Zimmer Golden Spirit Review

Most of what was written before 1987 appeared on business pages: the Fort Lauderdale and Miami papers, UPI, Automotive News, Forbes and Venture. The angle was a mobile-home company making money from very rich buyers, and the writers enjoyed the excess. UPI's headline in 1982 was "He produces immaculate autos for the filthy rich"; a stock analyst that year told a Florida paper the car looked like "a brothel on wheels — but they sell"; Forbes headed its story "The egomobile". Forbes measured it not against another neoclassic but against a Mercedes.

The first long piece, in the Fort Lauderdale News of March 1981, watched the cars being made and let the family talk. Robert (Bob) Zimmer was sure of his market: "Our business (in exotic cars) is not affected by recession. We are dealing with a clientele that has money regardless of market conditions." In June 1982 Automotive News found Zimmer prospering in a niche where others were failing: "One startling exception is Zimmer Motor Cars Corp. here, builder of one of the flashiest neoclassics of them all." It put the success down to money behind the company, a strong dealer network and wholesale finance for the dealers.

UPI's feature in October 1982 spread the story across the country. Zimmer's head of quality control, Paul Hahn, told it what driving the cars was like: "As much as I drive the car, I have to drive offensively. People look at the car and start to drive into you." Bob Zimmer was blunt about the motive: "We didn't get into it to fulfill a dream or our egos — we did it because we thought we could make money." Forbes, the next September, was the sharpest. It passed on, from people it did not name, that the fibreglass could shatter and the wheels come off, and, from one owner, that the ride was rough, and it ended, all the same, "Sure enough, the Spirit is Golden." No recall, test or survey ever bore out the claims about the body and the wheels, as the buyers guide explains.⁠source 7​source 8​source 3​source 2

Jack Hayes's piece for Venture, in July 1986, was the business press at its most doubtful. He described the Golden Spirit as a takeoff on the classics of the 1930s, and doubted whether the new QuickSilver, at its launch price, could hold its own against the two-seaters Detroit was about to launch, the Cadillac Allanté and Chrysler's car built with Maserati. A Rolls-Royce and Porsche dealer in Pasadena, who sold Zimmers, described the buyer for him.

The same dealer was surprised, and pleased, that Zimmer had done owners' tune-ups and repairs free.⁠source 6

Car and Driver's is the one full road test of a Zimmer that has been found. Patrick Bedard drove a QuickSilver of the 1987 model year for the cover story, under the line "Status! Power! Success! Zimmer! Zimmer?", and found it slower and heavier than Zimmer claimed, as the QuickSilver and the specifications pages show. He liked it anyway, and he ended on the effect it had on people.

Paul Zimmer gave the magazine his own view of his cars: "It's not standoffish like a Rolls. When you pull up, it says, 'I'm here!'" The three editors who added their "Counterpoint" were mixed. Arthur St. Antoine had "expected a real monstrosity" and was won over by the workmanship, but balked at the price; Csaba Csere likened the car to "an ermine coat" set beside everyday outerwear; and Don Sherman decided that "Coachbuilders like Zimmer keep the major makers honest."⁠source 1

Popular Mechanics the same month put the QuickSilver among America's small "designer" cars, and Zimmer's president, Carl Severe, made no claim for its speed.

Joe Rhodes of the Miami Herald, visiting the plant in September, was less kind to the QuickSilver: "a two-seater that looks something like a Buick on steroids, a chrome-toothed monster that, if you're looking straight into the massive grillwork, bears a strong resemblance to an electric razor from Jupiter". Zimmer's former promotions director, Rick Sand, gave him the company's own case: "There's nothing subtle about our cars. … We're selling automotive art."⁠source 9​source 5

When Zimmer Corporation went into Chapter 11, Forbes came back to the story it had told in 1983, under the head "Zimmer's bummer".

The column kept "some said" for the bodies but gave the wheels and the ride as fact, and it called the car "the poor-quality Spirit". In the years after, the Golden Spirit became a curiosity. John Gunnell's Weird Cars (1993) gave a page to Liberace's car, with its candelabrum, and Collectible Automobile that summer gave the QuickSilver three pages of history as "The First 'Neo-Modern'".⁠source 10​source 11​source 12

Art Zimmer's revived cars drew a little press, and almost all of it interviewed him. TravelLady Magazine rode in a new four-door on its delivery day in 2006 and wrote warmly. SFGate, the same year, headed its piece "Neoclassic cars -- big, head-turning fakes" but let Art Zimmer have his say: "these are cars to drive." Boston.com, in 2009, was wry: Art Zimmer, it said, built "the fanciest, rarest, and most expensive Town Cars on the planet".⁠source 13​source 14​source 15

Of all the pieces on this page, only one was a road test.

The retrospectives divide between affection and ridicule. Eric Peters put a Golden Spirit of the 1987 model year in his Automotive Atrocities (2004), among "the cars we love to hate". To some, Hagerty wrote in 2014, the neoclassics are "the automotive equivalent of a Thomas Kinkade painting"; Automobile, in 2016, said the Golden Spirit "overused every cliche, from the bevy of air horns to the padded top with landau bars". The Drive called one "the rolling embodiment of Rodney Dangerfield" in 2017, and admitted in the end that "sometimes a car that's a rolling cartoon can put a smile on your face". Consumer Guide's QuickSilver, in 2018, "would not look out of place in a Terry Gilliam film or Liberace's garage".

Baruth's was the only long drive found: about 2,700 km (1,700 miles) in a QuickSilver of the 1988 model year, which he found slow and beautifully trimmed. In 2026 The Autopian went to see Liberace's car and came away admiring.⁠source 20​source 21​source 22​source 17​source 18​source 23​source 24