Larry Lavers, a 31 year old lawyer in New York City, regularly attended the NY Auto Show. The year was 1969, and Larry had just taken a new job with a large salary increase. The Auto Show beckoned him, and his newly lined pockets, to have a browse. Little did he know he’d be walking out with a deposit placed on a new sports car. This car was an Intermeccanica Omega, a rare car today, and back then a lofty project that Steve Wilder undertook. Larry paid $7,350 for the car in 1969. Soon after purchasing the car, Larry moved to San Francisco, driving his red Intermeccanica across the country, finding the upper limits of the cars top speed along the way (or at least the limits of his courage). He ripped through Nevada at around 120mph, where the speed limit was “you must be in control of your car,” and decided 120 was more than enough for him (the claimed top speed was around 160mph). This was one of two cross country trips he would make in the car, as a few years later he drove back to New York. On that trip Larry dropped his girlfriend off in St. Louis at 7AM, made his way through a snow storm, and arrived back in NYC at midnight the same day. Speaking of snow, Larry even had a ski rack mounted on the car and used to take it skiing; the skis would poke off the top of the car, funny stuff! Larry’s Intermeccanica was last registered in 1981. At some point, the car broke down one block from his house, forcing him to push it all the way into his house and into the garage. That was 1983 and the last time she ran. In 2018, the car showed up at a shop in Rhode Island. Sometime afterwards the building was deemed a fire hazard and all businesses operating were forced to shut down, which is when we ended up buying the car.
Intermeccanica started in 1959 as a “speed parts” manufacturer in Turin, Italy, making carburetors, intake manifolds, high performance cams, and oil filters. The Omega shared a body with the Griffith GT, Intermeccanica produced the bodies. Only 14 Griffith GT’s were made before the company shut down. When Griffith went out of business, Robert Cumberford, the designer of the Omega, and Steve Wilder traveled to Turin to let Frank Reisner of Intermeccanica know what had happened, but also to let him know that they would be continuing production of the formerly named Griffith under a new name, the Omega. Steve Wilder would be bank rolling the operation.
The Omega’s were shipped to the US engineless, and all running gear installed in North Carolina by Holman Moody (renowned race car preparation experts). 33 Omega’s were produced over the entire production run. Over time, it became tough to have the cars manufactured in Italy, but assembled in North Carolina, and the distance made communication quite difficult. Wilder kept asking for changes to be made to the car, and Holman Moody relayed many complaints about the car back to Frank Reisner, at Intermeccanica. What had started as a great partnership, ended up becoming somewhat of a production nightmare eventually forcing the end of the road for the Omega and the Intermeccanica – Steve Wilder partnership.
All difficulties aside, a Car and Driver article from March 1967 truly sang the Omega’s praises, commenting that it was fast, handled extremely well, and that it even felt “expensive.” Their only gripe was a slightly stiff suspension, some things never change with sports cars. The Omega came with a 289 cubic inch V8 producing 271 horsepower, which was enough to propel it to 60mph in less than 6 seconds! We love it because it’s one of those Italian-American oddballs that only saw the light of day due to the pure passion people have for cars.
We will have this car at our facility and available for sale soon.