DUAL-GHIA

Dual Motors Corp. (1955-1958)
Detroit, Michigan

This is a Dual-Ghia hood emblem (date uncertain)   mjs
Size: 65mm diameter    MM: None

Chrysler engaged the Italian coachbuilder, Ghia, in the early 1950's to produce some Dodge based concept car designs using the design skills of Virgil Exner and Luigi Segre. The result was the Firearrow concept supercar prototypes produced in 1954. However, Chrysler decided not to put the Firearrow into production. 

Eugene Casaroll, who operated a car delivery service for Chrysler and had a specialist car manufacturing company called Dual Motors, secured the rights to the Firearrow designs and engaged Paul Farago of Ghia to develop the Firearrow design into a production friendly automobile. The first prototype was shown at the Grosse-Pointe Yacht Club in Detroit in June 1955 under the Firebomb name. The final refined version was the superbly styled Dual-Ghia, which was introduced at the International Automobile Show in New York in 1956.

The Dual-Ghia was a four-passenger convertible, although at least one coupe model was also built, and was powered by a Dodge V8 engine. The Dual-Ghia was a very expensive automobile and was mainly bought by celebrities. Eugene Casaroll was losing money on each Dual-Ghia sold and decided to cease production. The plan was to build 150 Dual-Ghia cars a year but, in the event, only 99 cars were built over the two years 1957-1958 before production was halted.

Ghia in Italy later decided to produce a second generation Dual-Ghia 6.4L using a Chrysler V8 engine, but only 26 new Dual-Ghia 6.4L cars were built between 1961 and 1964.

Emblems

The Dual Ghia displayed a round emblem showing the crossed flags of Italy and the USA mounted on the hood.

There were some variations in the Dual-Ghia hood emblem through the various development and production stages. The gold finished multi-colored enamel Dual-Ghia hood emblem shown above at the top of this post may have been used on a development model but I cannot confirm this. This Dual-Ghia hood emblem is extremely rare.

The following is a slightly different Dual-Ghia hood emblem seen on a surviving production model, which would also be extremely rare:

This is a Dual-Ghia hood emblem (1958)   mycarquest
Size: Unknown

The "Dual-Ghia" name was also displayed on the sill plates and hubcaps, see examples shown below:

This is a Dual-Ghia sill plate (1958)   bonhams

This is a Dual-Ghia hubcap (1958)    bonhams