(first posted 7/1/2013) July 1st is Canada Day which is always a good time to get a bit patriotic. If the words “Canadian” and “sports car” were used together, most car buffs would probably immediately think of Malcolm Bricklin’s SV-1, which was assembled in Saint John, New Brunswick. But oddly enough, the Bricklin SV-1 wasn’t officially sold in Canada, since it was always intended for the US market. Bricklin production was located in Canada strictly because of government subsidies more than anything else. There was, however, an earlier sports car that was designed and produced by Canadians, and this one was only sold in Canada.
It is the Manic (pronounced man-eek) GT produced in Quebec. The man behind the Manic GT was Jacques About (pronounced Ah-boo) who had previously worked for Renault Canada in the public relations department. The idea of producing his own car came about after a Renault Canada study into the possibility of importing and selling the Alpine (a sports car based on Renault bits) in Renault dealerships. Although the report was very positive, Renault Canada decided not to go ahead with selling the Alpine, leaving the market niche open.
About was confident enough that he left his job at Renault Canada and formed Automobile Manic Inc. in 1968 to develop the car with money raised from various private and government sources. The new car was quickly developed, heavily based on Renault underpinnings and components, and debuted in 1969 at the Montreal auto show.
Renault R8 engine as installed in a Renault R8 engine saloon
The Manic had a fiberglass body and used a Renault 8 chassis and running gear. This gave it independent suspension all around, four wheel disc brakes plus rack and pinion steering. The rear water cooled Renault 1,289cc engine was offered in various stages of tune with outputs of 65hp, 80hp and 105hp. The higher power engines were tuned in France by Autobleu and featured such upgrades as headers and Weber carburetors. Weighing in at only 1,450lbs the Manic GT was a quick car, especially by the standards of the day. A four speed manual was standard with a five speed optional. Depending on gearing and engine options selected top speed could be as high as 135mph. The Renault underpinnings allowed the Manics to be sold and serviced at select Renault dealers.
The styling was supposed to be European in the front and more American in the rear, so the whole would be much like Canada at the time; a mix of the two. The front definitely bore a resemblance to the Lotus Europa with maybe a bit of Opel GT mixed in. It was a very low car standing only 45 inches tall. The Renault parts bin even provided a fair amount of the trim, most obviously the rear tail lights. Bucket seats, separate Jager gauges and a three-spoke steering wheel completed the interior.
While the Renault connections proved invaluable for quickly launching the Manic, they soon came to be a major liability. With a full order book despite the $3400 price tag (about the same as a Camaro or Mustang but less than a Lotus Europa)m Manic was unable to source parts consistently and in a timely manner. Part of the issue was Renault was phasing out the rear engined cars like the 8, so many cars were left idly in factory while some small part was tracked down. Manic had to even source parts from various international Renault distributors to finish its cars. Investors pulled the plug on production in 1971 after only 160 complete examples were made. There were also several incomplete cars that were sold as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.
The longevity of the cars themselves were again struck a blow by the Renault underpinnings. With its rear engine, the Manic made for a fine winter car but the heavy use of road salt in Eastern Canada where almost all the cars were sold caused the frame to rust out in short order. Unfortunately the frame and body were bonded together rather than bolted which make any restoration attempt much more complex. Few survivors remain, but it is an important milestone as one of the last production cars designed and built in Canada.
Good Morning, and Happy Canada Day David,
I can’t say that in all my years I’ve ever seen a Manic. Like Canada the bonding together of dissimilar materials has caused some problems down the road so that truly is a Canadian car. psst – Bricklin’s got a c in it.
How did that slip by me? Thanks.
Wow, I have never heard of these before. A fascinating story and a very interesting car. I always feel sad when an ambitious project like this never really gets off the ground. The story of the Manic is, well depressive. (Sorry, someone had to put it out there, lets just get it out of the way.)
With such low production and the rust problems, I wonder if survivors number in more than single digits. Thanks for telling us the story of this really rare car.
A happy Canada Day to my northern neighbors.
I had considered the manic depressive crack as well, but figured someone else would get it. You came through for me JPC
Today I don’t have to work, and the 63 VW is being unpacked from the garage!
I get up too late in the Pacific time zone to get in on all the bad jokes…Merde! Interesting car, sort of Ferrari Dino meets some kind of Lotus.
Thank you for sharing this. Like the others, I never knew about this car before. The body style reminds me of a Saab Sonnet II. I guess there is no surprise that the Manic GT looks like it shares the positive camber in the front and the negative camber in the rear of the R8. The interior is from a time when even some sports cars did not have the now universal console!
There is a registry for the Manic gt, http//manicgt.com/Registry.html . According to it 34 cars are accounted for in various states of repair.
When I was five a friend of my grandfather had a body for one of these sitting on a rack behind his shop. Because of how it was perched I couldnt get a good view of it, good thing my grandfathers friend knew what it was and shared the info with me.
I never new about these either, despite living at the time in Burlington, Vermont (only about 100 miles from Montreal) and my father owning a Renault R10 (bought at Almartin Motors in 1968). The funny thing to me is the dashboard vents (which to us were new at the time; our previous American cars, all lacking air conditioning didn’t have them, neither did my Dad’s previous ’59 VW Beetle (which as they all did lacked many creature comforts). The R10 had several of them on the dash (despite of course having no air conditioning); we used to joke about it and say it was a place to store golfballs for my father (it was his car, and at the time he was an avid golfer, though its been years since he last golfed). He only had the R10 for about 6 years
(he ditched it during the 1st gas crisis, not because it got bad gas mileage, but because it had a standard transmission, which my mother always had trouble driving, and I guess he wanted her to drive his car more (instead of our ’73 Country Sedan) to save on gas for the family overall.
Is it just me, or is there something bizarre about the pose of the model in the 6th picture?
I noticed that right away too! Between her pose and spacesuit unitard, it makes even Mercury’s 1970s adds with models posing with diamond-collar cougars look normal.
In my life I’ve seen many Québécoise strike a similar confident yet defiant pose.
Just not necessarily while wearing a jumpsuit.
Between the unitard and the belt she looks like some bizarre interstellar WWE champion.
Great piece! I had no idea this car ever existed.
Back in the late 60’s there was a Cdn publication called Canadian Track and Traffic, and I’m pretty sure they did a feature on this car. i never saw one in the flesh though.
If there’s a lesson here…it’s to not do something like this on the cheap.
Granted, coming up with its own drivetrain would have been a road too far. But since Renault was phasing out these components…it seems a no-brainer to offer whoever controlled capital dispositions over there, a sale of designs and/or tooling. Or at the very least, to lock up a supply contract.
Home manufacture would have given the company the chance to improve on Renault’s quality-control and engineering parameters as well.
In any event, it’s an interesting story. He had a dream; he lined up financing; he came, problems arose, and he went away…and what market there was, remains unfilled. As with so many others, from Jordan to Tucker to DeLorean to Bricklin.
The same thing happened with VPG that was making the MV-1 handicap-accessible cab. The thing was engineered to use the Crown Victoria drivetrain, but suddenly supply looks in doubt as Ford is stopping production. Not sure if this is one of the factors in their recently shutting down production after about 2500 vehicles were built. I know that some DOE loans were cut off as well.
I’m Canadian…and old enough, but I’ve never heard of this car. And what’s more amazing is that BOTH TTAC and CC decided to feature this car today, eh!
Herr Schmitt and I always think alike.
Except you are more like Bob or Doug MacKenzie and “Bee Ess” is more like Brewmeister Smith!
Outside of Quebec in the Great White North Mr. About’s named would have been pronounced Ah-boot.
Have a great Canada Day and pound a few Labatt 50s for me.
Happy Canada Day indeed. According to gooogle, approximately 8% of our readers are from the Great North, although Canucknucklehead may be skewing those numbers 😉
Me, from a place called “Canada?” In honour of academic powerhouse and visionary Newt Gingrich, I will always see our socialist hell hole as Soviet Canuckistan. Heck, if it wasn’t for us, there’d be no regulations in US cars.
It’s amazing what people will do to build a sports car. When I heard French Canadian my first thought was something by Bombardier with a snowmobile engine, but a Renault R8 seems equally French.
The styling actually looks a bit like a Unipower GT, perhaps a result of convergent evolution.
What a cool and progressive vehicle! Amazing the designers didn’t see the writing on the wall with the engine…this could have been a Porsche-killer. Wonder if the tooling is still around?
Interesting car. I never knew it even existed, but then Quebec is a long way from British Columbia. I have to admit I might have been inclined to dismiss it as a kit car if I ever did see one. Now I know!
Happy Canada Day to all my fellow canucks out there.
The amount of rear camber these things have is almost uncomfortable to look at.
Proud pilot of a Canadian-built 1995 Z28 saying Happy Canada!
Really interesting article David – I’d never heard of the Manic. Appreciate the pronunciation guide too!
Reminds me quite a bit of the Brazilian Puma GT, which was pretty much the same concept with VW providing the mechanicals.
Those front bumper bars spoil the look of the car – were they Federally mandated for low-speed collisions?
The car came out in 1969 and was built that year and 1970. No bumper standards then.
I have just discovered one of these cars in Ontario. A complete car minus most of the interior and the windscreen. It also comes with an original factory body mold, so conceivably a fibre glass expert could make new bodies? What are these cars worth restored, as this one would require extensive restoration.
