Ghia 450 SS

Total Production: 52 1966 - 1967
At the Turin International Auto Show in 1966, Ghia unveiled their Giorgetto Giugiaro-styled 450SS. These hand-fabricated low-production vehicles meant that production volume was low and so only 52 450SS's were ever created during its production period from 1966 until 1967. Today they stand as one of the best values in the collector car world today. A creative project, the 450SS Cabriolet was produced by world-renowned automotive designer Giorgetto Giugiaro during his association with Carrozzeria Ghia in the mid-1960s. These 52 examples were sold for around $13,000.

The 450SS utilized many standard Chrysler components which included a Plymouth Barracuda chassis, Ghia's graceful, and stylish bodywork along with a lush Italian interior. Today less than half of the original production run remains in existence today, making these vehicles very collectible.

Following WWII the custom coach-building ingenuity was going the way of the dinosaur as new construction methods and in-house design studio's left little work for these professionals. Though a few continued this work, often creating a variety of one-off concepts based on production-based chassis and placing them on displays at prestigious auto shows worldwide. This was all done in the hopes of attracting lucrative commissions from manufacturers along with sales from the wealthiest private clients. Ghia was one of these surviving coachbuilders.

Ghia put their GT bodywork on display at the 1960 Turin, Geneva, and Paris Motor Show which they had attached to a Fiat 2100 sedan chassis. After receiving such great reviews from the press, it attracted the attention of entrepreneur and Hollywood producer Bert Sugarman who convinced Ghia to put the vehicle into production. He fell in love when he saw this car, and after approaching Ghia and persuading them to create a production series of a similar design, it became one of the few times that Ghia ventured beyond the design of the auto body into the complete auto-making territory. Sugarman wanted to give the car a powerful V8 and underpinnings of the Plymouth Barracuda Formula S, a vision very different from Ghia's, and the combined result was the 450 SS.

Giorgetto Giugiaro; Ghia's designer, designed the steel bodywork design which featured compound-curved panels that were integrated seamlessly into the front and rear bumpers. The chassis of the 450SS was formed by a pair of longitudinal tubular frame members in combination with a very strong semi-monocoque body. The interior of the vehicle received leather bucket seats along with a flat dash that contained a comprehensive variety of instruments. The engine was a 273 cubic-inch V8 engine that offered 235 horsepower and featured a TorqueFlite three-speed automatic gearbox and disc brakes in the front and hydraulic drums in the rear. The engine was perfect to power this sleek tubular frame that was offered with either a four-speed manual transmission or a three-speed TorqueFlite automatic.

By Jessica Donaldson