KITS AND PIECES

A Kiwi M1

Most of the cars I have written about in the past have been fibreglass-bodied sports cars. It is hard to communicate effectively each time the amount of work that goes into making the original plug before the moulds are pulled off and an amazing car is born. The more time and effort that are invested into the plug, the better the finish of the body that comes off it.

But the car in this story, the EMW 6, does not have a fibreglass body. Instead, it has been formed from hand-beaten aluminium. Every single body produced this way requires pretty much the same amount of effort as the plug created for a fibreglass car. If it is not done properly, every flaw will show up after it has been painted. The sad fact is that once a car like this is painted, most of the craftsmanship that went into its construction is much less obvious. From a distance, it would be hard to tell the difference between a fibreglass car and an alloy-bodied one. Unless viewed up close, a diamond looks like a piece of glass.

Wayne Fix, the owner of this particular jewel, is well aware of how special his car is. It is starting to show its age but with a lick of paint and a bit of a tidy up, this car will always stand out among its peers.

This car is one of five cars handbuilt in the factory of the late Cliff Everson, an artist who sculpted metal automobiles. Growing up, Cliff had watched his father Ern build three one-off sports cars and three aeroplanes. This car, the EMW 6, is the result of Cliff’s sixth attempt to mass-produce cars.

Starting in the ’60s, Cliff built three Lotus 7–esque cars, along with a couple of one-off specials. He followed this up with several Everson Cherubs, a car modelled after the Mini Moke. After the Cherub was a car inspired by the big American roadsters of the

1930s called the Everson Eagle. It was produced in the early ’80s using modern running gear.

Of all his cars, the EMW 6 was the car that best showed what Cliff was capable of. The story of the EMW 6 starts at the 1983 Auckland motor show where the Everson Eagle was on display. Cliff had a conversation with a salesman from a local BMW dealership. As they were discussing his Eagle, Cliff mentioned that he rather liked the BMW M1. By chance, the dealership had a large wall poster of the Group 4 racing version in a cutaway form, which Cliff was invited to view. Cliff was so enthralled by the picture that a spare copy was presented to him.

This was taken home and extensively studied — in particular, the M1’s chassis and suspension design. From this poster would emerge the EMW 6 prototype featured in this story. All the panels were hand beaten from aluminium with frequent comparisons with the poster. The panels were then attached to a strong square tubular space frame chassis that Cliff had designed, again using the poster for reference. Apart from the ZF transaxle, an American V8 engine, and a firstgeneration Holden Commodore windscreen, most of the car was hand

built by Cliff. For the later production cars, the Commodore provided the taillights, styling for the bumpers and various sundry other bits. The wiring was done by Darryl Muir with the instruments being aftermarket items.

Cliff had initially intended for the production cars to get the more modern-looking Commodore instrument cluster and dashboard but customers preferred the classic rounddial look of the prototype. The side windows were flat. The electric-window mechanisms were imported from Germany, as they proved to be of better quality than those in the current crop of Japanese cars.

Once the prototype was underway, Cliff started production of three more chassis and the construction of enough panels for five cars. He envisioned an initial production run of six cars, including the prototype. Unlike the prototype, which was built by eye, the rest of the cars were assembled using jigs, to ensure consistent quality. Two of these cars had buyers and Cliff was quite sure he could sell the third, which he had calculated was the break-even point for the EMW 6. The fifth and subsequent cars would be money in the bank. At about $100K each ($270K in