KOZMO - The Dream of a Polish Sports Car

Kamil Kaluski
by Kamil Kaluski

People who don’t take no for an answer deserve more admiration. James Glickenhaus is one of those people. James and his Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus are building exotic road cars which can be raced and done so competitively. Almost nobody does that anymore; most manufacturers just build road cars and subcontract the manufacture of racecars resembling those road cars to anonymous shops in North Carolina or southern England. But Mr. Glickenhaus has resources not available to us “normies” – funding, mainly. He has more than money, though. He has ambition, dedication, and he’s probably not the kind of person to take a no for an answer.

That’s great for him. What about you? What if you want to build your own car and you do not have millions of dollars at your disposal?

Because I am Polish, I’ve been receiving dozens of emails about this kid in Poland who wants to build a small sports car. At worst it’s going to be a drawing and a dream. At best it’s going to be a bunch of steel tubes welded together with a junk yard engine in the back. Delete.

After receiving an email from the only Polish auto writer I both know and admire, I decided to look further into it.

The story is cute. A car-loving 10-year-old kid named Tomasz Ferdek is diagnosed with Leukemia. While in hospital receiving treatment, he dreams up and pens his lightweight sports car in detail. Some years later, after shaking off his illness, he starts building it in his one-car communist-era city garage. Thousands of work hours later, he has a running prototype. Not only that, on an autocross course it runs times similar to some of the fastest cars there.

There is more here, however. This guy did not start off with a Miata or an E30 chassis. Nor did he copy an existing vehicle in hopes of creating another Ariel Atom. He didn’t scour for random parts off other cars, such as the Rally Fighter. That would have been the easy way out. But this project isn’t about being easy. Rather, it’s about creating something original. Everything save the Polish-built Fiat 500 Turbo engine and transmission was designed and manufactured by him, from the chassis layout to the power window mechanism.

This kid actually built something that moves and isn’t completely awful. Not only that, his plans, which I must admit I think are very ambitious, are almost realistic. So far Tomasz has spent about $30,000 on this project, which is a lot in Poland. It’s so much in fact that he is basically broke. Like so many do these days, he is looking to crowd fund the rest of this project. The Indiegogo link has a lot more information on the car itself than I can fit here.

But it’s not the car or how he built it that impressed me the most. Nor is it the story of a sick kid with a dream. Rather, I am impressed with the person and his stubbornness, his ambition, his pride, and his passion. He has appeared on many Polish television programs promoting this car and his ideas and now he wants global interest. He has somehow found direct contact to me, a person who left his homeland almost thirty years ago, in order to expose his Polish-made car to the world, and stubbornly won’t stop contacting me until I do something about it.

Well, here you go, America, a new Polish sports car.

Lead image: Blogomotive.pl

Kamil Kaluski
Kamil Kaluski

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  • HerrKaLeun HerrKaLeun on May 29, 2015

    Great guy and great implementation. This proves sometimes outsiders need to shake up an industry. There is too much group-think going on. his car was as fast as the fasted other car - hah! that other car probably was developed by multimillion $ team or OEM and wasn't better than a garage car.

  • Niky Niky on May 29, 2015

    These things are almost always doomed to be standalone projects, with no future production... but help me, I love them. And I love that he's gone his own way with the design... Sort like a Kei sports car or a modern Marcos Mini (only with a rear engine layout, from the looks of it). Much props to the guy... especially considering his young age...

  • Dartdude The bottom line is that in the new America coming the elites don't want you and me to own cars. They are going to make building cars so expensive that the will only be for the very rich and connected. You will eat bugs and ride the bus and live in a 500sq-ft. apartment and like it. HUD wants to quit giving federal for any development for single family homes and don't be surprised that FHA aren't going to give loans for single family homes in the very near future.
  • FreedMike This is before Cadillac styling went full scale nutty...and not particularly attractive, in my opinion.
  • JTiberius1701 Middle of April here in NE Ohio. And that can still be shaky. Also on my Fiesta ST, I use Michelin Pilot Sport A/S tires for the winter and Bridgestone Potenza for my summer tires. No issues at all.
  • TCowner We've had a 64.5 Mustang in the family for the past 40 years. It is all original, Rangoon Red coupe with 289 (one of the first instead of the 260), Rally Pac, 4-speed, factory air, every option. Always gets smiles and thumbs ups.
  • ToolGuy This might be a good option for my spouse when it becomes available -- thought about reserving one but the $500 deposit is a little too serious. Oh sorry, that was the Volvo EX30, not the Mustang. Is Volvo part of Ford? Is the Mustang an EV? I'm so confused.
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