American Power Meets Italian Styling: 1970 Monteverdi High Speed 375S - Jay Leno’s Garage

[Music] to me this is one of the great cars and there's no maintenance at all that's you know just standard priceless stuff anybody can fix it nice sound too not too loud welcome to the episode of jadon's garage pandemic edition once again i'm alone we just have the camera set up there i talk to the camera if it seems a little jump cutty it's because i've got to stop go around and move the camera okay the vehicle we're featuring today 1970 monteverdi 375 high speed monteverdi is a fascinating automobile some of you might recognize this car from the internet because when i started janelle's garage before we were on youtube we did about a four and a half five minute video of this and it's still up there and i read comments people saying oh you should do a more extended version of it so that's what we're doing about uh 13 14 years later monteverdi is a swiss-built automobile the swiss were not known for making cars but i think monteverdi is certainly the most famous swiss builder a few other people made but not with the success he had he was born in 1934 his father ran a garage he worked in his father's garage just a car crazy kid at 15 he became a professional racer built his own uh fiat special called it uh mbm motors i think monteverdi i think the beast and from bennington i'm not sure how the town he was born or basil either one of those mgm motors he then took over his dad's business he started importing cars and selling cars mostly european cars in switzerland uh he became a very successful ferrari distributor and then uh the rumor is you know everybody everybody got in fights with enzo ferrari and apparently he started he did very well selling ferraris uh in switzerland and then he took on the bentley and rolls royce and ferrari got a little upset with this and told him i'll give you 100 cars to sell but you have to pay for the front and he said no and they started swearing each other and said okay i'll build my own car and that's what he did and i think pretty uh successfully this is what you call back in the 60s a hybrid not like a hybrid today which means gas and electric hybrid back then meant european styling european chassis european rolled road holding and braking with american powertrains monteverdi wanted to build a luxury high-speed car ferraris in the 60s of course wonderful automobiles but a bit finicky and for a lot of rich people they didn't like the constant fiddling that had to go on with them all the time and he wanted to find a reliable power plant that could be serviced relatively easy and was reliable and he went to chrysler and he got the chrysler 440 v8 the same one put in the road runner and the barracuda and all those others and the four-speed transmission and it was the perfect choice because really i like to call this basically a plymouth road runner that went to college in europe it's basically what it is because when i was a kid i always liked american muscle cars but i hated the drum brakes the ill handling suspension they were plenty fast but they didn't really stop or go around corners the way they should i thought boy what if you took a muscle car and just just kept the engine and the powertrain and put a european body on and that is what you have here this body was designed by bodybuilder fisher i think i think that's how you say it if i'm wrong i apologize you know it's funny when you have these kind of things you don't know anybody else that has one you're not never quite sure how to pronounce them this car is interesting because this is the same car i saw at the london auto show on the stand it was yellow i had a brochure and when we shot the video 13 14 yeah however long ago it was as you can see the car was yellow it was very rare because most were automatics most had the torque flight these were extremely popular cars in saudi arabia and the middle east because you had the american powertrain with an automatic transmission you didn't have to shift people love that there weren't really many european automatic transmissions that could take this kind of horsepower 375 horsepower and this is still a very fast car today it's very long-legged i think the rear end ratio is something like 273 something like that so it is truly a high-speed automobile and that's what is meant to do cover great distances and comfort you have air conditioning and power steering and four-wheel disc brakes you've got brawny wire wheels as you can see which to me were always the most beautiful wire wheels same one used on ferrari you have four-wheel disc brakes you have a purpose-built chassis chassis was made in germany i believe for for monteverdi and as i said fisher designed the body this is a two seater coupe i guess it's a two plus two i mean it's got a little bit of a vestige of a back seat in there but it's basically a two seater car with the fourth speed transmission only four of these were built with the manual transmission and as i said this one was the london show car and the funny thing is when i found this car this car was actually less money than uh like a barracuda or road runner at the time at the auctions because nobody knew what it was it's just so much better than having a super bee or a road runner or even a cuda with a 446 pack or anything but just because way more sophisticated better handling more comfortable you know but with the chrysler reliability let's open the hood and show you it's almost it's kind of like the slr mercedes and the engine has set back here quite a bit let me show you what i'm talking about here as you can see it's not particularly clean under here because this is a driving running functional automobile i don't uh it's not a show car anymore it was once uh as you can see the engine is set back further than it would have been normally uh you've got this uh beautiful piece of aluminum here i mean your fan is way back here so you need that to provide suction to pull cold air in it works perfectly fine the only thing i've done to this added a more modern compressor for the air conditioner and the ignition msd ignition that's about it other than that it's completely stock and you know i really haven't touched this motor in 25 years other than oil changes and spark plugs and tune-ups of course and it runs perfectly well i mean it runs terrific it's it's this is one of the great motors is 440. this is the most underrated motor on the street i think it actually produced more raw horsepower in stock form than the hemi i mean the hemi of course you could tune and get way more power out of it but in terms of having something on the street this was an equal to the hemi engine in terms of just street to street drag racing if both were completely stock i think that's pretty fair to say i've got both of them they feel really close but of course once you put headers on the hemi and tune it open it up and get it to really breathe well that'll eat this thing alive but in stock form it's uh it well it's a darn good motor it's really really reliable really really good uh chrysler transmission and rear end everything is exactly it would have been when it left the factory this car sold for about twenty two thousand dollars back in 69 70 which was right up there with ferrari and rolls rice and might even have been more but monteverdi was quite successful then of course like so many manufacturers in the early parts of the 70s the gas crisis hit much worse than it has hit more recently gas prices shot up and there were shortages and opec and all of that and the demand for these went way down it was seen as wasteful to drive something like this so monteverdi quickly switched to well i think he's sort of the inventor of the luxury suv built one i think called the sahara and he would take suvs and just put really fancy interiors in them and make them very plush and so he was so the father interesting guy you know he was a race car driver who was very successful as a race car driver he just loved automobiles born in 1934 died in 1998 fairly young man when you're my age anyway he was a young man and uh like ferrari volcanic temperament you know didn't suffer fools gladly uh but that's what you have to do when you're building your own car and i i think it's a really good-looking automobile i would put this against the espada or the any other ferrari certainly better looking car than the ferrari 400 i think but that's pretty much what's happening under the hood come on let's uh go around to the rear vehicle and i'll i'll show you the truck you got your power bulge here which is really kind of cool come on let's go around to the back okay here we are at the rear of the vehicle as you can see still had chrome bumpers which didn't disappear for another couple of years i like the chrome barbarians dual exhaust let's see monteverdi high speed 375 s now 375 stood for as i said the 375 horsepower of the 440 engine which was a huge amount back in the day and the s for speed most of the monteverde's they built had the torque flight automatic some were four doors and some were bigger the wheel base is longer this is my favorite one because it's reasonably compact you could get some people in the back maybe in a pinch but for the most part it's a two-seater coupe although it does have four seats let's see what the trunk looks like good sized trunk as you can see it's just filled with stuff i carry extra fluids and things because i use this vehicle a lot got some weather stripping here there's not much in there but it's got a full-size spare and a jack and the trunk goes back away so you get a couple of good-sized suitcases in there these bumpers almost look like just angle iron they're kind of crudely done but not bad okay but nice but nice uh we'll take this next door we'll put it up on the lift and i'll show you the the chassis he the chassis on these are massively strong uh just to handle the torque and and keep it quiet you've got your uh right here is your gas cap filler right in here let's take a look at the interior this is the interior as you can see an inviting place to be wood steering wheel i think this is a stock wheel i'm not sure i found the original seats and put them back in where caros had been put in this but it didn't seem like her you know i hate those butter clenching seats where you simply these are nice big comfortable seats and the headrest is built right into the seat your gas tank miles per hour here we have what is that temperature tachometer amps and then you've got electric windows and of course a big chrysler air conditioning unit you know the europeans might have led the way in handling and and sophistication but when it comes to heating and air conditioning you couldn't beat american cars cadillac chrysler ford just unbelievable you know and these are massive units and you can you you're freezing in this car within seconds you know european air conditioning was always just kind of i having a spotter that's got the italian action it's hilarious it's like the funniest accident it actually has to be a cold day before you get in the air conditioning whereas this thing is fantastic and what's what made these cars desirable you had that american strength and reliability in the powertrain and american air conditioning and heating with well the best of america and the best of europe i mean it really made sense as an automobile and they were monteverdi was quite successful i guess he built about 80 to 100 cars a year but you got to remember it's a very small factory and you know regulations are getting more and more stringent and harder and harder to