We couldn’t talk about Canadian automobile manufacturing without mentioning the Bricklin SV-1. The Bricklin was manufactured in New Brunswick from 1974 to late 1975 for model years 1974, 1975 and 1976. The SV-1 stands for safety vehicle and the builders touted its integrated roll-over structure and energy-absorbing bumpers as modern safety features even though they had no place for a spare tire.
They were offered in 5 safety colors and had very distinctive gull wing doors (only seen before on a couple road cars built by Mercedes) and had hide-away recessed headlights. The body was made up of a combination of resin over acrylic and the color was manufactured into the body material negating the need for a separate paint process. They were only 2,854 produced and the engines were different for the production years.
1974 Bricklins were built with a 360 cubic inch (5.9l) AMC V8 motor and produced 220 hp with 315 ft lb of torque. The Bricklins built in 1975 received a 251 Windsor V8 from Ford and had 175 hp and 286 ft lb torque. While the models with the AMC motor could have a manual or automatic transmission, the Ford V8 models only came with a three-speed automatic.
With under 3,000 of these cars ever produced there are not many survivors on the car scene but we are fortunate enough to have a couple that have come out to cruise nights and car shows locally.
