This is the only known running and driving version of this car on the planet
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Most have never heard of the MacMinn LeMans Coupe and that’s for good reason. The example here sat in a field in California for some 60 years before the current owner restored it. Now, Jay Leno is telling the story of how he knew its designer and how the owner saved it.
Strother MacMinn designed the Opel Kapitan in 1937 before moving on to Hudson. By the late 1940s, he was a teacher at the Art Center College of Design in California. Then, in the late 1950s, he designed this, the LeMans Coupe. MacMinn intended this car to be highly aerodynamic and for some versions to go racing. It was so striking that it made the cover of Road & Track. Despite that, it never made it to any sort of production.
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Of six or seven known cars, only three remain and this is the only running and driving example. Of course, it wasn’t always that way. The owners, Dennis Kazmerowski and Alan “Chip” Fudge, literally rescued the body shell from an open field in California. Then, they went to the trouble of rebuilding everything from the ground up. They added fiberglass, built a new chassis, and then dropped in a chrome-polished 1957 Corvette V8.
In all, it took Kazmerowski, who did most of the work, some 3,000 hours and 20 months of work to get the car to the shape you see it in here. On top of the gorgeous bodywork, this car also sports gull-wing doors. They’re handy when someone Jay Leno’s size tries to get into the slinky coupe. In total, the car weighs less than 2,000 pounds (907 kg) say its owners, and the weight savings is immediately apparent in the cabin.
The fiberglass panels are bare inside including the entire headliner. Leno says that visibility is good and that the car sounds great too. “This is exactly what Strother would’ve wanted,” Leno exclaims. As the two men rumble around town, it’s clear that the MacMinn LeMans Coupe turns heads today as much if not more than it did back in 1958.
