1954 Pegaso Z-102 | Barcelona | Capricho Árabe | Andrés Segovia

Music: 1892 Capricho Árabe | Andrés Segovia 1950s
Video: 1950s Pegaso Z-102 | 1950s Barcelona
1950s playlist: https://t.ly/VSyM

"Rafael Pueche’s 1955 [Pegaso Z-102] still sees exercise on the mountain roads outside of Madrid, and given the rarity of his car even a trip to the end of the driveway and back would constitute more use than most would dare allow.

This lucky one that still gets to spin its odometer was originally delivered to one of Pegaso’s factory racing drivers who had done a stint in a similar one at Le Mans, and following a change of ownership after he moved on, it had its roof lopped off. There’s more to the story than the surface though: for starters the driver was a one Juan Jover, and his stint at Le Mans can be summarized by the high-speed accident sustained in practice that resulted in a majorly tweaked leg for Jover and prompted the team to pull the car from the race. And this car, Jover’s street car, had its Touring berlinetta body transformed into a spider by the coachbuilders in Barcelona at Serra.

Rafael’s car has a unique history, but by their nature so does every Z-102. The story behind the Spanish sports car is an excellent example of one of life’s intersections wherein something special is born against the odds (and perhaps against the financial interests of company stakeholders).

In this case, Spain is a country emerging from a civil war in a world emerging from a world one, and she decides to spark up some industry under the oversight of the state. Things aren’t quite that simplified in real life, but generally speaking Pegaso was a state-owned brand underneath the umbrella of Enasa that was chiefly concerned with the production of vehicles meant to carry dozens of people or else many kilograms of things they needed—in other words, a two-seater sports car that cost multiples of a comparable Jag or Ferrari was not expected to be conceived here.

However, when Enasa and subsequently Pegaso were being built up from the purchased leftovers of the defunct Hispano-Suiza brand, the man chosen to lead this effort and its requisite engineering was not going to be satisfied playing around with just city buses and truck cabs to entertain himself. Not coming off of a job at Alfa Romeo as their head engineer in the Special Projects division that saw Wifredo Ricart working on grand prix cars and airplane engines anyway.

At Alfa he had proposed and abandoned several supercharger projects that were either too complex or too costly to undertake (including the Alfa Romeo Tipo 512 which was built to take on the Silver Arrows), but with Pegaso he managed to create the world’s fastest production car thanks in large part to the supercharger that could be fitted to its 3.2L V8 as an option (with supercharger, the Z-102 could reportedly hit a top speed of 151mph).

The Pegaso Z-102, like most of Ricart’s best work, was an advanced vehicle for its time not only for its powertrain’s obvious capabilities, but for its alloy body, its transaxle gearbox, its novel application of the De Dion rear suspension architecture and its fully independent system up front. Eclipsed in its era by cars like the Gullwing when it comes to widespread popularity, we think anything that was once the world’s fastest something deserves some recognition, and especially when it looks like this." (https://petrolicious.com/articles/gal...)

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"Capricho árabe (Arab Capriccio) is an 1892 work for classical guitar by Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega (Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea (21 November 1852 – 15 December 1909)). He is often called 'the father of classical guitar' and is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time." (Wikipedia)

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"Andrés Segovia Torres, 1st Marquis of Salobreña (21 February 1893 – 2 June 1987), known as Andrés Segovia, was a virtuoso Spanish classical guitarist from Linares, Spain. Many professional classical guitarists today were students of Segovia, or students of his students. Segovia's contribution to the modern-romantic repertoire not only included commissions but also his own transcriptions of classical or baroque works. He is remembered for his expressive performances: his wide palette of tone, and his distinctive musical personality, phrasing and style." (Wikipedia)

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"Andrés Segovia: 1950s American Recordings, Vol. 3 (Segovia, Vol. 5)
Volume 3 of Segovia’s 1950s American recordings focuses on music by Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909), the great nineteenth-century pioneer of the guitar, as well as a noted composer and arranger, and Manuel Ponce (1882-1948), founding father of twentieth-century Mexican music and a close friend of Segovia." (https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item....)