1988 Italdesign Aztec

Offered Online by Bring a Trailer

The Aztec was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign as a celebration of the company’s 20th anniversary. It was shown as a prototype at the 1988 Turin Motor Show. Then the company decided to actually build road-going examples. They wanted to make 50 of them, but probably only 18 were actually completed.

It’s an almost-mythical car. They never come up for sale (at least publicly) and this is the first one to hit the auction block in more than a decade (though a quick search will show you zero auction results for the model at all). This one was once in the Shanghai Auto Museum, which seems like a place cars don’t escape from. But it was brought stateside by the Blackhawk Collection (who has a magical way to get some other classics out of China).

The Aztec is powered by a turbocharged 2.2-liter Audi inline-five that made 250 horsepower (if the stickers on the car are to be believed). That’s not exactly supercar territory, power-wise. But, those looks. That’s why this qualifies as a supercar. It looks like it drove off of a Star Wars set. It has a dual-canopy cockpit with gullwing and side-hinged doors. It’s straight out of bizarro land.

And it. Is. Amazing. This is a car I’ve wanted to see come to market for a long time (since I started this site almost a decade ago). And it’s the first one to hit the open market. What’s it worth? That’s the fun part. No one knows… there isn’t a big list of past sales to give us a clue. But if it isn’t a big money car, it deserves to be. Chances are you won’t see another one change hands for quite a while (unless the selling price here knocks it out of the park… then we’ll see a few of them).

Think about all of the wild stuff that came out of the 90s supercar madness. This is like the genesis of that. It’s a bummer this wasn’t a bigger success, then maybe they would’ve put the Nazca C2 into production as well. That could’ve led to even more fun in the 90s (Alfa Romeo Scighera anyone?).

The Aztec is among the wildest designs ever put into production, and it is the precursor to all of the low-run, high-end stuff we are awash in today. Check out more about this car here. But hurry, the auction ends Monday.

Update: Not sold, high bid of $165,000.