San Francisco Street Sighting - 1984 Excalibur Series IV Phaeton

One often-forgotten niche in automotive history is the Neo-Classic, a new car built to mimic the style of long, luxurious cars of the 1930s while employing modern technology in its construction. They were popular for a time, mainly in the 1970s and '80s, and were usually built using fiberglass bodies and parts supplied by various manufacturers from Detroit and abroad. Such small coachbuilders as Zimmer, Clenet, Spartan, Gatsby, Panther, Gazelle, Sceptre, Tiffany and several others came and went, their models often loosely resembling a 1920s or '30s Mercedes roadster and incorporating full fenders, fake external exhaust piping out the hood sides, wire wheels, external spare tire shells. Some utilized middle sections taken from such contemporary cars as Volkswagen Beetle convertibles (Clenet), Nissan 300ZX (Spartan II), Mercury Cougar and Ford Mustang (Zimmer), and MG Midget (Sceptre). One might call them the "retro" craze of their day, much like the factory-built retro cars of the late 1990s and early 2000s such as the Chrysler PT Cruiser and Ford Thunderbird. One of the original, and biggest names in neo-classics was Excalibur.