Martin Swig’s Obsession

Words and Photos: Roger Meiners

Martin Swig has cars in his blood. Always has and always will. “I think I have only two friends who are not either car collectors or car industry,” he says. He has a passion for Chrysler, FIAT,® Lancia and Alfa Romeo cars, and has a collection of them to prove it—a collection he started years ago before FIAT even thought about the link-up with Chrysler. Now he has perhaps the only garage that mirrors the state of the new company. Who would have guessed?

Swig’s Chryslers include a 1931 CD8 roadster that replicates the one run by Raymond Sommer at the 1931 24 Hours of Le Mans and in which he finished third at the 1931 endurance race at Spa-Francorchamps. William Milliken also has a replica (see the Milliken car in the May/June 2008 issue of Mopar Magazine). Sommer finished third at Le Mans behind the Bentleys. Swig competed in his car many times at the famous Monterey Historic Automobile Races including the year Bentley was featured. He had a large banner made and hung in his pits that said, “Bentley Boys, Catch the Chryslers if You Can.” Unfortunately Bentley guru Stanley Mann was there from England with his super-hot Le Mans Bentley and he “cleaned my clock,” said Swig. “But I beat all the other Bentleys,” he said, with some chagrin.

Swig’s first experience in the car dealer world was when he was a Stanford student and worked at a used car dealership in Menlo Park that was run by the son-in-law of Walter W. Carr, the Palo Alto Chrysler-Plymouth dealer. After graduation he went to San Francisco and hired on as a salesman at European Motors, an Alfa-Romeo/Lancia/FIAT dealership on Van Ness Ave. owned by partners Al Hooper and Jules Barsotti. He jumped in with lots of enthusiasm and learned the business to the point that he thought he was a real hot shot—knew everything there was to know.

“There was a dealership down the street that I thought was going to go places and I kept pestering my bosses to buy it, but they wouldn’t listen,” he said. Finally, they responded to his pestering by letting him go—in effect firing him. Now he was out of a job, so he bought the dealership. It was very successful because the brand was new and it really took off. He added more franchises, including Chrysler, and expanded to the point that he had more than ten brands under one roof. His store may have been the first of the “auto malls.”

Years later, he asked Hooper why he didn’t buy that seminal dealership. He answered, “If we did, it would not have been available to you,” It then dawned on Swig that he wasn’t so much fired as kicked out of the nest because his mentors knew it was time for him to spread his wings and fly. And fly he did.

Now retired, Swig channels his enthusiasm these days by organizing events that bring out other enthusiasts. He founded the world-class California Mille—once sponsored by Chrysler and attended by Swig’s friend Bob Lutz—and the “Anti-Football Drive.” It takes place on New Year’s Day each year. January 1 was once the big day for college football in America. His Web site says, “Is it true that the Anti-Football Drive forced many professional and college games to move from January 1 to January 2? ‘I think the evidence is clear,’ says Swig, tongue in cheek. ‘When we began, New Year’s Day was synonymous with football played by obscure colleges some place east of Oakland. Today ... the sound of cheering football fans has been supplanted by the roar of unmuffled exhausts, mis-firing engines and the intoxicating rhythm of out-of-round tires.’”

Swig has a few significant Chryslers, including a 1924 Chrysler roadster he found in Washington State. He was offered a ’24 Chrysler touring car for $150 in 1951, but didn’t have the money. In the early 1990s, 40 years later, it all came full circle and he now owns one of the oldest Chryslers in existence.

The Swig collection also includes a 1931 CM 6 roadster. “Absolutely perfect,” says Swig. It has three updraft Zenith carburetors, a 3.5:1 rear axle ratio and open exhaust. It cruises nicely at 70 mph. He has raced it at the Monterey historic event at Laguna Seca on the Pebble Beach Concours weekend.

Then there’s the 1951 Chrysler Saratoga club coupe that he made into a replica of one of the 1951 Mexican Road Race Chryslers that John Fitch drove. One of them finished third overall behind two all-out Ferrari competition cars. Swig replaced the Fluid Drive transmission in his car with a 4-speed, added the drum brakes from an Alfa Romeo 2000 and upped the horsepower to 300 for vintage racing. The Walter P. Chrysler Museum displayed his car for a while and used it as reference to make its own Mexican Road Race replica.

Swig’s Italian cars include three Lancias—a 1925 Lambda, powered by a 3-liter V4; and two 1959 Appias, a Pininfarina coupe and a Zagato. He also has a bunch of Alfas, starting with a 1928 6c 1500 Sport Zagato Spider, a 1954 1900 and five different Giuliettas, two spiders, two coupes and a 1959 Berlina TI, which is a hot 4-door sedan much prized by Alfa enthusiasts.

“The most fun are the FIATs,” says Swig. “They’re some of the best small cars.” He especially treasures the 1100 models, one of which he ran in the 2002 Mille Miglia Storica in Italy. The FIAT engineer, Dante Giacosa, head of passenger car design for thirty 
years, was responsible for the 1100. He also created the 1969 FIAT 128, which is considered the prototype for all modern front-drive cars. “A brilliant concept,” says Swig.

Chryslers Drive the Andes Mountains

Swig took two of his Chryslers to South America thirteen years ago with the late David E. Davis Jr. for the thousand-mile Argentine Mil Millas rally. In years previous, Swig had visited Davis in Michigan on Davis’ birthday. On several occasions Davis mentioned his love for Argentina. His house in Charlevoix in fact was modeled after an Argentine hacienda. “One year I wanted to make David’s birthday a big deal so I called Chrysler PR and asked them to send the cars down to Argentina for his birthday,” says Swig. Chrysler obliged and a memorable event ensued. It was a big Chrysler love fest. Swig wrote a story about it for the March 1999 issue of Road & Track magazine:

“Our first car was the 1931 Chrysler CD-8 roadster, first of the 8-cylinder Chryslers. The second car was a 1951 Chrysler Saratoga coupe, re-created to the specifications of the 1951 La Carrera Panamericana race car driven by John Fitch in that event.

“For the Argentine run, the drivers were David E. Davis Jr. of Automobile Magazine and myself as organizer of California’s Chrysler Historic Racing Team. Both cars ran perfectly throughout the thousand-mile event, a route that wound around the resort city of Bariloche in the Andes Mountains. Davis and I ran all stages of the Mil Millas without a hitch, but we were not competing for any of the timed awards.

“The mission of our program was to help publicize Chrysler’s considerable but little-known racing heritage. To that end, in 1998 we had Chrysler cars in such events as the California Mille, the Mille Miglia in Italy, La Carrera Nevada and the Monterey Historic Automobile Races, as well as the event in Argentina.

“We also took advantage of the opportunity to drive across Argentina to Buenos Aires, stopping en route at Balcarce for a visit to the Juan Manuel Fangio Museum, that wonderful site that honors the late five-time Drivers World Champion. It was there that we celebrated David E. Davis’ 68th birthday with a fabulous fiesta. And I swear that my driving skills were enhanced enormously when I was given the honor of sleeping in Fangio’s bed during our stay in Balcarce.”

It’s very obvious that Martin Swig loves all the cars that now make up the new FIAT Empire now that Chrysler is a big part of that equation.

Find out more about his car hobby and the events he created for enthusiasts at Californiamille.com.

Roger Meiners is a veteran automotive historian, writer and photographer with 35-years experience in the automotive industry.