images: Autobild.de via Myles Kornblatt
(first posted 7/21/2014) Bruce Mohs was obviously a visionary, anticipating future automotive trends long before they took root. That probably explains why no one actually bought any of his Ostentatienne Opera Sedans back in 1967; it was just too far ahead of its time, although I could well see the Beatles driving a psychedelic-painted one in their Magical Mystery Tour movie.
It had all the requisite features of a blinged-out Escalade: a genuine truck chassis by International, giant 20″ wheels, over-the top styling and gobs of bling and gold. But the Ostentatienne went even further than that; it had such an overwhelming presence, one that would make it the ultimate “look-at-me-mobile” today. Maybe its time has finally come.
Mohs owned a seaplane service company in Madison, Wisconsin. Just how he happened upon the idea of a the Ostentatienne Opera Sedan is a matter of wild speculation; but then LSD was still legal in 1967.
The Ostentatienne was built on an International truck chassis with a 119″ wheelbase, and measured a massive 90″ wide, 69″ tall, 246″ long, and weighed some 6100 lbs. As best as I can tell, its front axle was also a truck solid beam unit. The Opera Sedan must have been a leisurely affair, as it was powered by a 250 hp 304 CID V8. Seems to me that the Ostentatienne deserved to have had the really big 549 CID big International V8; now that would have done the massive hood justice.
The only entrance was a fold-up central rear door, which allowed heavy steel girders to be placed on the sides of the body as a safety feature.
The actual seating space for such a monstrous car is not all that generous. But the visibility is splendid.
Given the lack of real pillars, the roof appears to be cantilevered. Mohs was a bit obsessed on safety, which explains some of the protuberances and such. But the cantilevered roof probably didn’t give much roll-over protection.
But there’s genuine walnut on the dash. There’s also 110V power, a fridge, and other amenities not customary in mere automobiles, like “isle lights” (SIC). Maybe that’s something seaplanes have, to light up an island?
Was the Mohs the true inspiration for the whole pimp-mobile/Superfly era that soon came to dominate our urban automotive culture? It certainly seems that way, given the timing. Let’s stop giving the Mark III or Eldorado the credit for that. Who would have imagined Madison, Wisconsin being the source of such a major design trend?
I remember reading about the Mohs in 1967, in a Car and Driver article. It left an indelible impression, needless to say. Only this one prototype was ever built, which given its original asking price of $19,600 ($135k adjusted) is not too surprising. But nowadays plenty of blingy luxury cars sticker for that and more, which makes the Ostentatienne look almost like a bargain. Where can one buy this kind of exclusivity for that?
And with a rear entrance at that.
The prototype, still owned by Bruce Mohs, was looking something less than ostentatious after being stored for decades, so in 2009, two Wisconsin high schools undertook a restoration.
The 20″ truck wheels are very obvious without their wheel covers. And the Mohs is still riding on its original 20″ whitewall truck tires; good luck finding replacements for those. But the Ostentatienne Opera Sedan is roadworthy again, and Bruce Mohs can once again ply the ‘hoods of Madison in the style that he is accustomed to. I’d suggest keeping the speed down a bit, given those 47 year old tires.
If that wasn’t enough, Mohs was back at it in 1973 with the Safarikar. The front end looks rather familiar, but the rest was a cornucopia of the absurd. Just what did they put in the water up in Madison? The Safarikar was less ambitious, obviously based on an International Travelall. It was a “dual cowl phaeton, with “skin” of Naugahyde stretched over foam padding. A safety feature? The doors opened outwards on sliding rods, again for alleged side-impact protection. Must have been fun stepping over those rods to get out or in. Not very safe…
I’ll let this poster speak for itself. I thought the Safarikar was a bit of a let-down after the Ostentatienne, but how could that possibly be topped? Mohs should have quit while he was ahead; there was simply no way to top the Ostentatienne, then or now.
More Ostentatienne Opera Sedan images found at autobild.de
Related reading:
Pimpmobile history: 1975 Cadillac Regent
1973 Rolls Royce Phantom VI Drophead by Frua
Liberace your car is here!!!!!
