[texbike]

I've been a bit of a car fanatic for most of my life and have always had an interest in obscure machines. Not counting car shows, car meets, cars in shops, etc, the most obscure cars that I've actually seen in the "wild" are:

-AC Greyhound - lived a few blocks down from my parent's house in Houston.
-Matra Djet (someone else mentioned this one) - owned by a guy in the Brentwood neighborhood in Austin.
-Renault Caravelle - I actually owned one of these - a 1967. Fun car - Rear-engined convertible with a 1100cc water cooled, 4 cylinder motor.

Probably the most obscure car that I've seen in the wild happened about a year ago as I was dropping my son off at one of his friends' houses for a play date here in Austin. A house a few doors down had its garage door open and I happened to notice what looked like the rear bumperettes and backend of a Bugeye Sprite in the garage. The homeowner was in the front yard and I pulled over and asked him if he might be interested in selling the Sprite. Turns out it wasn't a Sprite, but a little British special called an Ogle SX1000 GT. The Ogles were based on Austin Mini mechanicals and utilized a fiberglass body that was very Italian in design. There were only 66 of them made before the founder of the company (David Ogle) was killed in one of them in the early 60s. The owner that had this car had an interesting story about it. The car had been in his family since it was new. His Dad was actually the official importer of the cars to the U.S. in the early 60s before David Ogle was killed. As the owner showed me the car, he opened up an old filing cabinet in his garage and pulled out several 60s vintage marketing pieces and spec sheets for the cars and gave them to me. Interesting car, neat story, and a nice gentlemen.

Texbike