Photo of one of the three known Frick Vignale Cadillacs by Axelrod.
Recently Al Axelrod reported on the Morgan Adams Concours in Denver and spotted a car that piqued our interest, since we had no prior knowledge of such an Italian American hybrid. We asked him to pursue it and he did. His report caused further investigation the results of which we reveal in an addendum from Staff, immediately following Al’s report.
Story and color images by Al Axelrod
In the early fifties, a hot rodder entrepreneur by the name of Bill Frick established Bill Frick Motors and found a ready market for an estimated 200 Fordillacs. As it sounds, a Fordillac was a 1949 Ford with the newly introduced 331ci Cadillac V8, shoehorned into the Ford. Along with Phil Walters (aka Ted Tappet), a very highly regarded race car driver in midgets and sportscars, they managed a successful engine conversion garage in New York Things were looking up for the team when Briggs Cunningham, who often employed both Frick and Walters, decided to open a car building facility in Florida and took the pair with him.
Seemingly well proportioned from the front, the convertible is the most attractive of the three Frick Vignales.
Frick soon wanted to return to New York and did so by 1953, establishing Bill Frick Motors in Rockville Centre, N.Y. and he went on to his next project with Walters. He liked the highly styled ’53 Loewy and Bourke designed Studebaker coupe and proceeded to build Studillacs. These too, were a success (see below) so it followed that the Studebaker body could be replaced by something a lot lighter and even more attractive.
Being the creative man he was, he noticed the beautiful cars of the Italian designers like Vignale who were doing bodies for Ferrari, Cunningham, Maserati and the many examples of what now are called one-offs or concept car prototypes. Cunningham too, had established ties with Vignale for his road going sports cars. Perhaps inspired by Cunningham’s Vignale bodied street cars, Frick began sending Studebaker rolling chassis with the Cad engine, one at a time, for a Michelotti designed aluminum body hung over a light tubular framework by Vignale. In about six months Vignale would ship back a completely assembled car. Apparently, three were built and one was the convertible version I first saw at the Morgan Adams Concours.
It is impossible to use the word “purist” in reference to the Frick Vignale because after all, we are talking about a hand-made “Custom Car” of the fifties, further updated and modified to the tastes of the current owner.
For me, there is a certain excitement about what is possible with careful project management and in the selection of expert craftsmen to restore and modify this Italian-bodied car. Believe it or not in this case, all the skills were available in the Denver, Colorado area.
When I first gazed upon this creation, I was skeptical, especially when I realized the serious modifications made to update Frick’s now ancient creation. The powertrain is now headed by a 2007 Chevrolet 427 C.I. LS7 V8, Tremac 6 speed and a Ford 9 inch diff; then the replacement frame, chassis, and suspension. A custom frame build was by Art Morrison; assembly, fabrication and layout by Lee Baumgartner’s Zoomers Automotive, North Denver. (BTW, Zoomers web site gives a great display of the build process.)
Not a Cadillac but a 2007 Chev 427 LS7. Carbs are non functional.
The paint and sheet metal was by Colour Restoration in Longmont, CO with Glenn Watt keeping the body lines and look as close to original as possible. Of course the interior was completely redone by Ron Nelson’s Auto Weave, the best interior shop in Colorado, again as close to the original as possible, but with the addition of up to an estimated 400 pounds of insulation, sound deadening and carpeting.
Well, it all works! Visually and mechanically, the owner knew what he wanted, and he has surely accomplished his dream of restoring the Frick Vignale. While I did not road test this car, the owner agreed with my only comment on our drive together that the ride was slightly choppy and the car could stand a little more spring and shock tuning. The local talent in Denver fulfilled the owner’s ideas such as the chrome Cadillac valve covers, the three pretend downdraft carbs and intake manifold and the adapted Chrysler Sebring automatic convertible top assembly.
Interior is sumptuous and the top a neatly modified Chrysler mechanism.
The original owner of this car was George Clark, brother-in-law of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. In 1962 the current owner’s father found this example at a Palm Beach Rolls-Royce dealership and he had to have it. You all know what that means, I am sure.
The Frick Vignale was then used by the current owner as college transportation, already a little tattered and shop worn. Later after college and a job assignment overseas, a dream came to light and a plan was made to remake this coach built classic. A Resto-Rod is how it is described today.
Ferrari-like rear end treatment uses MGB tail lights which fit nicely with the lines.
Four years in the making culminated in a trouble free 8oo mile round trip to the recent invitation only Santa Fe Concours where it was awarded the Unser trophy, presented by four time Indy winner Al Unser who felt it was his favorite car and his own idea of Best-of-Show.
About the Author: Al Axelrod has lived in the Denver area for 5 years, after 50 years on the West Side of LA. His garage on North Robertson Blvd. had great karma, being the home of the 3 original Reventlow Scarabs,and was a happy place for 24 years of the golden age of sports cars. He now does forensic vehicle mechanical inspections. He is also featured in Wally Wyss’s article “One Man’s Pantera” in VeloceToday also this week.
The Other Frick Vignales
By Staff
Frick’s most famous creation was the Studillac, which took the Raymond Loewy designed 1953 Studebaker to new heights by installing a 210 hp Cadillac engine into the stunning coupe. It was perhaps America’s first true Gran Turismo. In fact Studebaker would later be one of the first manufacturers’ to use the GT tag as an actual model name.
The original Studillac sold well for the hot rodding Frick despite costing $1500 more than the standard model.
The Studillac would reportedly do 0-60 in 8.5 seconds and top 120 mph all while achieving somewhere around 27 mpg. The conversion, which included modifications to the brakes, suspension and chassis, took about three days and added a whopping $1500 to the cost of the new Studebaker.
