Have you heard of the car called Apollo GT? We're not talking about the wildly designed Apollo hypercar that's nothing short of otherworldly. We're talking about the coupes and convertibles from the '60s that were built as an answer to European grand tourers of that time – the American Ferrari, as Robb Northrup called it in his book, Apollo GT: The American Ferrari.
If you haven't, that's fine and we won't fault you for that as the Apollo GT is a rare breed. In fact, Northrup, who worked on writing the history of the car, said that there are 88 Apollo GT units ever produced. Of those numbers, around 55 exist today, and one of them visited the famous Jay Leno's Garage.
Kurt Brakhage owns this particular Apollo GT. Actually, it's his father's dream car, which the latter finally acquired in 2003 at 72 years old. It was in rough shape at that time, stored for 25 years. When Brakhage's dad passed away in 2010, he stored the vehicle for years until he decided to restore it in 2017.
So what's so special about the Apollo GT? Well, the Apollo is a dream project of Milt Brown – an engineer from California. He worked with Frank Reisner to hand form the body in Turin, Italy then got shipped back to California for completion. Ron Plescia was the original designer of the car but was later revised by Franco Scaglione, a former stylist at Bertone.
As for the engine, Brakhage's Apollo GT has a 3.5-liter Buick V8 under that long hood, sending 225 horsepower (168 kilowatts) to the wheels via a 4-speed manual transmission.
The original Apollo GT prototype was made completely out of aluminum but the production version's body was made of steel but with aluminum doors and hood. There are a lot of things to know about this rare, classic car, which you can learn by watching the video atop this page.
