit. Buttons and switches have that
overwrought Sixties alloy look – each a statement of flamboyant excess in its own right. That form over function was the L6.4’s
raison d’être is proved by the spindly chrome transmission selector, which had no Park function. You optimistically held your $13,500 L6.4 on hills with the flimsy foot-operated handbrake.
And yes, it really did cost $13,500 – or nearly double the price of a contemporary Cadillac. But owning an L6.4 wasn’t just about money, it was all about status. Sinatra had the first car (now in the National Automobile Museum in Reno) followed by Lucille Ball, Debbie Reynolds, Glenn Ford, Peter Lawford and, after much pleading, Dean Martin. The L6.4 became so exclusive that Hollywood gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen said, ‘A Rolls-royce is the Hollywood status symbol for those who can’t get a Ghia.’ Sinatra and Martin even had their cars subtly improved by LA custom king George Barris, who modified six of the 26 L6.4s made. Graham’s car (chassis 0308) is one of those special six, originally ordered by film star Gary Cooper and registered in 1962.
By that time ‘Coop’ had died, and the L6.4 spent a reclusive early life in Beverly Hills until it popped up in an LA dealership
‘He drove with the car’s name on a ping-pong bat for curious onlookers’
in 1971 for $5500. Local car accessory company owner Bill Van Gove traded in his 1958 Dual-ghia convertible along with $3000 and kept 0308 for 23 years. Gove kept a ping-pong bat in the glove box with ‘1962 Ghia L6.4’ written on it to hold up on the freeway for curious onlookers. In 1994 he passed 0308 to his son-in-law, who had it restored. In 2015, after 45 years in the same family ownership, 0308 was sold by RM in Monterey for $297k to our man Graham. I’ll let him take up the story.
‘I’d always wanted a Ghia and thought it would be the perfect addition to my collection. I spent years watching the prices rise. I missed the Dean Martin car at $117k and then saw the same car sold again later for $199k. So when one of the six Barris-modified cars came up at RM I had to go for it. American car experts Dream Cars in London helped me buy the car by telephone – I didn’t even see it before bidding. I timed it well, though. Back then the dollar was £1.54 to the pound – not like now.’ Graham had his Ghia shipped back to the UK, and over the past 16 months has been scooping up prizes at local events. And during that time, the wisdom of that buying impulse has been proved conclusively.
‘My wife and I were at a car show and this guy kept walking round the car – he must have come back to it eight times. Then he handed me his chequebook and told me to write a cheque for whatever I wanted. And he definitely wasn’t joking.’ Graham didn’t sell, because his instinct told him that such unprecedented admiration means his Ghia is indeed enormously desirable and likely to stay that way – a view vindicated in August this year when another Ghia went under RM’S hammer in Monterey. Chassis 0319 had been beautifully restored but had no celebrity ownership and wasn’t one of the six Barris-customised Ghias, yet made $577,500. Which means that in 16 months Graham’s pension has potentially
increased in value by $260k. And he now owns something rather more captivating than a spreadsheet full of numbers.
The Ghia L6.4 drives much better than you’d think. It’s slung deceptively low and you have to watch your head climbing in. For several minutes you’re distracted by the twinkling dash and fiddle with all the jukebox switches. Twist the key and there’s an immediate Mopar V8 rumble from the twin exhausts and the Ghia gently rocks on its engine mountings as you blip the gas. Snick the selector into D and it takes off smartly with a turbine-like whoosh. Then comes the big surprise – the ride. No clonking or shuddering, just serene flat progress that reminds you of a Silver Shadow. The Ghia’s body control feels taut, modern and well damped, and the clever front torsion bar system and semi-elliptical rear springs do their job with aplomb. The assisted steering has plenty of play but feels direct and positive on turn-in. Lean into a roundabout and the Ghia won’t lurch or wallow but stays level and planted.
The 6.3-litre Carter-fed 335bhp V8 feels brisk enough to suggest the claimed 8.5-second sixty time and 140mph top end might be achievable but the interior is so quiet and well-insulated you
don’t want to try – and in deference to Graham’s pension I don’t. But the overwhelming sensation is of hand-engineered poise. The Ghia only feels like a lump of Sixties Americana when the V8 soundtrack intrudes. The rest of the time it drives like a very upmarket XJ6 – silent, plush, smooth-riding and lively – with a strange space-age sensation from those huge windows and all that light. But the real magic happens when you get out and close the door. You don’t just look at the angles, planes and surfaces, you drink them in. The lines are otherworldly, from a time when Americans thought they’d soon be living on the moon and transported there by personal rocket ships that looked a lot like the Ghia. Around the same time Sinatra released his smash hit, Fly Me to
the Moon, with a Lockheed Constellation on the record sleeve. This was space travel re-imagined for the road.
That such a tiny car company could build America’s most glamorous Sixties car and make its A-listers queue up to own one is remarkable. But the Ghia L6.4’s real significance comes from its Motorama DNA. The work that Earl and Exner did at GM’S studios in the Fifties really was a zenith of car design. The Ghia L6.4 is one of those experimental cars that escaped its turntable and headed for Hollywood. The Rat Pack made that sensational shape a badge of rank. Maybe they sensed that their fabulously expensive Ghias were the final flourish of pure, impulsive, visionary car design? Those 17 surviving L6.4s precisely capture a moment in America’s past before JFK was assassinated and almost everything seemed possible. Graham didn’t just invest in a classic car – he bought a unique and exquisite page from America’s social and cultural history. Clever man.
‘The Ghia L6.4 is one of those experimental cars that escaped its turntable and headed for Hollywood’