ENGLISH HISTORY
From: THOROUGHBRED & CLASSIC CARS
JANUARY 1994
THE GREAT NODDY CAR GAMBLE
In the Sixties there was an unsuccessful attempt to sell
Vignale-Fiats in the UK, Cris Rees tells the bizarre
tale:
FRIXOS Demetriou was a Greek-Cypriot who had
built up a successful casino in Cyprus. He then came to
London and set up in business with a gaming club
called the Olympic. Concerned that his gaming licence
might be affected by forthcoming legislation, he
resolved to find an alternative business venture. In
1967 Demetriou happened to be in Milan on a diverted
flight to Athens when he saw a strange little car
parked near the airport. Enquiries revealed that it was
a Vignale-Fiat Gamine, a humorous little belle époque
roadster based on a Fiat 500 floorpan. Demetriou's
brain was already ticking - in terms of securing the
world rights to market the car. On the return journey.
he diverted to Turin, where coachbuiIder Vignale was
based, to view its products. Four days later, he
returned with his German-Swiss legal adviser, Ernest
Huppert, with a rather unusual business proposition.
Not accustomed to thinking small. the pair asked if
Vignale would be prepared to sell them a run of some
of their Fiat-based models: Gamine (500), 850 Special,
Eveline (124) and Samantha (125). Demetriou knew
how to impress in a potential business relationship. He
bought 200 cars on the spot. cash up-front, and
guaranteed to buy the next six months' production, as
long as Vignale would build the cars with right-hand
drive. Before long, puffed up with optimism. the pair
signed a similar deal with another Turin coachbuiIder,
Francis Lombardi, to import his pretty little Fiat 850
based coupé called the Grand Prix, introduced at the
1968 Geneva Motor Show. Demetriou did have some
logic behind this profligate spending spree... "No
factory will listen, even a 40 car-a-day factory." he
said. "unless you talk in quantities of at least 1,000.
Besides, l wanted to be able to force them in time to
incorporate special equipment for my market." By
September 1968. Huppert had secured a Motor Show
stand at Earl's Court and was ready to launch the
Vignale Fiat range in the UK. The Gamine in
particular was given a big splash in the dailies. mainly
because of the stress on the car being 'for women
only...'Demetriou's Queensway premises were now
bulging with cars. Literally hundreds of them sat in a
specially-cleared zone beside his casino. He had
invested a fortune in the cars with not so much as a
single order to offset his expense. Some estimates put
the total sum invested at over £500.000. Demetriou
appeared on the cover of Car magazine with the line
'Meet the Racing Car Show's least enthusiastic
exhibitor'. The magazine was certainly struck by his
demeanour: he was a man of few words, wore dark
glasses and an overcoat and played his part 'almost to
the point of caricature'.
Apparently he did not enjoy having his picture taken.
There was much Press comment that these hand-built
Italian sports cars would find customers solely by
virtue of their exclusivity and stylish appearance, but
alt said they were expensive. The cheapest was the
Gamine at £700, but the 850 Special was a huge £1,225,
the Lombardi Grand Prix £1,457. the Eveline £1,686
and the Samantha £2,211 - in January 1969 an MG
Midget cost £769, and a Jaguar E-type was £2,I63. The
attractions were there. The Gamine two-seater was a
great laugh, known as the 'Noddy Car', and became
trendy with the Chelsea set - even night-club owner
Peter Stringfellow had one. It was offered in all sorts of
gaudy colours, like Portobello Yellow and Hollywood
Green (a sort of peppermint hue). Both the Vignale
85O Special and Lombardi 85O Grand Prix were
lovely to look at but desperately underpowered. The
Eveline could have been a good car and was probably
the most reasonably-priced of alt the Vignale-Fiats but
lacked performance. The Samantha was the jewel of
Demetriou's range with a seductive shape allied to
good handling and performance. However, there were
detail faults on the cars. The only proper road test of a
Vignale-Fiat was conducted by Motor in 1969 and the
list of little items on its Samantha which weren't quite
right is representative of the range: the wipers didn't
clean the top half of the windscreen, the rear window
was difficult to demist and very narrow for rear vision
and the heater was poor.
There was also the problem of build quality,
unforgivable in cars costing so much. Fiat dealer
Graham Baker in Devon, remembers: "We tried to sell
the Gamine and the Samantha. Both were badly built,
even the show cars at Earl's Court. The trim was
shoddy and the paintwork very poor. We took alt our
cars on a sale-or-return basis and did sell several
Gamines, but only one Samantha.-' Demetriou had
arranged with Fiat in Turin that Fiat (GB) would
service the cars as if they were imported Fiats.
Unfortunately, no one had involved Fiat (GB) in the
negotiations. Naturally, it wasnt very happy, was
highly suspicious of Vignales work - rightly, as it
transpired - and feared many warranty claims. Indeed,
the Gamines body was so poorly welded to the 500
floorpan that many cars did need to be fixed under
warranty - and there were quite a few multilingual
phone conversations about that.
Demetriou and Huppert were still assured about their
venture. They planned to participate in saloon car
racing, to which end a transporter was bought and
driver Nick Faure was hired for the season. And
Demetriou was even talking about building his own
Italian-styled four-door coupé in Britain by the end of
1969 for around £1,600.
There was one problem: having brought hundreds of
Vignale-Fiats into the country (some estimates go as
high as 800), they just didnt sell as well as F
Demetriou & Son had expected. Perhaps 300 Gamines
were actually sold in Britain and as many as 27
Samanthas. Few Evelines found buyers (there is only
one known example remaining in the UK) and the two
850 variants sold only a handful each.
For most people in the car import business, this would
have meant curtains. Luckily, Demetriou was rich
enough for this not to bother him. His gaming licence
was renewed and he didnt need the car business any
more. In 1970 he decided to return to Cyprus; most of
the unsold Gamines followed him. There he met an
untimely end in the back seat of a Vignale-Fiat in the
most unlikely twist to this bizarre tale: a runaway
army tank squashed both the car and Mr Demetriou
flat. He had outlived Alfredo Vignale, who had died
the previous year in a car crash near his home on the
very day he signed an agreement to sell out to De
Tomaso.
Thus Demetrious brief existence as an exotic car
importer was over. His was a gamble which just didnt
pay off.