We recently saw a later offspring from the design partnership between Chrysler and Ghia of Italy in the 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car. What a difference a decade makes! This 1953 Chrysler Ghia Special Coupe is worlds different in style and futuristic feel than the Turbine Car but it’s fantastic in its own way. It’s listed here on eBay in Phoenix, Arizona, and the seller is asking $550,000 or you can make an offer. You read that right, $550,000 or offer. Thanks to Larry D. for sending in this tip!
The Chrysler/Ghia partnership would produce about a half-dozen concept vehicles and some of them made it into production, such as this 1953 Special Coupe. Fewer than 20 Chrysler Ghia Special Coupes were built so they’re rare. They were never sold in the United States, at least by Chrysler dealerships, but they were sold in Europe by Société France Motors.
The color looks almost like a robin’s egg blue, but this car is, or was, originally gray. The seller thinks that it may have been repainted at some point and they have provided one hundred photos! Sadly, out of literally one hundred photos, there is not one engine photo or underside photo. I know, just when we all thought that 2021 would be a better year than 2020 was. For my $550,000, I want to see at least one engine photo. What a beautiful car, though, at least design-wise. The engine should be a Chrysler 331 cubic-inch FirePower Hemi V8 with 180 horsepower.
The gorgeous interior in red leather is a thing of beauty and wonder, but not quite up to the Chrysler Turbine Car interior as far as outside-the-box space-age design. In 1953, there were churning out movies about landing on Mars as fast as they could so they didn’t quite have a grasp on the whole space-age thing yet. This car needs a full restoration, however, and that will not be cheap. I’d probably plan on a solid $150,000 for that and that’s probably on the low end. One sold in 2017 by our friends at Hyman, LTD in St. Louis who had it listed for $575,000 and it was drop-dead gorgeous.
Parts of this car look great and they could be reused rather than restored which would save a lot of money, but the body is showing a lot of dings and chips and what looks like body putty (?). Hopefully not, but unless I’m mistaken, some possible bodywork has been done on it at some point. It looks a little wavy, certainly not what a 1 of 18 concept-to-limited-production car should look like. A really nice example sold at an RM Auction in Monaco in 2014 for $462,353 so I’m not sure if they’ll get their asking price given the work that needs to be done to bring it back to its former glory. Have any of you seen one?
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