Some KHAMSIN QUARANTA photos to bring this thread back on track. Friday June 15, 2012: the tour de Bourgogne. Photos Arnaud Meunier for me, Copyright. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
More tour de Bourgogne during KHAMSIN QUARANTA. Visit of Abbaye de Fontenay with private lunch in the gardens. Photos Arnaud Meunier for me, Copyright. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Tour de Bourgogne continues: onwards through medieval town of Semur en Auxois. Photos Arnaud Meunier for me, Copyright. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Tour de Bourgogne final phase: visit of Chateau de Pommard winery. Photos Arnaud Meunier for me, Copyright. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I noticed the spyder has the front rubber bumper. Do you have a photo that shows the rear of this car? I am curious how was the rear glass treated. Ivan
Here you go, the Spyder is of course a US version, AM120US1030. Remember this was done by a body shop in Michigan, not by the factory. The second photo (on the lawn) is from 1976 when it had just been finished. The rear end was Europeanized partly in Paris in the 1990's but the bumperettes are incorrect, the rear US bumper brackets have not been cutoff, the exhaust therefore does not sit right, the front end is still US version so the bumper has to be replaced and the front lights won't need the boxes under the bumpers and the US sidelights need to go. Finally the rear end opens unconventionally which means that if the hard top is in place you can't access the trunk so a narrow opening needs to be made in the rearmost flat part to allow trunk usage with hard top. The hard top by the way was not made in Michigan but much later in Paris in the 1990's. It can look a lot better once these details have been sorted, I have discussed it several times with Gandini at KHAMSIN QUARANTA and afterwards, just recently in fact. The main issue is that the vertical 5cm/2 inch notch behind the doors is unharmonious and needs to be resolved, the way to do it to make the door bodywork upper limit rise gradually from the front end of the door to be level with that notch to have a smooth up sweep like in a Ghibli Spyder. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I really like it with the top down, though WO the entire roof line and hatch the design lessens somewhat. That's a folding hardtop? They should really finish the front conversion and those rear pipes!
Seems to me that it is a folding soft top under that rear panel, but I may be wrong. Do you have other pictures of the car with the hardtop on? And also possibly with the soft top on? I am curious to see how the lines of the coupé are more or less preserved...
It has both tops. The soft top from new and the hard top since the 1990's. Yes I have been hoping for the car to be fully Euro converted since when I fist saw it in 2006 in Paris at the then owner's home. It was acquired by the current owner from western France in 2007 at the Retromobile Christie's auction. I don't have other photos with the hard top on -it was not at K40 and not in use when I did the Classic & Sports Car article- but the profile view I already posted in post 10257 shows it clearly. I love the photo from the bridge by Daniel Denis done for a French magazine article (not by me). Now that the owner is willing to sell and has asked me to find a buyer I have spoken with Gandini and as long as no big fuss is made he is willing to study a design touch up of it. I think it would be very cool if someone bought it and chose this option. It could look sooo much better...In any case Liliya my date at KHAMSIN QUARANTA, like many of the ladies there, liked the car a lot Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Thank you Marc. If Gandini is willing to study a design touch-up (of the soft top, of the hardtop or of the B-pillar?), it will certainly be interesting. In general, it is very difficult to make soft or hard tops fit well with the design of a spyder. The design of the hardtop (and of the soft top ) on the Vignale Spyder is quite elegant in my opinion, maybe facilitated by the design of its body: Image Unavailable, Please Login Only a few spyders seem to have been designed from the beginning to fit well with their hardtop. Worth mentioning IMHO is the E-Type: Image Unavailable, Please Login Sorry to have derailed the thread... Back to Khamsin's!
