The American Sports Car Company- TASCO

After WWII, a number of American solders came home with a new-found appreciation for the tiny sports cars from MG, Jaguar and Singer they saw buzzing around the UK and Europe. A group of investors in the US wanted to capitalize on this growing trend ... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.

 

Yep pretty ugly..what is in the back glass tail section, looks like instruments?

 

Ugly as a man's ass.

It's probably best they stopped when they did.

JH

 

Woof! It's fugly alright. Looks like a bunch of kids threw a slew of scrapped airplane panels onto a chassis.
Seriously, had Buehrig lost his mind?

 

Well, very interesting to say the least, looks like they couldn't figure out if they wanted to fly or drive it.

 

what a waste of a good idea. The over all concept was great. A lot of work on the nose and roof line they could have had a winner.

 

This is what happens when your closest friends won't give an honest opinion about what you are doing. Gary

 

I guess I should have looked at all of the photos before commenting...

Was this the car that had the aircraft type of controls, like a joystick and gauges with hand accelerator controls?

I saw an old newsreel of it, and i thought it might be this vehicle..

 

How on earth could Buerig could go from designing beautiful cars such as the Auburn speedster and the Cord 810 to this?

It has some neat ideas incorporated into it, but overall it's no wonder it went nowhere.

It's interesting that they left off the headlights on the restored car. It does help to clean it up and improve the looks at little.

 

Usually when guys comment on other's work, I'm sure they couldn't do better themselves, but in this case I betcha they could.

 

Holy Crap!

Was Buehrig blind by the time he designed this?

Rich

 

Instrument panel looks like it is out of a Culver V.

 

I found these thru google Patents...

I can't help but think that the front view (figure 5) doesn't look that bad on paper
but that certainly didn't translate to the finished project.










.

 

In "trying to capitalize" on the European Sports cars,
I wonder where they went wrong?

It looks nothing like early Jaguars, MG's or a Singer for that matter.

You would think that if they were trying to pick up on the European trend,
they would have given it a European sports car look.

This looks nothing like the agile low slung European cars of the day.

Perhaps their undoing was in starting with a American full bodied
chassis like the Mercury.

If you start with a large car chassis, you are going to end up
with a large body.

They should have started with a clean slate that was designed around
their choice of motor -in this case a Flathead V8.

Perhaps scrapping the drawing would have been their best advise
but who would dare disagree with the man who brought to the world
one of the most beautiful and influential designs of the 1930's,

The Auburn.

 

Ouch, Jay you owe me for the trip to the eye doctor to fix my retinas!

 

After viewing the initial post I thought "I seriously doubt that Gordon Buehrig had anything to do with this design" but as I read the posts and saw the patent posted by Moefuzz I was quite surprised to find the story was essentially true. Amazing. Perhaps there were severe cost constraints and manufacturing simplicity issues that account for the results but, overall, it's not very appealing.

Ray

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQoLXBF4uSA&feature=player_embedded

This video shows a couple of other one-offs along with the TASCO at the end.

 

I don't know, maybe if you took off the fenders, chopped the top a little, and painted it jet black...naw it'd still be fugly.

 

Very innovative however some of these designs
Are far more practical



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bBpDNRP5qQ&NR=1

 

Even a great designer can have a bad day. Kinda looks like he overthought the concept, trying to incorporate too many ideas, or be too clever. We see this all the time with customs; think Joe Bailon's "Scoopy" '58 Impala.

 

Looks very, errrm, special...

 

Hell, that's not ugly. It's hideous.

 

I saw something that ugly before, then I flushed it.

 

The sad thing about that car is that at about the same time it was being built there were a number of amateurs building "specials" based on similar running gear and some of them wound up looking absolutely gorgeous.

 

That would be the Messerschmitt - from the 50s - another truly odd vehicle!!



It has controls like a small plane - push wheel to accelerate, pull back to brake - a real PITA to drive.....

Rich

 

Yup, it's fugly. But we all mess up once in a while.

Gordon Buehrig can be forgiven for one mess-up, considering his many styling successes:

The Stutz Blackhawk
Duesenberg Model J
Cord 810
'51 Ford Victoria coupe
'56 Continental Mk 2
Even the T top

 

After watching the You tube on this car , I wouldn't want to drive it with all the stuff on the dash to use and look at . People today wreck their cars just for talking on the phone so how would they have made it down the road driving that thing .
It's butt ugly to say the least but with a few mods I think it will look OK with me !

Retro Jim

 

Saw that car in a backroom at the ACD museum in 2005, it has an Ardun engine and the guy who showed to us told us that the collector circle calls it "The chrome cl..t" I`m sorry for the langueage but that is what the guy in the suit holding all the keys told us... i swear!

 

Farghly....from any view. Sure am glad it didn't have any success. How they could claim to be sating the desires of returning GIs for Euro sports cars is beyond me. That 'vehicle' doesn't satisfy anything I've ever felt a yearning for.

dj

 

Makes you wonder that maybe Buehrig took the credit for those design successes in his past,without any original input. We all know people that have taken credit where it really wasn't warranted.

Buehrig also had another turkey in a restyled Corvette design in later life.