Left, the Ferrari Frick had for sale in 1954, right 0301AL courtesy Marcel Massini.
But as Al Axelrod reported above, soon Frick was drooling over the Vignale bodied cars from Italy. In 1954, Frick Motors also handled new Lancias and had a good business selling used sports and racing cars. One in particular was the Ferrari Vignale 4.5 coupe, which he advertized for sale at $15,750 in August of 1954. We think this to be S/N 0301 AL, but we’ll let the readers make up their own minds on that based on photos herein.
Frick Vignale #1
In any event, by 1955, Frick had Vignale complete the first of the Frick Vignales, which looked a great deal like the Ferrari Vignale he had sold a year earlier. He must have been charmed by the design. In the spring of 1955, R&T stringer John Franklin Fellows paid a visit to the Frick garage and came back with a glowing report on the latest Frick invention. According to Fellows, it had a “Frick built box-channel chassis with X bracing”. Whether or not all the framing came from a Studebaker is hard to determine.
Bigger, sturdier, bolder and maybe faster than the Ferrari, the Frick Cadillac Vignale was most certainly less expensive.
Fellows also described the body as more sturdy than the Ferrari, with better visibility and more room, afforded by the 110 inch wheelbase. With hefty bumpers and the Dayton wire wheels, it looked large. The Italian style interior was offset by Stewart Warner gauges including a 160 mph speedometer and an electronic 5000 rpm tach. Price was about $9000—a good deal less expensive than the Ferrari Vignale! We don’t know the current location of this car or if it still exists.
Frick Vignale #2
In 1992 at a meeting of the Milestone Car Society in Pennsylvania, Bill Frick was reunited with his second Vignale creation. It took another two years before this one was finished, and it was built for John Blodgett Jr. from Oregon, eventually ending up with Michael Pomerance from Boston.
The second Frick Cadillac Vignale had pronounced fins.
The Blodgett Vignale reportedly makes use of a Studebaker chassis and a modified 1955 Cadillac V-8, a four speed transmission and Mercury differential. The coachwork sports very obvious fins at the rear and a sunroof.
Frick Vignale #3
Al Axelrod has covered this for us above, and apparently this car was not completed or titled until 1958. It design is muted but still large, but no doubt now the fastest and safest of the three due to its modern underpinnings.
The Frick Vignale as seen at the Morgan Adams Concours.
Not much out there on Frick, but AutoWeek contributor John Matras wrote an article on Bill Frick which appears in Special Interest Autos, #143.
Kia Australia has a range of 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I have heard the name Rockefeller name mentioned with Ferraris before; I hope some historian will come up with something for VT on the cars the Rockefeller family owned. I remember when Nelson was running for President, I wonder, if he would have made it, how it would have come across that he was a closet Ferraristi!
About the Frick cars, could you say he was paving the way for factory built cars like the Iso Rivolta, Iso Grifo? Or were his cars priced right up there with the expensive imports like Ferrari and Maserati?
In a website called American Classic Cars, (http://americanclassicars.com/tag/53-studebaker/) they said something about his Studebaker conversion :”The car’s light weight and low center of gravity reeled in customizers like Bill Frick, who sold nearly 300 converted “Studillacs” in 1953 alone. To make the Studillac, Frick replaced the stock engine with a 331 cubic inch Cadillac V-8, turning it into one of the fastest cars on the road. With its 330 foot pounds of torque and 210 horsepower, the Studillac could go from 0 to 60 in less than 9 seconds—a whole 6 seconds shorter than the conversion’s speediest foes.”
I remember his name from advertising, when I was with Campbell Ewald Adv. I think they hired him to get a Chevy up on some pinnacle in Arizona so a helicopter could film it up there; very dramatic, forgot how they got it down.
The fake carburetors are the first time I’ve seen that–I wonder if it’s fooled any ill-trained concours judges?
bill frick was a very good friend of mine long time ago. he used to do the commercials for gm. the one where the engine flew across the desert. and the one
with the car skimming an italian canal. he was a character, he lived in florida in his later years, he visited me in atlanta one time he was doing a commercial and rented a car cut out part of the floor board to mount camera. covered it back up and back
to the agency unbeknowence to them. that was wild willie.
“Things were looking up for the team when along came Briggs Cunningham, who bought a Fordillac and decided he wanted to go racing.” WHOOPS! “Cunningham opened a car building facility in Florida and took Walters and Frick with him.”
Great story and pix by Al Axelrod…as far as he goes.
Long before Briggs Cunningham opened his Florida facilities, he had Frick-Tappet’s Freeport, Long Island facility build both a Cadillac sedan-based open-bodied car and also modify an otherwise stock Cadillac sedan for his initial entries at the 1950 LeMans. Howard Weinman, a happy Fordillac owner and engineer at Grumman Aviation arranged for testing the open car’s aerodynamic bodywork in his company’s wind tunnel.
Of 60 entries in the 1950 LeMans 24 Hour Race, the Cadillac sedan, co-driven by Sam and Miles Collier, finished ninth, with “LeMonstre“, as the French christened Cunningham’s open car, Briggs and Phil Walters co-driving, finishing tenth. An outstanding debut.
And finally, RVC residents prefer their town be spelled Rockville Centre.
So sad to see a nice car butchered. Hopefully it will some day be sold and restored.
Al, Great article; thanks for taking the time and effort to hunt down #3 and tell the world about it! I’m not quite as adamant as Harold Pace is about the non-original nature of the car today, although I can’t help but wonder why not at least use a period-correct motor? The fake carbs do nothing for me. Being a one-off, though, I can appreciate the problems one might face in that it probably wasn’t entirely sorted out at the time, and making it safely streetable might necessitate some changes. But, it does seem like it’s way beyond “some changes!”