Monteverdi decals / stickers

I got my hands on these genuine decals. They are not reproductions. So where do you find these you might ask. Well, it was a little labour intensive. I took the effort to scroll through the entire postings in the Monteverdi Automobile group on Facebook. So I came across quite a few interesting postings. Including from someone who posted these for sale last year.

"found some Original stickers which I got from the factory in Basel-Binningen when I went there long time ago. Any people interested? Click on the picture for a full view. Size 9 x 5 cm."

To my surprise they were still available. Not sure how many he had but there were 3 left, greedy as I am I bougth them all.  The seller happened to be Dutch and has a shop in automobila: https://www.carsonpaper.nl  He bought them somewhere in the eighties in the museum.

And by the looks of it they had such decal placed on the rear window on one of the show cars:

Swiss license plate, check!

Since quite a few Monteverdi cars are still residing in Swiss I was curious to see if a little more information could be retrieved regarding the car based on the license plate.

The following wiki provides more insight about the Swiss plate structure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Switzerland

Kanton Basel-Landschaft

Apparently in Swiss the plate belongs to the owner and not the vehicle (In the Netherlands it belongs to the car). So it's not possible to find out more detail about the car. But it's possible to identify the owner. The following official website provides instructions on how to do it:

https://www.ch.ch/en/number-plate-owner-details/

The process and information (name and address)  that can be requested is different per district (kanton). Actually I was quite suprised to see this was possible at all - especially in Swiss. As an owner you can block this information though but it's not blocked by default. Some Kanton's only provide the information by SMS which will be billed according, a Swiss registered SIM is required though.

By now I also learned someone took the effort to create an App to easily retrieve the name and address of a Swiss license plate. Apparently this App was created to get in touch with an owner for dating purposes, think flirting in traffic.

More about this App can be found here: www.swiss-plates.ch (mapped to FB).

or directly on FB: https://www.facebook.com/swissplates

The app is quite crafty and once details are found it provide automatic search options on Google, FB, Telephone book, etc to provide additional information about the owner.

As such I have tried it as well and I can now say I have succesfully made contact with another Sierra owner. For another owner I'm still awaiting response, instead of emailing maybe I should make an old fashioned telephone call ...

Magazine : Auto Zeitung 13-7-1977 : Aktuelle Tests : Monteverdi Sierra

A very nice German article. And the car in question is interesting as well. It's the same car which was on display at the Auto Salon in Geneva 1977. See also blog: 

http://monteverdisierra.blogspot.nl/2018/04/another-press-show-car-geneva-autosalon.html

On one of the photo's in this article I can see a small badge on the C-pilar though (which wasn't visible at the Auto Salon). And the other trim/piping on the C-pilar is still missing though. The photo of the rear shows there is no badge-plaque on the boot. Instead they have used the name Monteverdi Sierra in text characters (just like as on the 375 High Speed). And they have changed the rims with a different type.

The magazine article is now available as PDF in the Google Drive download folder.

First owner - Part I

In this blog: http://monteverdisierra.blogspot.nl/2018/04/car-registration-part-i.html
I made a small comment regarding the first road registration. And I got informed the following about this:

From reading the UK registration document, your car was first registered in another country before coming to the UK. Ie it was imported. Hence the date of manufacture 1977 and date of registration 1978. In which country, unfortunately we can’t find out, at least not from the UK registration authorities.

And now I have a copy of the new registration document this is clearly stated at point 3:

I was thinking it was previously registered in Swiss but yesterday I finally got a response from the Monteverdi Club. They confirmed the color settings of the car, exterior: brown, interior: beige

So it's not golden as stated on the UK papers (like it though) and on our photo's the interior looks white but it appears the beige color completed faded away overtime. When removing the interior we could see indeed that some areas did had a beige color.

But there was more; I was informed the first owner of the car was located in Dubai. Since we know the name of the 1st UK owner I was able to do a little more investigation about this person. And it turns out he was running business in the U.A.E. and was very likely located overthere. If my information is correct he is nowadays residing in Abu Dhabi. At the time he was also running other companies, one being located in London. So that could explain how the car ended up in London. So likely it was owned by the same person.

I'm trying to get in touch with the first owner to get the story verified but also out of interest regarding his background and interest for this particular car. But so far I have not succeeded yet.

[Click the picture to enlarge]

1978

Car and Driver January 1978 - Monteverdi Sierra

Another magazine I got ahold off. It has got a tiny article about the Sierra. Though an interesting perspective from a USA journalist, it is after all a modified USA car.

Dodge Aspen details

Yesterdays blog triggered me to learn a little more about the Dodge Aspen. For this I consulted the following website: https://www.allpar.com/model/aspen.html 
It's quite an extensive page and does even make a reference to the Sierra. So I will now include this link on the sidebar.

There was already a link to this specific website as they had an excellent article written about the Sierra: https://www.allpar.com/cars/adopted/misc/monteverdi-sierra.html

I was particular interested in the automatic gearbox. To my surprise I noticed many online examples were having a manual column gearbox. When further looking into this I learned the following:

There were three transmissions available. The TorqueFlite three speed automatic was optional with either a column or console shifter. A column mounted three-speed manual was standard with the six, while a floor mounted three-speed came with the 318; the 360 came only with an automatic. A four speed manual was sold with the six or 318 engines.

So that explains. Another thing I noticed is that not all of them were having these air vents on both sides of the glove box. So I suspect that might be pending if the car was equipped with the optional airco. Not sure though, it's only my guess.

Furthermore I was now becoming curious regarding the new price back in those days. I found the following website which provided more insight:

http://www.nadaguides.com/Classic-Cars/1977/Dodge/Aspen/4-Door-Sedan/Values

The main difficulty is now how much the dollar back then would translate to the Swiss Franc.

Original MSRP  : Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price

Adding the standard options on the Sierra: 318 and Airco (There were more options though, like automatic, power steering, electric controlled windows, radio, etc)

Unforutnately adding these options did not have an effect on the MSRP. The other Retail prices did go up with 10% per option.

According to this website the average car price in the USA for 1977 was USD 5.813,-

http://wgntv.com/2016/04/25/the-average-car-now-costs-25449-how-much-was-a-car-the-year-you-were-born/

That's it for now ...

Amazing discoveries

As said earlier, we suspect our car is the so called show/press car. In one of the magazine articles I noticed something remarkable. Have a look at the gearbox lever and bezel on the following picture. And while you are at it, also have a look at the radio location.

(click the photo's to enlarge)

First off all the gearbox lever and bezel are identical as used on the Monteverdi 375 Highspeed:

And as for the radio, this now seems to be moved under the armrest area in our car. But they also changed it to the correct gearbox lever and bezel as used in the Dodge Aspen:

Not sure what has happened there but clearly they must have been rethinking the interior design.