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Car of the Month - March 2005

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Daf_55_Siluro_Michelotti_1968

Daf 55 "Siluro" - coupe body by Michelotti - manufactured in 1968

Probably the most photographed car at the recent AutoRAI exhibition in Amsterdam was this unique prototype created by Giovanni Michelotti for the 1968 Geneva Motor Show. That's quite remarkable because the AutoRAI is a show for presenting new and currently available cars to the public and tends to attract prospective car buyers rather than classic car enthusiasts. But then this Daf takes up a special place in the hearts of all Dutch car enthusiasts. It's the one that got away, a part of Dutch automotive history, as limited as that may be, that was actually never seen on Dutch soil before and yet had become famous because pictures of it graced virtually every book about the history of Daf.
The story behind this car is short but odd: the prolific car designer Michelotti, responsible for the looks of about 1200 different models of cars amongst which most of the Triumph and BMW models from the 1960s, was hired as a freelance designer by the Dutch car and truck manufacturer Daf in 1965. In 1966 he designed the new Daf 44 model which was a move upmarket for the budget car with automatic transmission manufacturer. The introduction of this humble 2-door saloon was accompanied by a small but attractive sport coupe prototype based on the Daf 44 platform also by the hand of Michelotti but this rather conservative looking car remained largely unnoticed. In 1968 appeared yet another new Daf production model by Michelotti: the 55, a car resembling the 44 but with a larger 4-cylinder engine and with an added coupe body option. This time Michelotti decided to draw a more spectacular looking sport coupe prototype on the Daf 55 platform to show his potential. He did this on his own account and showed the result under his own name at the Geneva Motor Show. He named the car "Siluro" (torpedo), a classic Italian name for the sigar-like open wheeled racing cars of the 1950s. It featured an extreme wedge shape, a curved coke-bottle style rear end treatment and a fancy metallic grey paint job; with some imagination the side view from the nose to the rear deck did resemble the shape of a torpedo pushing through water.
Michelotti was rather taken by this design. He decided to hold on to it and never showed it again at a car show. So the people in Holland, used to the relatively plain and businesslike mass produced Dafs, did see all the pictures from the Siluro at the Geneva Motor Show published in papers and magazines but never saw the real thing. That caused some degree of frustration because it was regarded as maybe the only Daf with some sex-appeal. Michelotti kept the Siluro in his personal collection until his death in 1980. His son inherited it and put the car in his garden as some kind of memorial to his father. It soon became the home of all sorts of animals and withered away quickly. Ultimately what was left of the car was sold to a trader who in turn offered it to the Daf Museum in Eindhoven, Holland, who set out to restore the car to its original splendor which took a number of years because most of the car was hand crafted and had to be recreated.
The finished result of this effort was presented for the first time at this year's AutoRAI, a premiere delayed by 37 years but certainly not less welcomed. At the time it must have been a quite original looking design; now, in retrospect, it slightly resembles a scaled down version of Pininfarina's Ferrari 365 GTC/4 design from the early 1970s and it has also some aspects of the AMC Javelin of the late 1960s and the Chevrolet Monza hatchback coupe from the 1970s. It mostly predates these cars however and so it's quite an inspired design by the old master and a step away from his usually slab-sided more boxy designs of that era. It seems understandable that he would want to hold on to it for new inspiration. Unfortunately it didn't do much good because the quality and popularity of his designs declined during the 1970s, he seemed to have lost his famous eye for proportion an good taste somewhere in the autumn of his career.

Never the less the Siluro is a great landmark for both Michelotti and Daf: it shows the artistry of Michelotti and that Dafs could look exiting and fresh. The restoration is well done though not in all aspects exactly similar to how it was pictured in Geneva in 1968. It does have however the panels hiding the headlights it usually was fitted with though for some reason they were taken off the car at the time I took this picture. The Siluro will have its rightful place in the Daf museum showing people this interesting part of the manufacturers history for years to come. Great to have finally seen it...

© André Ritzinger, Amsterdam, Holland

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