Lightburn

Over the months I've been messing about on the internet with Zetas and compiling a bit of a story as I went. Graham beat me to the punch with his Zeta article in the latest NSW Slipstream, so I'll add to it with a few little anecdotes. Eventually you will be able to read the article via the NSW website (see links). I think they run about a month behind on the website, to give the members and subscribers first go which is fair enough.

Almost a year ago I started to get involved in an attempt to begin a community based electric car building project and, knowing that the Zeta moulds were held by the National Motor Museum, asked the resident restorer and fellow Nagari owner, Immanuel, about the possibilities of whipping up a Zeta body for the project. "Don't waste your time" was his response. "By the time you got around to doing that, you could have gone out and bought a Handivan with a buggered motor for less than $200 and saved yourself all that time" which is very true. Not much has transpired since, but Mighty Boys are looking attractive. That is unless one of those dog kennels comes to light. For those who don't know, when production ceased on the Zeta, the left-over sedan bodies were sold off for dog kennels by a Wingfield salvage company.

A lot of the articles on the internet about Zetas talk about them being hopelessly unreliable. I remember the older sister of a good friend of mine in the 60s having a relatively new Zeta sedan. It was her everyday car. She and her sisters all lived and worked in Adelaide but the family home was in Kingston in the South East and the trips home on weekends were usually done in the Zeta, with a minimum of fuss.

The same goes for the blue Zeta in the picture below. The owners, Bob and Maureen, are members of the same local car club that I am in and the Zeta seems to turn up for, and complete, just about every run the club puts on. Quirky yes, but unreliable, well...... maybe not.

When they first came out they looked a bit crazy, with fins on the roof and nips and tucks here and there, but then Lightburn tidied up the appearance somewhat and below are a couple of shots of the series 2 version.

This little grey car is in the small car display at the National Motor Museum.

There is another Zeta in a museum. Michael Finnis has one of the Zeta utes in his collection at Goolwa. Prodsports racers will remember Michael as he ran a very quick E-type in those events and then continued in the ex-Latham Porsche. Always wanted to do it in a Nagari (race that is) but opportunity passed him by.

Lightburn expanded their horizons by introducing a sports car to their range. They did this by purchasing the rights to the Frisky Sprint when Frisky collapsed in 1959. They also poached the Frisky designer, Gordon Bedson, who arrived in Australia with 50 of the big, powerful Fichtel & Sachs motors. I say big and powerful because they were 493cc compared to the 324cc Villiers engines used in the sedans. Bedson's brief was to develop the Zeta Sports and when they came out they were a bit different to the Frisky Sprint, the most notable change being the absence of doors in the interests of rigity. Must be where Campbell got the idea from for the Ikara. Here's a picture of the Zeta Sports.

Remember me mentioning Albert Ludgate and the Capricornia sports cars he designed and built? Well, he also built a Zeta Sports with a VW motor in the back, one of the quickest cars up Collingrove in its day.

Now here's what I really wanted to tell you about Harold Lightburn. While all this car activity was going on, he also established an arrangement with SAAB to build a SAAB based sports car in Australia. Various SAAB forums, particularly a couple in USA and Sweden, talk about this mysterious car with reports that they are on the verge of discovering the whereabouts of what is supposed to be the rarest Saab of all. The truth is that two prototypes were to have been built, one LHD and one RHD. This was done but for some reason production never went ahead. Supposedly these 2 cars disappeared forever. Wrong! The LHD version is alive and well and pictured below.
This photograph was taken on one of our Gawler car club events. Yes, once again, the owners of this very rare vehicle are members of our local club - Terry and Dawn. The body, designed and built by Lightburn is of aluminium except for the tilt-forward bonnet which is fibreglass. The RHD version, I believe, also exists to this day but I also believe that it never proceeded past the running chassis stage.