One of the benefits of living near the Motor City is that cool bits of automobilia often turn up in local antique stores. On a recent quest for tchotchkes, I stumbled on a particularly intriguing trove of relics from postwar Detroit: There was a mint-condition stack of Dodge “family day 1949” ashtrays -- a little souvenir for the chain-smoking children of Hamtramck factory workers, no doubt -- and a pair of black-and-white photos of a mysterious roadster, among other treasures.

I passed on the ashtrays (I might go back and get one) but grabbed a GM pamphlet, which I’ll scan at some point, and the pair of photos you see here.

The first shows a petite two-seater with slabbish sides, a split windshield and a louvered hood. There are no doors or top. In front of the car, there’s a placard reading “American Eagle Spark Plugs presents Paul Farago’s Custom Built Italian Fiat!”

The second is a close-up of the interior. The dash is dotted with gauges, and there’s a Sports Car Club of America sticker in one corner.

Those clues were enough to lead me to an Oct. 9, 1949 Detroit Free Press article on Farago’s creation. The article, “The Car That a Dream Built,” reports that the custom was constructed on a Fiat chassis purchased from the Kaiser-Frazer Corp., which apparently had it on hand for testing purposes.

Based on the timing, we can guess that this means it used Fiat 1100 underpinnings of some sort (interestingly, Zagato also tried its hand at draping that chassis in custom bodywork, but Farago beat the famous carrozzeria to the punch). That would have given it a rather humble 1,089cc inline-four to work with, but streamlined bodywork and a 1,640-pound curb weight enabled an estimated top speed of 113 mph. Plus, it got a stated 35 mpg. Not bad.

Its dimensions were 13 feet, 7 inches long, 59 inches wide and just 3 feet tall. This photo reveals that the car was finished in a lovely blue. Total cost, less the value of Farago and co.'s labor? $1,100.

Further, per the Free Press article and the Detroit SCCA’s archives, we know that Farago’s Fiat won the first Watkins Glen Concours d’Elegance in 1949. That latter source tips us off to the origin of the car’s deco grille: a 1948 Cadillac. The roadster wasn’t all show, however, and Farago raced the car (wearing no. 82) at Watkins Glen in 1950, earning one ninth-place finish and one DNF. The car returned to the circuit in Detroit in 1952; the next year, Farago upgraded to a Siata 300BC, which he ran at the 12 Hours of Sebring.

The cockpit was simple, with lots of gauges -- this was a racing machine too, remember. Note the SCCA sticker at the right.

Who the heck was Paul Farago? Comb through Exner-era Chrysler history, and Farago’s name pops up with surprising frequency -- he's referred to variously as a designer, an engineer and as Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Ghia’s “American agent.” From what we can tell, none of that is false. The guy seems to have lived an impressive, accomplished life.

Farago’s father moved the whole family from Italy to Detroit in 1930; and after serving in WWII, he established Farago’s Auto Service, which specialized in foreign makes, on one of Detroit’s major thoroughfares. Drawing on some innate creativity and the know-how of his garage crew, he built the Fiat special without ever making a full-size mockup or even drawing detailed blueprints. Despite demand from friends for duplicates, he only ever made one of the roadsters.

Farago later served as a link between Chrysler designer Virgil Exner and the owners of Carrozzeria Ghia -- and acted as a translator, as the Ghia men did not speak English. This relationship led to the creation of some of Chrysler’s most memorable concept cars. He was somehow involved with the creation of the Dual-Ghia, but he’s variously listed as a designer for Ghia or a mysterious “agent” or “sales representative” for the coachbuilder. Details here are sketchy.

And that’s not all. Farago would go on to create the burgundy wedge that was the 1969 Pontiac CF428 concept car at the behest of none other than John Z. DeLorean. It’s not stainless steel and it doesn’t have gullwing doors, but if you squint, it kinda looks like a DMC-12.

Based solely on the surprisingly plentiful (if totally uncollated) bits of information scattered across the Internet, we can assemble a portrait of Paul Farago as a hard-working dude who established an automotive service shop, mixed with one of Chrysler’s most storied designers in the automaker’s most glamorous era and also made a brief go at it as a gentleman racer before collaborating with the father of everyone's favorite time machine. And somehow, when he wasn’t doing all that, he designed and built himself a nice-looking roadster on a humble Fiat chassis.

What eventually happened to Farago’s Fiat? Nobody knows. Or at least I don’t. I can’t even pin down where the photos I found were taken. The first Detroit Autorama wasn’t held until 1953, by which point the roadster would have been old news -- but that was hardly the only Detroit car show of the era, or the first.

If you can fill in any of the blanks or happen to have a great-looking Italian custom in your garage, drop me a line.

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