Wider, lower and above all crazier
Although you could get the Opel Corsa, Peugeot 405 and Mercedes 190 in a rich variety of colors and designs, you always ran the risk that your car looked exactly like that of your neighbor or colleague. The solution to this problem was provided in the 1980s by car tuners, who sometimes thought they knew more about styling than the car manufacturers themselves. A selection of the distasteful tuning you saw in the 80s!
Adapting cars to personal taste is of all times. In the early years of motoring, cars were sold as motorized chassis, on which coachbuilders were then allowed to place a coach according to the buyers’ wishes. Since the car has become a universal product, the owner has to resort to other methods with the urge to distinguish: modifying the existing sacred cow, or having it modified, so that it becomes even more sacred. Where car manufacturers nowadays offer handy styling packages, they still liked to leave the ‘tinkering’ about their cars to third parties in the eighties. As a result, brands such as Kamei, Lorinser, Brabus, BBS and Treser experienced golden times. These tuners delivered everything from a simple lamp set to complete car conversions. Not only of the exterior, by the way, the interiors also had to believe, just like the technology: engines were given an affordable booster set or were replaced in their entirety by (much) more powerful ones. The craziest was not crazy enough, which is why we now sometimes look back with a burst of laughter at the cutting and pasting work from then. Or is it with vicarious shame?
Der Hammer
That’s his real name, this Mercedes-Benz 300E from AMG from 1986. An AMG from the time when the company was not yet part of Daimler. Der Hammer was described by the media at the time as the most comfortable alternative to a 911 Turbo or Testarossa: he calmly sprinted to 100 km/h in five seconds and wanted to thunder with ease over the Autobahn at 285 km/h. Before that, the six-cylinder made way for a fat 5.5-liter V8 of 355 hp. The styling is quite understated for the time.
Gutmann Peugeot 405
Tuning companies nowadays focused on, among other things, Japanese cars, but they were barely visible at the time. No, it had to be German, from Opel and VW to BMW and Porsche. Not so the Gutmann company, which – just like Dimma for example – focused on Peugeot. But has the naturally elegant 405 with the glued-on plastic now gained in beauty? No.
Irmscher Opel Corsa and Ascona Sprint
If you say Irmscher, you say Opel. The two are almost married. Under the name Sprint, a series of models addressed by this tuner appeared in 1987, which were temporarily part of the Opel range. Here the tuning was purely optical: a lot of spoiler work all around, window frames covered with dark foil, lowered chassis, thick wheels and so on.
Rinspeed Porsche R69
How cute: a Porsche 911 coming out of the closet! Yes, he preferred to be a Ferrari. Such a Testarossa with those stretched air intakes in the sides and of course flip-up headlights. We know from Rinspeed’s front man Frank Rinderknecht that he was and continues to work maniacally – he is a champion in coming up with bizarre creations, such as this R69 from 1986. Remarkably, Porsche took over this concept itself later: the Flachschnauzer.
Audi Quattro but then open. Walter Treser came up with it.
Treser Audi Quattro Roadster
Walter Treser, the former sports chief of Audi, focused his creations entirely on adapting and beautifying the cars of this brand. His better work includes the completely open version of the original Quattro from 1983. In itself a very special and rare car, which Treser skilfully sawed open, reinforced under the skin and provided it with a manually operated folding roof. The spoiler work all around is typical of the Treser style.
Transmitter Mercedes-Benz 190E
The 190-series was, as the originally quite modest model, a rewarding subject for tuners; companies such as Lorinser, Brabus, AMG and – in this case – Zender gladly took advantage of it. Popular was the application of the hood of the Mercedes SEC; this car also had to put up with bulged wheel arches and much too large spoilers.
Koenig Jaguar XJ-S
The German tuner Koenig showed in 1988 how you could turn the most elegant men’s coupe of the moment into an ordinary hot rod. Why? To steal the show, this raped Jaguar has no other purpose. The technique has reportedly been left undisturbed; hopefully this monster makes a little more noise than the standard whisper car.
This is just a selection of the many tuning objects from that period, we previously wrote this post about the phenomenon ‘Breitbau’. King of the Breitbau was Koenig.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl