The Most RADICAL Mid-Engine Beast Ever Made!

Описание: The Most RADICAL Mid-Engine Beast Ever Made!

In 1970, something incredible happened at the Geneva Motor Show. A metallic purple supercar appeared that shocked the entire car world. It was barely 40 inches tall, packed with an American racing engine, and came from Switzerland - a country nobody expected to build supercars. This is the Monteverdi Hai 450 SS, one of the most extreme and forgotten supercars ever created.

Peter Monteverdi grew up around cars. His father owned a garage in Basel, Switzerland, and by his teenage years, Peter had already built his first car. As an adult, he became very successful selling luxury Italian sports cars to wealthy Swiss buyers. But everything changed when an Italian car company demanded he buy 100 cars upfront. Monteverdi walked away. He decided he would build his own supercar instead and show the world what he could do.

In 1969, Monteverdi started building a mid-engine machine called the Hai, which means "shark" in German. He wanted to create a car that could compete with Ferrari and Lamborghini. For the engine, he did something crazy - he got Chrysler to give him their most powerful engine, the 426 Hemi V8. This wasn't a normal sports car engine. It was a massive 7.0 liter racing engine that produced about 450 horsepower and 490 pound-feet of torque. He even convinced Chrysler to add air conditioning to it, something that had never been done before on a Hemi engine.

The Hai 450 SS was truly special. It had a ZF 5-speed transmission, massive disc brakes, and no power steering. The body was painted in a custom purple color called Purple Smoke and designed by Italian coachbuilders. Inside, it had black leather seats, power windows, and air conditioning. When it debuted at Geneva in 1970, everyone was amazed.

However, things didn't go as planned. Test results showed the car was slower than Monteverdi claimed. Orders never came in. Instead of building 49 cars like he planned, Monteverdi only completed two prototypes - the original purple 450 SS and a second red 450 GTS with a different engine. The project died in 1973. By 2012, the original purple Hai sold at auction for over half a million dollars.

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