do and that's eventually what put him out of business to that combined with the oil crisis again in the 70s but then he started working for toyota and other manufacturers doing design work monteverdi design really interesting interesting guy and as you can see it you know it's a funny this old type of vinyl in here it puts off such gas if this car is parked in the sun i'll come back and the windscreen will be completely clouded because of the gas from the plastic you know all that doesn't happen anymore in modern cars in terms of emissions all that stuff has to be uh tested and and made you know compliant and all that kind of thing but this is this car is exactly the exception of the color change it was yellow exactly as it would have left the factory back in the day uh four-speed gearbox here um what else you know what i used in this this transmission was a little notchy and i put in a can of something called mtl manual transmission lube um i'm not giving a plug here well i guess i am only because i like the product work really well this thing was always so notchy just hard to shift and i put this mtl in it and boy cured it it it's much smoother it's much easier i'm not a big tune-up and a can guy but that one works so i recommend it uh because you got to have your giant ashtray because everybody smoked back in 1970. um yeah you've got real wood in the dashboard uh and it's a real stylish car i think it's a great uh great looking car and it's probably like oh am fm radio electric antenna you know that kind of stuff uh but this was considered luxurious for a gt car electric windows and air conditioning that was a huge deal especially in the european high-speed car because most cars didn't have it ferrari did but it was more of an afterthought this thing was really reliable really dependable and has been for me and the nice thing is any garage can fix it because it's a chrysler and being a big american v8 it's a big slow revving it it doesn't break it doesn't wear out so i mean i've had it 25 years and i've never really ever had a problem just change tires and oil and fluids and that's about it so i think we're just ready to go let's take it next door we'll put it up on the lift i'll show you the underside show you the massive chassis on this thing and then we'll take it out on the road come on take it next door okay we've got the monteverdi up on the lift let's take a look underneath here as you can see no mufflers just these glass packs i'm not sure if that's factoring out i think it might be uh as you can see inboard disc brakes which are really cool you weren't getting that in american cars back in the 60s even now uh i forget the name of the german firm that uh built these chassis as you can see monovertis are famous for well look at this kind of you see this rectangular sort of chassis here very strong very durable pretty much lasts forever no evidence this car has ever been an accident see independent suspension course [Music] transmission of course right there just nothing fancy everything's easily accessible under here there's your oral pad coils back here i love these brony wire wheels i mean they really are impressive looking me and you can see no rust of any kind on this car again this is the era when cars rusted out fairly quickly but if you just keep them dry that's the trick yeah no no nothing earth shattering back here there's your drive shaft right there um of course as i mentioned this breaks all the way around pretty straightforward let's get a look at the front of this car that big kind of fish mouth on it there which is oddly attractive to me single headlight of course uh okay so that's that's about it there's your massive radiator you know one place as i mentioned before american cars always excelled heating air conditioning in in cooling you know a lot of european cars had come to the california climate and boy they would heat up and you know overheat or whatever but uh american cars have always that's one thing we've always done well we take our we take our comfort more serious and we take our handling uh just showing a little bit of detail under here okay i thought that'd bought about do it let's uh put it back on the ground get in the car and we'll uh we'll go for a ride here you go you know peter monteverdi was very talented guy a race car driver good designer good sense of engineering kind of self-taught guy i mean he's running the business at age 25. i believe it was he was the youngest ferrari dealer in the world at the time he so impressed enzo and then he kind of got in so mad at him i still can't get over the fact that when i got this car it was maybe 16 years old 17 years old something like that and used road runners and plymouth barracudas with this motor were more expensive than this was i i i this boggles my mind nobody knew what this was i think people might have thought maybe some put together car or something because you know it's not like now we have the internet everybody can just look up and you can find out what it was mata verdi what what where did you even find out about that you know so it was not a well-known car and of course being a four-speed that's what makes it exciting to me and monteverdi was quite clever peter monteverdi pretty good businessman his idea was you know chrysler had dealers all over europe so any one of those could fix this if something went wrong or there was a problem and of course being a big lazy 440 v8 375 horsepower i mean nobody had that back in 1970 68 69 70. certainly not ferrari or maserati or well lamborghini yeah technically lamborghini did but not this big sort of quiet comfortable huge torque motor like this this is it's so undistressed in this application i mean it's the same engine used in the chrysler imperial and some of the big uh police cruisers who