So how do you get out if someone rear ends you?Horrible beyond belief though I think some UK chav lottery winner would love it
That’s what I was thinking. It appears that the windows don’t roll down either.
What publication would those ads have run in?
Insane Peoples Quarterly….
Popular Psychotics
Lunatics Illustrated
… and Egoweek.
Carmine you kill me, that is seriously funny!
Road & Crack
More money than sense monthly
And Motor Trend.
Ouch.
“Road & Crack”
That one made me laugh.
I’d drive it.
It looks interesting enough.
Both Mohs are build on Travelall 10×0 chassis which means they have the torsion bar IFS.
In 1967 the 304 was the middle of International’s “Small V” engine family, the 266 was still in production and the 392 hadn’t appeared yet.
The other thing to consider is how long something like this would have taken to build. Sure it was billed as a 1967 but the chassis is likely older and maybe it is old enough that the 304 was the big engine in that year.
Yes, I forgot about the intro dates on those engines. In one of the pieces I read, it said that Mohs was going to offer a Model B with the 549 inch V8. Maybe he wasn’t too happy with the performance of the 304.
The 549 would have been a serious feat to get in there, they are huge and literally weigh half a ton. Don’t know if the torsion bar IFS could handle it and of course it wouldn’t have done much for the ride and handling which was the strong point of the IFS equipped trucks.
Named right.
The front sheet metal reminds me of King Midget…..on steroids.
A couple of years ago I found a copy of a self published book by the Opera Sedan’s builder called The Amayzing Mr. Mohs (Mr Mohs has a healthy ego). Both the Opera sedan and the SafariKar were built to showcase certain technologies Bruce Mohs had developed and patented.
Of those, the Swing-and-Sway Safety Seats got the closest to production. They are designed to pivot back in an impact letting the seat bottom absorb energy and protect occupants in a crash. As crazy as this feature sounds, in that heyday of the Nader-ite nazis, manufacturers were willing to consider almost anything that might give them an edge in the quest for automotive safety. Mr. Mohs brought the Opera Sedan down to Dearborn to demonstrate the Swing and Sway seats to the Ford Motor Company, who considered them for its upcoming Lincoln Mark III. Unfortunately, the seats took up too much interior space, even in the big Lincoln.
Having had a strange facination with the Mohs Opera Sedan ever since reading about it in a Motor Trend piece back in 1975 (or ’76), I enjoyed your article very much. The Opera Sedan reportedly is residing in a museum in Roscoe, IL.
I knew I’d read about these somewhere. Motor Trend, mid-seventies – thanks OrphanGuy! Have to see if I’ve still got the issue……
I read that very same Motor Trend article, and it was the first thing I thought of when I saw this post. I was thinking ’76; I was only five years old at the time, but I think I may have come across it when it was a couple of years old. I want to say there was a Pontiac Firebird on the cover.
Looks like a nice companion car to a Bricklin, for when your going out with friends….
> Mohs was a bit obsessed on safety, which explains some of the protuberances and such. But the cantilevered roof probably didn’t give much roll-over protection.
If that got in an accident with a bus, I think the bus would be more likely to roll over.
Yeah I think it would be hard to roll this considering its weight, much of which is relatively low and the track width. The Travelall has a fairly wide track width at least in the front with the IFS and those wheels with the serious negative offset had to increase the track width substantially. I feel very sorry for those outer front wheel bearings with those wheels.
Errr… What does it do?
My biggest question is how do you pronounce “Ostentatienne”?
http://tts.imtranslator.net/Tp0p
Neat site!
Say it like you would say “ostentation”, but even more ostentatiously, like it’s something that Pepe Lepieux has just fallen in love with OOH LA LA!
With great feeling.
Its sounds like a more ostentatious version of Ovaltine….
Funny that’s the first thing that came to my mind, too.
Ah-sten-tay-she-enn?
My initial reaction was “nice photoshop job.” Then, I saw rest of the photos… It has a sort of Born From Boats ambiance. It’s very cool in a designed-by-a-12-year-old-boy kind of way.
Why the heck does this car remind me of that awful Thunderbirds cartoon from the 1960’s? Maybe it’s because of the over the top tackiness level!
Reminds me a bit of the Homer.
I was thinking the same thing. Though the quad lamps and forward-canted fender tips do also give a slight ’67 Caddy vibe.
Also, has “ostentatious” ever had a positive connotation? And if not, what the hell was he trying for with the name?
The “Homer” is spot-on. I’ve only ever seen pix of this car by itself, not really to scale with anything else. It’s really badly designed, in terms of styling. The proportions are awful. It really looks home-made with a twinge of art-car baked in.
It’s like the stuff I used to draw when I was 12, before I understood proportion and scale and how to effectively use them to convey an idea.
Wow. Just… wow…
The Homer nails it, I’m almost wondering if one of the writers of that episode had a copy of that Mohs ad for inspiration.
“Powell makes a pow! pow! powerful car!”
Just what I was thinking!
What a retard, did that clown really think those would sell or was he just extracting the urine?
Oh, too early in the day to read this. My tummy hurts.
Thank you thank you thank you Paul, I’ve been looking for more photos of these cars for years and they are very difficult to get information on. They were a big star in a book I had growing up; Lemons: The World’s Worst Cars. Most of the cars in that book were really only guilty of bizarre design decisions, I found it quite entertaining and there’s a lot of cars in it I’d be thrilled to actually drive (looking at you, Chrysler Airflow and Suzuki Samurai).
“OK guys, Brooks Stevens won’t return my calls. I guess we’ll just go with our version.”
They should have offered a badge-engineered version to Studebaker – they could have called it the Land Bruiser.
I have never, ever seen reference to this. Wow. Just wow. Not only is this extremely unattractive, but the amount of front overhang is just mind-boggling on a basic RWD International chassis. I can imagine that there was a lot of “Yes Sir” involved in the styling.
Just imagine how many Nauga’s gave up their hydes to create the skin on the Safaricar!
From what I’ve read the average size Nauga yields about 1 yard of useable hide so it looks like about 50 gave their life for one Safrikar.
…not to mention barbecue grills.
I saw one copy of the Safarikar at the (old) kruse auction in Auburn, that had to be late 90’s. The pictures do not do it justice – it was even more horrid in real life! Those naugas died in vain!
Thankfully, Nauga conservation efforts since the early 1980s have been very successful. In fact they are no longer a threatened species.
Alcantaras on the other hand have been severely overharvested in recent years, particularly in the forests around Ingolstadt and Munich.
According to the information in Uniroyal Engineered Products’ ads, naugas shed their hides naturally – sort of like a molting process – so fortunately no naugas were harmed in the making of this monstrosity.
The naugaharvesters have to restrain them while peeling back the epidermis. They get a bonus if they get an unbroken hide in one piece. Here’s an example:
Oddly enough Naugahyde is made just south of Madison in Stoughton Wi.
I know I’ve seen this car somewhere before…http://techland.time.com/2013/06/27/finally-homer-simpson-designed-car-the-homer-comes-to-life/
I cannot take this thing serious. Then again, I am not sure it was suppose to be taken serious.
It was listed as a current model in the Auto Club of Italy “World Cars” books at least through the mid-70s, as well as several other encyclopedic guidebooks. I had always wondered how many were built, and it’s almost amazing that it was theoretically on offer for at least eight years and nobody, nobody, not one soul stepped up and said “I want one too, Bruce!”
This intrigues me as well – no one ever bought one? You would have thought Idi Amin, Pappa Doc or some crazed dictator somewhere would have put their deposit down. Was this the only car ever not to secure a single buyer? I suppose the real question is was he really trying to sell any or was it all a publicity stunt for individual inventions that were part of the car?
My familiarity with it is from the “World Cars” books as well (I still have a 1970 and a 1973). I had always assumed that there had been at least some limited production.
Thanks a heap, Paul. I was going to write another CC satire, but I can’t top the sheer intrinsic hilarity of this…this…THING!
It looks like something a Batman villain would drive…..if they have made a big budget Batman movie in 1978.