The glass is standard Renault glass of the time. Mostly R8/0 or R16 stuff. But I don’t recall which window is what.
Drivetrain is pretty standard Renault, too, R8/10. And a lot of that stuff was used in the R5, R6, R16 and R12, too.
Happy Canada day to every Canadian CCer!
That car with the 105 hp engine must have been a fun little vehicle
Seems like a poor combination. Kept one good part of R8, the zoomy unbreakable engine, but lost the supercomfy interior. Kept the bad part, lack of parts and service. The low-down camber makes me think the weight balance was wrong. R8 normally sat with zero camber.
I’m Canadian and consider myself pretty well knowledgeable about cars in general, and I too have never heard of the Manic……never seen one, either (I was born in 1978, so many of these cars may have already been beyond salvage by the time I was born), so I can tell you that they are ridiculously rare. Thanks for this article, Paul……it’s why we come here!
Correction (it won’t let me edit)…..thanks for this article, David!
– Renault and Peugeot both built cars in St-Bruno-de-Montarville, Quebec (just outside of Montreal) from 1965 to 1974, which probably played a role in the selection of the Renault 8 as a platform for the Manic.
The factory was a joint venture between the Quebec gov’t and Renault-Peugeot. Over the years, relatively small quantities of Renault 8s, 10s, 16s, Peugeot 204s, 404s (Alouette – french for Skylark)) were assembled, mostly from parts imported from France. The factory had the capacity to assemble 15,000 cars per year, but never reached that figure.
The factory struggled throughout its existence from political interference, endless strikes, over staffing, parts shortages, a reluctance to adapt the cars to the Canadian market and climate conditions, and the increasing availability of Japanese cars.
– The name Manic is derived from the name of the Manicouagan river, reservoir and hydro-electric dam complex in central Quebec. This complex was built in the 1960s around a 72km (45 mile) wide meteorite impact crater created some 200 million years ago. As the reservoir was filled, the distinctive shape of the crater became visible from space (see pic, courtesy of the Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation (CCMEO)). The two hydro-electric dams are called Manic-5 (now also known as Daniel Johnson dam) and Manic 5-PA.
Manicougan is an indigenous Cree word that means “where there is tree bark” (for canoe making).
BTW, Manic is normally pronounced man-ick rather than man-eek, even though it is pronounced man-eek when embedded in Manicouagan.
Right on with the pronunciation! 🙂 Manicouagan is often shortened to Manic in conversation, even writing. BTW, poutine is pronounced poo-tin (or poo-tsin) and not poo-teen. In both cases (Manic and poutine) the emphasis is on the final syllable.
And this concludes your French lesson for the day. 🙂
I spent a few days in Montreal in the summer of 1970. I’m pretty sure I saw Renault 12’s with “Renault 12: Fabriquée au Canada” decals on the rear windows.
As kid, I worked part time at a small used car lot. We had one of these on consignment . I do remember washing ,and drying it with a Chamois cloth.
I can’t remember if anybody ever did buy it.
I never heard of this car (low production not a surprise), nor of Canada’s “Track & Traffic” magazine.
The latter (complete run, scanned) is apparently available at modest cost:
https://stevemckelvie.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/canada-track-traffic-magazine-complete-digital-collection/
eBay has two “factory photos” of the Manic today, FWIW:
The other “factory photo”:
Happy Canada day! Thanks for a great read David. I missed this on the first run. And thanks for the pics above George.
The reference to the originally Renault-powered Lotus Europa is appropriate, and frankly I think this car, despite a few awkward details, is far more attractive than the Europa. Thanks for reposting on this Canada Day, as I must have missed it first time around. And thanks to all the Canadians on this site who keep us Yanks educated about Plodges, Meteors, Vauxhalls and Ladas. Not to mention Manics.
If a Lotus Europa was it’s high end competitor, then I’d say this was the low end.
I wonder if rear engined Skoda mechanicals could have been substituted when the Renault supply dried up very similar water cooled rear engine rear drive set ups, just to keep the show on the road so to speak. I wouldnt have solved the rust problem, galvanising before bonding to the body would have but that costs money I gues.
Tha famous and very successfull A 110 Alpine was also based on the Renault R8, the 1100 and 1300 Cleon engines were very reliable and tuned in the hands of Gordini, another big advantage of the R8 were disc brakes all around.
If I remember correctly, Autobleu were Renault’s in house tuner before they launched the R8 Gordini 1100
T’as compris?
I live in a small Ontario town and recently I drove down a street that I had not been on recently, and look what I found. Two Manic GTs, one just a body shell and one with a chassis but no engine. They is no glass and not much of either interior, but the bodies look pretty good. This must represent a significant portion of the remaining examples.
Better shot of the one with wheels.