How One Company Tried To Sell Firebirds As Fake Ferraris With The Help Of A Miami Vice Co-Star

There’s really nothing wrong with kit cars; those assemblages of body parts that convert a flat-out pedestrian machine into something that looks rather glamorous and beyond the means of the typical owner.

The problem I have is when the people that make such kits seem to think that the end result is something fundamentally better than the sum of its parts. In the eighties, one such builder seemed to do just that, and he even had the backing of a television actor with an ego the size of Antarctica. This didn’t help to save the whole venture from a premature end, but it’s a story that beggars belief.

Made By Tubbs For Scrubs

Despite the fact that Pontiacs generally having rather strong personalities of their own, these cars have often formed the basis for numerous low-production custom cars and home-buildable kits to make them stand out even more- maybe even too much so. The Stutz Blackhawk neoclassics made popular by Elvis had Grand Prixs and Bonnevilles below their glitzy skins, and Fieros have served as the underpinnings of many body kits replicating any number of exotics. However, one of the strangest of these conversions turned a Firebird into a replica of Thomas Magnum’s Ferrari 308GTS; I’m not sure if the product was as bizarre as much as the dead seriousness with which they marketed it as a Real Car.

I first became aware of this odd vehicle by reading Automobile magazine back in 1986, and I learned of its association with the actor Philip Michael Thomas who played Riccardo Tubbs on a certain Friday night television show.

Specifically, it was an article from the late, great Jean Jennings, a truly pioneering female writer in an industry that was about as male-dominated as any you can mention. You can (and should) read her entire article One Fake Ferrari as recaptured in a collection of her work called Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings, but I’ll quote enough of Jean’s writing to set the stage for this bizarre machine.

If you don’t know who Phillip Michael Thomas is, you must not have read the recent interview with him in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine.

“We are actually more famous right now that anybody else in the world,” PMT told interview. “I’m the wing-footed god.”

Indeed, the Miami Vice star didn’t lack for self-confidence. I read that Mr. Thomas had a goal of the “EGOT”, or an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony within a few short years, though ultimately he ended up with, I dunno, a “People’s Choice” nomination or something? Jean continued:

And now – some Hollywood publicist for Miami Vice called to tell us – Philip Michael Thomas is part owner of a company that makes that Machiavelli, another in a long line of Ferrari ripoffs. “What is a Machiavelli” we asked “Is it the fake Daytona on the show?” No, they’re not using the fake Daytona this season, said Hollywood, this is the new car, and PMT drives a purple one around Miami every day. Would we like to ride around with him? At this point, we weren’t sure what this guy was talking about.

“We’re talking cover, darling,” said our man in Miami. No lie. “What did you say your name was?”

Needless to say, Jean got a lot of face time with the car’s main creator, a fella named Bobby Henderson, but at the end of the day, the bluster about rides around with the Miami Vice star didn’t materialize, and the hype around this “new car” was equally empty. Most TV and movie props, at least from a distance and on film, convincingly appear to be whatever they’re trying to portray, but the Machiavelli couldn’t keep up that end of the bargain. Even the least enthusiastic car enthusiast would take one look at this thing and say, “That’s a Firebird with a bunch of crap stuck on it.” Ah, but the invisible thread spun into the emperor’s new car was a joy to behold.

I Can Smell The Bulls**t In The Air Tonight

Seriously, look at the promotional material. The cover shows what at first glance to be Ferrari’s famous prancing horse rendered as sculpture, but wait, no, that’s a unicorn. When this type of thing is done with a moose on a Volvo badge, it’s funny, but these guys were not joking. At least not intentionally. And 305GTS 2+2? Really?

Open up the brochure, and you’ll find the Machiavelli described as “The First American Made Exotic,” a statement so wrong-headed that I don’t know where to start.

Inside, plenty of photos and text extol the Machiavelli’s “European flair and style with American engineering and reliability.” Exactly, because it’s a Firebird.

The specs on the back page are particularly amusing, written in four languages so that ostensibly the many international potential customers could read it without busting out a translation dictionary. It’s packed with hilarious claims like “gearbox, operated by central remote control gear lever,” even though I’m pretty sure that stick comes right out the transmission like on any F-body. The “independent front and rear suspension” sure looks a lot like a live axle from a Firebird as well. At least you have “external rear view mirror electrically adjusted from inside the passenger compartment.” Where exactly was the “I4 2.0 liter 140HP Turbo” motor coming from? The Firebird could have been bought with a 2.5-liter Iron Duke, but no blower was in sight, and why would you want your fake Ferrari, uh, I mean “American Exotic” powered by a four-banger?

