Whenever you go to the annual bid-ness that forms so much of the Monterey car experience, you know that you’ll always find some extreme stuff, from the standpoint of uncommonality, at the auction conducted in Pebble Beach by Gooding & Company. Here’s an example. We didn’t attempt to account all the veterans of the Pebble Beach concours lawn that were on the block at Gooding in 2009, but this zany creation brought that total to at least three.
Officially, this is the 1955 Ghia Streamline X, but it’s better known by its informal name, the Gilda, supposedly inspired by the title of the 1946 film that starred Rita Hayworth. This was one of several 1950s tag-team efforts between Chrysler styling boss Virgil Exner and the coachworks folks at Ghia, led in this case by Giovanni Savonuzzi. Despite the crazily wide body overhang, the Gilda otherwise predicted the super-narrowness of today’s straight-line bullets in Top Fuel and at Bonneville.
Though the concept was obviously intended to imply gas-turbine power, it had no engine at all when completed and displayed. Through ownership changes, which included the Harrah and Blackhawk collections, it later received a Garrett AiResearch turbine producing 70hp, so the Gilda now actually could get along. It was invited to Pebble Beach in 2008.
These photos don’t show it, but the car was actually fired the day before the Gooding auction – outside the auction tent. I saw (heard) it. So did an on-site crew from CAL FIRE, the California statewide wildland firefighting agency formerly called the California Department of Forestry, which was patrolling the grounds. Better not to have the Gilda’s hot breath blowing unmonitored into the crackling dry brush of Monterey County, encompassing some of the planet’s costliest real estate, with a huge wildfire already burning in nearby Santa Cruz County. The ghost of Bing Crosby wouldn’t have appreciated it.
Ultimately, the artsy blowtorch didn’t sell, bid to $500,000 against a pre-auction estimate of at least $1 million.
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