3 PART 1: THE DESIGN THE DEVIN SPORTS CAR BODY In the early postwar years, the handbuilt sports car movement was at the height of its popularity and was celebrated across America. Films like Universal Studios “Johnny Dark” celebrated the unique designs of handbuilt American sports cars. To the young men growing up in the 50s, seeing this movie was like throwing “gas on a fire”. Salvatore Salerno was part of this era. In the 1950s, it was estimated that once you had a body to build a car from, it took an additional 2000 hours to complete your “build”. That’s 50 weeks of 40 hour weeks and 2 weeks off for good measure—a full year. To estimate the cost today, if you use an hourly rate of $50, then 2000 hours of labor translates into $100,000—before you purchase the body, chassis or anything else to build the car. These cars represented a big investment to the owner. Companies that produced bodies included legendary names such as Glasspar, Wildfire, Victress, Byers and more. Handbuilt cars using these bodies were seen in magazines and on over 100 magazine covers during this time, but the most successful of these companies was Devin Enterprises founded by Bill Devin of Fontana, California. Devin started out with their first body in 1954. But his company took off in 1956 when they started to produce a new body based on an Ermini 357 Sport 1000—a design by Sergio Scaglietti of Carrozzeria Scaglietti near Modena, Italy. This elegant design was offered in nearly 30 styles—something for everyone. Which in this case, made it perfect for the sports car that Salvatore Salerno wanted to build. While well-known at the time, these cars and the effort it took to build them faded from memory for many years. But increasingly in the last twenty years, these cars have garnered favor with museums, exhibits, magazines and especially concours d’Elegance events. Handbuilt American sports cars were most recently recognized in 2023 at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance which included cars like Salvatore Salerno’s Devin in a class called “American Dream Cars of the 50s”.
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