Not even necessarily big-budget, the car already existed – they probably could’ve rented it from Bruce Mohs and maybe even painted it.
it looks like an AMC Marlin fell into a vat of Jetsons
Meh
Having lived in Madison for several years (the bulk of the ’90s), this doesn’t surprise me that much, though I never actually saw any of these vehicles while I was there. The name “Mohs” did sound familiar–a Dr. Frederic Mohs, who also lived in Madison, was a pioneer in skin cancer surgery (“Mohs Surgery” techniques–yes, I did have to google that). My guess is that they are related. Your call as to which Mr. Mohs made the more lasting contribution to society!
There is also Friedrich Mohs, who gave us the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Though he’s not from Madison, unless there was a city of that name in Germany or Austria in the 1800’s.
Don’t know about hardness, but Bruces father was a surgeon at University of Wisconsin an alumni that invented the first machine used in cancer surgery. His name was Fredrich. Bruce also has a brother Fred Mohs who is a prominent lawyer and developer in Madison WI.
That front end is pimpadelic! The rear looks like a freaking BBQ grill, though 🙁
Wow…just…..WOW.
That’s what I said! 😉
I learned of this in the back of my copy of the Std. Catalog of American cars in the early ’80s, and saw maybe one more reference since then. This is by far the best coverage. Fun piece on a wild creation.
Hooniverse covered these a few years ago and they had a link to more pictures of the restoration of the Ostentatienne.
I learned of this in the back of my copy of the Std. Catalog of American cars
They seem to have made it into a lot of reference books, which is kinda surprising. The only thing that really separates Mohs from many other hideous and ridiculous customs is that you could, in theory, buy one – not that anyone did, apparently!
But that’s an interesting distinction. Why is this a “production car” and a homebuilt rat rod from someone’s backyard isn’t? Pretty much only because Bruce Mohs said it was and managed to convince a bunch of other people too. I assume that if any were actually sold, they also would have been titled/registered as a Mohs (as I’m guessing this one is) rather than an International, which would be typical of a custom car.
I had a similar thought about King Midget when that article ran. The only thing that made those a “car”, as opposed to a motorized toy, was that their builder called them “cars” and they fit a legal definition of the word back then.
Because King Midgets were legally considered cars when new, they still are today – you can drive them on any public roads! And because Mohs were offered for sale as “new cars” 45 years ago, that’s the way we still view them rather than as one-off customs.
And what does that all mean? Nothing at all, I just think it’s interesting!
As far as how it would be registered it would have been a Mohs. The Glassic which loosely resembled a Model A but was built on a Scout 800 chassis were registered as Glassics. Moneteverdi and Felber who converted Scout IIs using some of the original body parts were also not registered as Internationals. Monteverdi’s Aspen/Volare re-hash were also sold and registered as Monteverdi. IH was quite acomodating and were willing to sell incomplete vehicles, even to individuals if you knew how to order them. Or in some cases if you didn’t know how to order them and left out something important like axles or engines. Of course back then it was common for truck companies to sell what is known as a glider. A glider is a truck delivered less engine, trans and rear axle(s) so it wasn’t too far off from that.
You can still purchase a new semi tractor or other heavy/medium truck as a glider today. Given you can take a pre emissions controls engine that has been rebuilt and drop it into a brand new “wrapper” they have had something of a resurgence.
I’m surprised that the gov’t hasn’t closed that loophole due to those new emissions laws.
Nope, not April 1st.
You know, compared to the Safarikar, I’d rather have the Opera Sedan.
for those occasions when good tastes leaves my brain.
“ISLE LIGHTS” LOL, that’s great! Maybe this is the genesis of GM’s “CHECK GAGES” goof – an inside joke from a bunch of engineers who saw this car on its trip to Detroit?
The SafariKar was an object of particular fascination to me for many years. I had a copy of Lemons: The World’s Worst Cars when I was a young’n and the section on Mohs, despite being disparaging, made it sound way more interesting than it actually was. They only showed one grainy little B&W photo of partially assembled SafariKars and the most complete one looked something like a Land Rover Defender sedan, if that makes any sense. Plus they described it as being 4WD, having an International V8 and a large & luxurious interior that could double as a camper, but with every modern convenience at your fingertip! And to top it all off, the Ostentatienne Opera Sedan, which wasn’t shown, was only described as “even wilder”.
