Mavromatic had a post this week — with a link to some nice photos — about the Volga V12, a hand-built one-off with the heart and underpinnings of a BMW 850CSi and a body modeled after a Soviet-built commodity sedan. The original Volga isn’t much to look at (and was never offered as a two door coupe) but the V12… That’s a true work of art.
Part of the beauty of this car — aside from its svelte shape & wide stance — is that it is truly hand built; the outfit that built it — A:Level — spent 17 months crafting the sheet metal for it with little more than hammers & anvils. Each front fender took two weeks to form. One door skin took a month. And the price? $500,000. Yow! But you can’t buy one, unless you could talk the owner, “Mr. D.Z.” — the patron who commissioned the work — out of it. And there won’t be another one built.
I saw an article on the Volga V12 in Car & Driver a while back, but had forgotten about it until now. I dunno… there is just something about taking a body style with history behind it and making it modern. And this is just so much classier than the P/T Cruiser.