It’s just uncanny to read and hear the claims coming from Bobby Henderson’s mouth, and especially of Philip Michael Thomas, all said with such seeming sincerity that they might actually believe it. PMT told Jean Jennings how this venture was going to bring jobs and “millions of dollars” to Miami, as if he were the next Henry Ford. Henderson spoke of an exotic with a more usable back seat than a Mondial and greater ease of repair. However, at no time were they referring to an “exotic” sports car. Make no mistake: they were talking about a Firebird Trans Am with a bunch of fiberglass bonded and/or bolted to it.

The creators (and even people trying to sell the remaining examples today) are adamant that this is not a kit car; it was “made in a factory” as an American exotic. Well, sure, if you want to get into semantics, then, yes, you could say that gluing plastic bits onto a GM sports coupe in a garage could make the garage a “factory” and you a “car builder,” but I wouldn’t say that makes you Colin Chapman.

Inside, slabs of shellacked wood were adhesive-mounted to every flat surface of the Firebird’s interior, but Bobby really did the bare minimum here, other than covering up any Pontiac logos.

The engine, like the other mechanicals, received a sum total of nothing in terms of modifications over the Firebird you’d drive off of a Pontiac lot.

My favorite promotional piece has to be the Machiavelli ad below. If you haven’t guessed already, Jean Jennings’ article in Automobile was a side-splitting tongue-in-cheek hit piece that Mr. Henderson would not realistically be able to use for any kind of positive reinforcement of his product. Or so you would think!

At one point, Jennings refers to the Machiavelli as the “best car to drive around Miami” in a criticism of the superficial nature of Miami itself and the surface-deep showiness she felt pervaded much of the town. Despite this remark being made by Jean as a devastating takedown, Henderson uses the line in his ad. That’s brilliant!

Did anyone not see through this ruse and actually purchase a car named after an Italian philosopher whose name is most often called upon with the term Machiavellian, as in “like a schemer”? However many such people existed, very few had the chance to actually buy a Machiavelli.

They Should Have Blown This Thing Up Like Crockett’s Fake Daytona

If you’re up on cars at all, you probably already know that the firm in Maranello that makes cars with the prancing horse on the hood is usually less than thrilled if you put their logo on something they didn’t sanction or replicate its signature designs, even if unconvincingly. It should come as no surprise that a guy purchasing taillights and bumpers from Ferrari’s 308 parts supplies and sticking them on a Firebird kind of irked local Florida suppliers, who in turn likely alerted the boys upstairs.

Bobby Henderson almost certainly faced such wrath, and in the Jean Jennings’ piece, he even spoke of Ferrari parts merchants complaining about him stripping out their stocks of 308 parts. Records are understandably as sketchy as the whole venture, but it would appear that the entire Machiavelli adventure ended in a cease and desist after about 12 to 14 cars had been built.

Oddly enough, as insane as the Machiavelli Firebird was, it looks like Bobby even tried to make a sort of luxury family car or van called the Mystere.

Yes, that’s right, those are Caravan/Voyager wheels and headlamps, so we are looking at an “enhanced” Chrysler minivan. This is the only image or record I could find of this thing, so whether this we supposed to complement the fake Ferrari in the lineup or this was Bobby’s follow-up “car building” attempt after the smackdown from Maranello is unknown. All we know is that Machiavelli disappeared after around two years and was no more by around 1988.

Exactly how much money Philip Michael Thomas invested in Machiavelli is unknown, but it turned out to be a financial move about as solid as his music career. WARNING: He does robot moves at 0.13.

Hell, even Don Johnson had a bigger hit on the radio. Regardless of the failure, there will always be a steady supply of Bobby Hendersons and Machiavellis as long as there are roads to drive on. However, we may never see another time and place like Miami in the eighties, where even a full-on stock Trans Am wasn’t flashy enough.

Pontiac Points: 56 / 100

Verdict: Oh, come on, how can you not smile at this thing? It’s so bad, it’s good. And under the skin, it’s legitimately late-80’s-Trans Am good.

Top graphic images: Classic Auto Mall; NBC Universal