So when I finally came across more pictures and info on them many years later, it was a huge letdown. I had assumed the SafariKar was a cross between a Range Rover and VW Westphalia somehow squeezed into a ginormo-sedan package. Maybe that’s actually what its intentions were, but the finished product was nothing like that at all. And Mohs’ earlier effort? OMFG…
Even though they didn’t live up to my delusions about a blurb in a coffee table book from 20 years earlier, I still have admiration for these insane creations. The Ostentatienne Opera Sedan is easily the most ridiculous American car ever built. No question – and it really is such a perfect “American car”: conservative and rugged mechanically, but over-the-top gaudy on the outside!
This car is a living piece of folklore, I almost can’t believe that it still exists and has been (mostly) restored. Supposedly Bruce Mohs regularly drove it on errands and whatnot for many years before it got too decrepit. Imagine driving through the main drag of any decent-sized town back in 1967 and taking in the bright, pulsing neon signs through all that glass, isle lights aglow?
It was never “ahead if its time.” The car was never ahead of anything. Clearly this automotive blight was truly a beauty in the eye the of its creator. Yuck!
I love them both. But only as parade cars. Put 4 shriners in the car and have the little go carts circle them. 😛
The actual seating space for such a monstrous car is not all that generous. But the visibility is splendid. Given the lack of real pillars, the roof appears to be cantilevered. Mohs was a bit obsessed on safety, which explains some of the protuberances and such. But the cantilevered roof probably didn’t give much roll-over protection.
Just realized… it also looks like the roof (and entry hatch) are made out of wood!
According to the literature above that top has an integrated roll bar that is designed to support the weight of the vehicle.
I had to squint to see it but there it is… so is the roll bar made of wood, too? If not for the necessity of destroying the car, I’d love to see that tested. Seriously doubt it’d hold up – think about how skinny those pieces of metal must be! If they actually exist, they have to be tucked just inside of the wooden door frame, have curves that roughly match the roofline and one sharp bend to attach all the way back at the rear section of the frame.
I have no idea what the roll bar is made of, but as the de Havilland Mosquito demonstrated during the war, a well-designed hardwood structure can be quite strong.
Superfly and Timothy Leary designed a car with some really awesome orange barrel acid mixed in the Kool Aid.
What? No cupholders?
Front page of the Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI), 10/8/67; if you want the article, too, I can post it:
well…if someone shows up at the ACD in this thing, they’ll beat out the Henry J owners for the funkyness award.
I want the “Iacocca Edition”.
The “opera windows” have “opera windows” and the fake wire wheels have tripled padded vinyl inserts color-keyed to the colored crystal keys and Landau top.
A couple of decades ahead of its time – for the Sultan of Brunei to buy five of these things!
Hello, Dan Akroyd? I found the new Ecto-mobile for Ghostbusters 3.
I can think of a guy over at TTAC who would go for one of these.
(Hint: HE USES CAPS LOCK A LOT.)
You know, it does look like a plane from the inside. I think had the front overhang and grill been toned down, it would look attractive. Maybe a downward snout, Charger Daytona style.
The side profile, ignoring the over hang, is nice.
Could be mistaken for a 50s Futurama car.
The Safarikar though…interesting construction but definitely not that attractive.
Wonder what happened to the non-surviving one. Maybe a rhino saw it and got upset and rammed it?
my god…my eyes……is it possible to un-see this??
Mr. Mohs was apparently under the impression that calling a vehicle “ostentatious” was a compliment.
Mr. Mohs was wrong about a lot of things.
Never thought I would see this car again, but viola! here it is. Totally unique in every sense of the word, it has enough style for two cars.Must handle like a tank and get miserable gas mileage, but who cares? It seems to be built like the proverbial brick s-ithouse, but thats the idea. Just love that Rolls Royce style grill and the aircraft inspired interior!