highway patrol use the 440. just a great great motor it's one of the great american engines my favorite the 289 the 327 the chrysler 440 and of course the chrysler hemi and unlike a lot of italian exotics of the period you can be long-legged and sit in this car you're not jammed up against the steering wheel you know all kinds of leg room and just such a long pole motor you know just that torque just carries you through visibility is excellent you know the whole greenhouse effect is very nice it is about uh almost 100 degrees here today in los angeles fahrenheit and this is at what's that just about 60 65 degrees centigrade so that's excellent actually pretty amazing this car never overheats very dependable the only thing i had to do as i said was i just put a new compressor in it because the card sat for a long time and you know these things just kind of freeze up or something i don't know it's just easier just rather than take the old compressor apart just put a new one in and you can run 134 instead of freon and solve your problems i thought that was a nice touch the fact that the headrest reclines into the seat because most people do not like a big giant headdress when they first come out they thought they're really ugly and unattractive whereas this one you can put it up if you want and push it back in when you're done again this really is the definition of a grand touring car a gt you've got adequate road clearance right normal road heights you're not you know you're not tearing a split or ripping the bottom end out all the time nice sound too not too loud i think it'd be louder with just those sort of glass packs on there but it's not bad at all sometimes i have to take my shoes off when i drive this because the engine is set so far back in the chassis as you see it it intrudes here on the engine compartment nobody ever guesses what engine this have they always think some kind of twin cam six or something like that nobody ever guesses the big 440 chrysler and the engines are 100 stock i don't believe monteverdi modified these engines in any way but a son of a genius idea had the exotic look and feel of a european car with the sensibility of an american power train you know nowadays there are lamborghini maserati all kinds of specialists but back in the day you just you know the 60s you just said mechanics you pull into a gas station you know the number of guys i saw got screwed up by the rochester fuel injection on corvettes and chevys you know a lot of guys just replaced it with a four barrel or two four bells if they could the simplicity of this engine you know hydraulic lifters nothing just change the oil and put plugs in it every 15 20 000 miles as i said this body was designed by fish oil i think that's how you say it the original was pietro fiora he designed the first generation and then fischer did the later body the essence of this was also used in the ac bristol you know that in that 428 deal they built back in the 60s the maserati mistrial i think that's how you say it um i think that he was the same sort of some of the same body stampings you know there's a wonderful museum in switzerland that has all the monteverdi cars and it's rather sad because i think a lot of people walk right by it when they're there and don't realize that mata verdi was an automobile manufacturer and certainly of some renown you know he was well respected he didn't build obviously as many cars as ferrari or mercedes-benz but he uh he managed to make a profit building 80 to 100 cars a year which is not easy to do but this idea of using american power plants in european cars certainly did not start with monteverdi uh he wasn't more successful in iso grifo bizarrini a lot of them did and to this day i mean the small block chevy is used in all sorts of exotic cars as well as the corvette and you know camaros and everything else as well so anyway i read in the comment section a lot of you were asking to see a longer version with this car so i hope we gave you what you wanted anyway you can go back and look at that earlier version and see a younger version of myself but it's but the car has not changed a whole lot in the 13 to 14 years since we did that last video safe to say i think pete i think peter monteverdi got it right you know take a big american engine you put in a felt sexy looking european car and you got a winner and that's what you have here to me this is one of the great cars and there's no maintenance at all that's you know just standard priceless stuff anybody can fix it i think it's a formula to still work well today actually anyway i hope you enjoyed this uh little trip and probably the only swiss car i think you'll see for a long time so i think he can hang his head proud he did a good job and these are going up in price again you know i don't think you'll find any of these for under two hundred thousand dollars i'm not going to tell you what i paid for because you're like oh wow but it was a long time ago and uh let's think of it as investment you can drive around anyway thanks for uh thanks for watching you guys i hope you enjoyed this little video and um you know i just want to make sure we have new content every week so we're not having to stick up reruns again so see you later thanks you guys bye-bye [Music] laughs

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 509,505

Rating: 4.9577804 out of 5

Keywords: Peter Monteverdi, High Speed, Italian car, American muscle, Hemi, V8, sports car, car nerd, car porn, Chrysler, Mopar, Enzo Ferrari, Italian design, Swiss, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: I-WfbppXkyk

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/zillah1985]

Wow. That is beautiful. I am in love.

That car in green with brown leather. And a 5 speed? Anyone got a half a mill they can give me? XD