Zimmer Golden Spirit Buyers Guide

There are three kinds of Zimmer, and a buyer needs to know which is which. The original Golden Spirit, built by Zimmer Motor Cars Corp. at Pompano Beach, Florida, from 1980 to 1988, began as a new Mustang; its few four-doors, the Golden Spirit Sedan, were built there too, on a donor no one has named. The QuickSilver, built there from 1986 to 1988, began as a new Fiero. The revival Golden Spirits of Art Zimmer's company, the Zimmer Neo-Classic, built from 1998 to about 2012, began as later Mustangs and, as four-doors, Lincoln Town Cars.

None of them was a kit car, a story the Golden Spirit page answers, and the revival company told insurers in 2005–06 that "the Zimmer is not and never has been a kit car." Look-alikes by other makers are another thing: the Classic Tiffany of Miami, a Zimmer-like car on a Mercury Cougar, is the one most easily taken for a Zimmer.⁠source 3​source 1​source 2​source 4​source 5​source 6

Zimmer built the bodies by hand, as Automotive News saw in 1982.

The steel is the Mustang's: its cabin, floor, doors and roof, which Zimmer kept when it cut away the rest. Check it as on any Mustang of the age, and check the fibreglass for cracks, crazing and old repairs under fresh paint, especially round mounting points and the bumpers.

Whether the fibreglass is a weakness, no evidence says either way. Forbes wrote in 1983 that "Its fiberglass body, some say, can shatter on impact and the wheels can fall off without warning", naming no one, and its follow-up of 1988 repeated the claims more firmly. No recall, test or survey supports them: the federal recalls of Golden Spirits concerned the brakes and the headlamps. When Car and Driver tested a QuickSilver in 1987, one of its editors found that "The pieces fit, the finish is smooth".⁠source 7​source 8​source 9​source 2​source 10

A two-door Golden Spirit's engine, gearbox and suspension are those of the Mustang it was built on, with steering and brake parts changed for the longer, heavier car: Ford's 4.2 V8 in the early cars, the 5.0 V8 from 1983, fuel injection and the four-speed automatic with overdrive from 1984, with vented discs at the front and drums at the back. Buy mechanical parts for the donor Mustang. Zimmer's revival company reminded owners of the old cars that "Underneath, your ZIMMER® is all Ford Mustang", though it passed on members' reports that their local Ford dealers would not work on them. Of his own cars Art Zimmer said in 2006: "You can get parts. You can have them serviced at any Ford dealership." The revival cars kept their donors' factory warranty, and their mechanical parts are a later Mustang's or a Town Car's.⁠source 11​source 1​source 7​source 12​source 13​source 14​source 4​source 15​source 5

The federal records hold two recalls of Golden Spirits, both from the first two years. In June 1981 Zimmer recalled cars whose stopping distances were about 10 per cent longer than the federal standard allowed, to modify a brake valve. A second recall, in July 1982, had dealers take a metal "spider" and lens off the headlamps of the cars built until then, because they cut the light. A car of those years may still have the brake work or the headlamp parts to check.

Two other Zimmer recalls of 1982, for seat backs and for missing seat belts, were for vans, not cars. No recall of a Zimmer car after 1982 was found.⁠source 10​source 16

The parts that make a Zimmer a Zimmer are the hard ones. UPI reported in 1982 that the cars used parts from Lincolns and Europe besides Zimmer's own, and some lamps came from cheaper cars still: Liberace's Golden Spirit, a 1981 model, has Volkswagen Beetle front indicators. The revival company ran a parts depot for the old cars from 1998, by volunteers, and warned in 2000 that "the former ZIMMER® company was not consistent in use of equipment on the cars they built". It had no QuickSilver parts. Parts and specialists goes through what can still be found.⁠source 11​source 17​source 4

The Golden Spirit's cabin was its luxury: power Recaro seats in leather, Mouton (sheepskin) carpet, a Nardi wood-rim wheel, a dash covered in leather and a wooden console, with German crystal vases. The seats still drew praise decades on: The Drive, in 2017, called them "what may be the best leather seats ever sold in the 1980s". Not every Golden Spirit has the same dashboard, though the dashboard alone does not date a car; the identification page lists the details that do.⁠source 13​source 18​source 19

Zimmer added two large headlamps in chrome pods, two fog lamps, opera lamps on the roof, chrome trumpet air horns (four, by Automotive News's count in 1982), polished stainless side exhausts and bumpers, and, as options, a badge bar and cowl lamps. All of it is plated or polished metal exposed to the weather, and all of it is particular to the car. Check that it is there, that it works and that the plating is sound.⁠source 13​source 7​source 18

A Zimmer kept its donor's identification number. The numbers that matter are the Mustang's or the Fiero's, with Zimmer's own production number beside them, and the identification page explains what each tells. Match the numbers on the car to its papers before anything else.⁠source 20​source 10​source 4

An original keeps the 1980s Mustang's cabin under its Zimmer body, as in the picture, and has no airbags; the revival's cars have later donors, with airbags, and the look-alikes other cars again, among them a larger one on Lincoln running gear that John Gunnell's Weird Cars (1993) describes. The identification page sets the differences out. A car sold as a 1980s Zimmer should show the 1980s Mustang under its body.⁠source 1​source 13​source 21​source 4​source 22

Zimmer replaced the Fiero's manual steering with a power-assisted rack from a Merkur, so the steering is not a Fiero part: check the rack and its lines and brackets. Car and Driver measured the ground clearance at half Zimmer's claim, so look under the nose and sills (rocker panels) for scrapes. Jack Baruth, driving a QuickSilver of the 1988 model year about 2,700 km (1,700 miles) for Road & Track in 2016, found the brakes "more of a suggestion than a command" and the car nervous in crosswinds, and the tank small: "130 miles between fuel stops is pushing it." The first cars of 1986 were held up by production problems, the Crain News Service reported that September.⁠source 2​source 14​source 23​source 24​source 4