Serge Mr Gandini and I were discussing the car's design not its soft or hard tops. Yes hardtops can be succesful (Ghibli Spyder which clearly inspired the Khamsin Spyder's hardtop) or less so (Mistral Spyder whose hardtop is somewhat baroque and bizarre) but yes let's stay on Khamsin topic. The K Spyder's hardtop could conceivably be redesigned with a long rear end to replicate the normal Khamsin back end profile, not a problem, it would need two people to remove/fit the hardtop due to weight but that is the case of any hard top. The car actually has a hardtop stand/nest for it to rest safely in the garage during summer. The current owner never got around to picking it up in Paris but the ex owner keeps it for whenever the current or a new owner wants it.
To me the back side profile of both then hardtop and soft top of the Khamsin look ridiculously small and do not enhance the lines of the car. The Mistral and Ghibli spyder have nice flowing lines and do not look like a chopped version of the coupe .... this one does. Ivan
And .. I still do though I did remark about not being as aesthetically beautiful as the hard top. I gave the same opnion for the Ghibli.
Here is that Gucci seventies shoot photo in London with AM120-337, the demonstrator Khamsin of importer Mario Tozzi Condivi, MTC Cars with his well known number plate. I just received it, better than the screen capture I posted earlier. The person who sent it to me just found it online by chance, there were no other photos. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Hello Elliott, this answer is quite old but I ask for a friend, if you still have this part in your inventory? If yes, please it would be great. Many thanks and best greetings from Germany Hans
Marc, 1. Based upon the open trunk photo, there doesn't seem to be any reason for those 5cm high fins just behind the doors. Better to eliminate them completely, no? 2. Considering the typical Euro car guy's insistance upon originality, I'm surprised you like the spider at all. I agree it looks good but the Khamsin has a shape that works so well as a coupe. 3. Agree that the USA bumpers are terrible (*) but the side marker lights really don't bother me. (*) Although they are "original".
Playing a bit with Paint. I don't like the spider with the fins eliminated. It gives the car a pickup truck look. (photo 1). To make the rear lines work one would have to be willing to do some sculpture on the rear deck. (photo 2). The rear glass panel tail light area might have to be adjusted as well. I appreciate the effort in conceiving and fabricating the spider, but the more I consider it the more I believe that Gandini's coupe design was the best choice for the car. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Hello Carmine, 1-Well it is the way it was built, modifying it means modifying the soft and hard tops but it could be done... 2-I have always dreamt, apart of having my "normal" Khamsin back of course, to also have a Spyder in fly yellow or oro chiaro with tan interior, 5 speed That being said supposing I had the funds I would never cut a healthy Khamsin but would look for a hopeless project to do this. Regarding gearbox selection the automatic reduces top speed but actually works very well with the Maserati V8, low revving and also suits the more relaxed driving one associates with Spyders. 3-It is a question of visual habituation, in the US you see them all the time here not so much so they stick out and are rather crude and of a size mandated by bureaucrats NOT styled by a designer.
Thank you for that. Yes too much of a flat surface as has been seen on other cars of other makes when cut: mile long rear deck that is why I don't think that is the solution. The answer is a rise of the upper door bodywork limit to gently meet what you call the fins. This would visually be satisfying, like the gentle rise there on a Ghibli Spyder. So the idea would be to have a skilled body shop modify the door part above the body line crease. Of course side visibility for the driver should not be impacted. As mentioned if I find a potential buyer for the car Mr Marcello Gandini accepted my idea in principle. that is to say he is willing to give a quote to put his mind and talent to it if the car is brought to him for assessment. It would not be subject of a big media hullabaloo, he is a very, very discreet person (plus Bertone for whom Mr Gandini worked when he designed the Khamsin) no longer exists but it would be the hand of the master himself finalizing the design, not some bodyshop in Michigan in 1976.
I still have it but it is buried in one of many boxes so I will have to begin to do a search for it, Can you contact me offline via email to discuss the cost of the item so we are in agreement about it before I start digging deep in boxes. At eighty it is a real pain in the butt to sort through them even though my children want me to begin to get rid of everything that isn't needed for either the eBora or the Mistral, a project that will start fairly soon.