I’m sorry but I do really really really want this car I honestly think its amazing if I ever win the lottery I would try my hardest to have this in my life asap I fully love it
I attended UW Madison from 1967-1971. I remember seeing the Mohs Ostientatienne on the streets of western Madison and Middleton esp. in ’70-’71 when we lived west of Lake Mendota. The Mohs family lived near our apt. complex (Sunrise Heights, Middleton)
I went to elementary school in Middleton and was in the same class as Mohs daughter Peggy, who I think is the little girl standing next to the big wheel in one of the old ads above. We had a field trip in third or fifth grade to the “car factory” where they made those things. Fun.
Seeing that the car was manufactured by the Mohs Seaplane Corporation, I’m surprised that it wasn’t amphibious like the Amphicar!
Didn’t it have nitrogen filled tyres?
That’s one of the few practical details.
90″ wide?! How was that road legal?
Back then, the maximum width for trucks was 96″. This was built on an IH truck chassis, and undoubtedly titled as such. A re-bodied truck.
I got to see a SafariKar up close at the Imperial Palace Auto Collection in Las Vegas back in 1989. Closeness doesn’t help – it was still hideous. Sadly, the collection closed its doors a few years back.
One showed up at the big Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) fall meet in Hershey a few years ago.
I’m just a bit surprised they would entrust the restoration of such a unique vehicle to a high school?
But then again, what an experience for those students.
Who else would touch it?
But seriously, the high school that did the resto was in Wisconsin and Bruce Mohs was a Wisconsin guy.
It’s funny, these cars came out when I was at the height of my consumption of Road & Track, plus British magazines like Motorsport, even the German Auto Motor und Sport. It was not covered in those publications.
By the way, I have had Mohs surgery. If the two Mohs are related, it’s a good thing that the surgeon had the talent for precision and subtlety, which is what Mohs surgery is all about. Not words one would use to describe anything about these cars.
It most certainly wasn’t covered by the publications you listed. Why would it? Completely outside of their focus, especially the European ones.
But Car and Driver certainly did, which is where I first read about it. And some others too.
The Ostentatienne’s high cowl to low beltline transition is done more deftly than a lot of production cars.
I blame the caste system. And Gerry Anderson. And the Midwest.
Twenty years earlier (1947), 14-year-old Mohs had created this in the HS shop in Madison, WI—and it made it to the Petersen museum pretty recently: https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/doug_moe/doug-moe-madison-made–foot-scooter-gets-new-life/article_16662b8c-9de7-11e0-9abf-001cc4c002e0.html
Mr. Mohs and his doings appeared in the Madison State Journal now and then–interesting/eccentric guy. (BTW, the paper always says there was just this *one* copy of the car.) Here’s some of his 1987 activity:
Just the thing to park next to your SafariKar. Bill Gelbke’s Roadog. Obviously drug use was rampant in the 1960s!
“I got to see a SafariKar up close at the Imperial Palace Auto Collection in Las Vegas back in 1989. Closeness doesn’t help – it was still hideous. Sadly, the collection closed its doors a few years back.”
I knew I’d seen it somewhere. I attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas from 1981-2001 and always tried to wander through the Imperial Palace collection. It was quite an exhibit in it’s time including several Duesenbergs.
That rear entry is kind of Gerry Anderson-ish
I think its not nearly mean and angry looking enough to sell to the public. Connect it to the interwebs (a series of tubes!) and blueteeth it up and watch them fly off the (very large) shelves! Call it the Armageddon Mark I.
International Van den Plas.
“but then LSD was still legal in 1967”
Anything’s legal till you get busted.
From what I’ve found LSD was banned in 1967.
Like that made a difference?
LSD became illegal in the US on October 24, 1968.
But I’m not really sure what your point is.
Some more Mohs from the (Madison, WI) paper, 1979. If I read things right, the Wienermobile was in his museum’s collection–though he had nothing to do with its construction.
Perhaps if he hadn’t gotten the national attention by Car & Driver, this would be just one of a zillion forgotten one-offs:
[Part one of two]
[Part two]
Someone taking up your disabled parking spaces? “I’ll show them disabled.”
I met the man and his wife in Madison. Different .