Submitted for your consideration, the beautiful fiberglass-bodied STC-16 sports car, shown here in the bright yellow that is its trademark color. Designed in the early 1970s, it's a hatchback coupe that's very close in size (less than six inches difference in all major dimensions) to the present-day Mazda Miata. The styling is reminiscent of the early Datsun 240Z and Ford Capri and maybe even a little of the Shelby Cobra Daytona--yet the STC-16 is undeniably unique. It's clean and understated and wouldn't look entirely out of place in a 21st-century showroom. I particularly like lines of the grille and headlight surround, and the black-edged body-color bumper.
It is unlikely that you will ever see an STC-16 in person--mostly because there aren't that many to see. The car was never marketed in North America, and as far as I have been able to determine, there's not a single STC-16 on this continent, not even in Jay Leno's legendary garage. Only 176 STC-16s were built, according to the most optimistic tally, making it rarer than the Studebaker Avanti, Plymouth Superbird, Mazda Cosmo 110, Kaiser Darrin roadster, Toyota 2000GT, or Ford RS200. Only 26 are known to still be in existence, all in their country of origin.
So, you may ask, what is the STC-16's country of origin?
Unless you already know, you'd probably never guess.
The STC-16 came, not from England or Germany or even Japan or Italy, but from Istanbul, Turkey. The Anadol STC-16 was the first and only sports car built by the Turkish firm of Otosan Otomobil Sanayii.
Otosan assembles Fords today, but it once sold cars and light trucks bearing its own "Anadol" brand name. The first Anadol was the A1 coupe, introduced in 1966. It was designed and engineered in England by Reliant, a firm best known as the manufacturer of the Robin three-wheel minicar. The A1 had a fiberglass body on a steel ladder frame, and used a European Ford drivetrain. Otosan added the four-door A2 sedan (also fiberglass-bodied, and built on the same running gear as the A1) to its lineup in 1970.
Shortly after the A2 went on the market, Otosan embarked on its most ambitious project yet--a two-seat sports car which would be the first of its vehicles designed entirely in-house. Stylist Eralp Noyan drew inspiration from the Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane, and produced an attractive, well-proportioned coupe. The exterior styling was complemented by a tasteful interior with bucket seats and full sports-car instrumentation.
The chassis was a modified version of the A1/A2 frame, cut down to an 89.7-inch wheelbase, but with the same basic layout--front engine, rear drive, independent suspension with coil springs up front, live axle with leaf springs in the back. The sedan suspension was not stiffened or otherwise tweaked in the direction of handling, but a rack-and-pinion steering box was fitted in place of the sedan's recirculating ball system.
The engine was a 1599-cc Ford inline four-cylinder with a single-barrel carb which produced 67 horsepower and 89 foot-pounds of torque, mated to a four-speed manual transmission. This powertrain gave the 2,028-pound STC-16 a top speed of 108 mph and a 0-60 time of around 15 seconds.
That doesn't sound all that impressive, but there are a few mitigating circumstances to keep in mind. First of all, we're dealing with the early 1970s, when even supposedly top-end "performance" cars were a little light in the performance department. Anadol was not a large enterprise--its best seller, the A2 sedan, sold an average of only 3,500 cars a year--and the development budget could not have been all that large. The STC-16 was only the second automobile designed entirely by Turks--the first was the ill-fated Devrim sedan of 1961--and there just was not a large talent pool of experienced Turkish automotive engineers to staff the design team with. This being the early '70s, they probably had to do their designing the old-fashioned way, with T-squares and French curves and slide rules instead of computers.
The result was a car that was a bit overweight and underpowered--but considering Otosan's limited resources and lack of institutional experience relative to its competitors in Zuffenhausen, Marinello, Tokyo, Bowling Green, or Hethel, Norfolk, the boys from Istanbul had nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, the phrase "pretty good for a rookie" seems like a fair evaluation. The STC's styling and interior ergonomics were the equal of contemporary sports coupes from Europe and Japan. It was competently engineered and had no major vices. The STC was all but hand-built, and one suspects the assembly quality would have put most 1970s Detroit iron to shame. The performance envelope may have been modest, but the car had a lot of potential for further development.
Otosan intended from the start to race the STC-16 on the rallying circuit. The race-prepared version of the STC had a modified engine producing 140 horsepower and a lighter fiberglass (!) frame. This illustrates what I meant about potential--add 73 horsepower and subtract a couple hundred pounds of weight, and all of a sudden the performance envelope gets a whole lot larger. The rally version compiled a respectable record in Turkish and European competition.
The designation "STC" was chosen with an eye toward export sales. It was supposed to stand for the English phrase "Sport Touring Coupe." Young Turkish car enthusiasts, however, insisted that it stood for Süper Türk Canavarı--"Super Turkish Monster!" The STC's alternate nickname was "the Moslem Corvette," in reference to its fiberglass body.
Unfortunately, the Super Turkish Monster didn't work out very well as a business proposition. In Turkey in the early 1970s, automobile ownership was still limited to the relatively well-to-do. The STC was expensive--70,000 Turkish lira ($5,384 at 1973 exchange rates, which equates to about $25,000 in today's dollars) versus 50,000 lira ($3,846) for the A2 sedan. There simply wasn't that much of a domestic Turkish market for expensive sports cars. A few STCs were exported to the UK, but it was not marketed anywhere else outside of Turkey. It is unlikely that a car with the STC's relatively modest performance would have had much appeal in the US market at that price point, and Otosan's inability to take advantage of economies of scale would have prevented it from being priced competitively. (A humble '73 Vega hatchback, which could out-accelerate the STC and had a back seat, had an MSRP of $2,192--less than half the Turkish Monster's home-country list price.) Further, the car could not have been sold here without adding federally mandated 5-mph bumpers, which would have utterly ruined Eralp Noyan's beautiful styling.
Though not a commercial success, the STC-16 is fondly remembered by Turkish automobile enthusiasts. It's become something of a cultural touchstone for the era and an object of understandable national pride. A small but very enthusiastic community of STC owners and fans in Turkey are keeping the memory alive, restoring and preserving these interesting automobiles.
As for myself, I find the STC-16 quite compelling. It is a reminder that creativity and talent--and, yes, even the irrational love of automobiles which Car Lust is dedicated to chronicling--are universal human characteristics, and that good things can come from unexpected places. What it might lack in raw power or sophistication it more than makes up for with its attractive lines, unique origin, and eager underdog personality.
I've owned and driven plenty of cars with better performance than the STC-16--even the much-despised Monza wagon would probably dominate it at the dragstrip--but there's a large part of me that would really like to have one. Since it is over 25 years old, you may import an STC-16 to the United States for street use without having to bring it up to U.S. specifications--assuming you can find one in Turkey that the owner is willing to sell you. Roll up to a car show or the cruise-in at the ice cream stand in a bright yellow STC-16 (with "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" blasting out of the stereo, of course!), and you'll likely draw a curious crowd wondering what it is. Imagine the looks on their faces when you tell them that it's a "Super Turkish Monster!"
The two publicity photos of the prototype that appear at the top of this article were taken while it was in England for development testing. Those shots, and the photo of the restored blue and white two-tone (which belongs to a Mr. Gomugen), came from the Turkish website http://www.stc-16.org/. The other illustrations came from another Turkish website, http://www.anadol-stc16.com/. Both sites have plenty of photos and other information, in both Turkish and English.
I would also like to thank Ali Ersin, the proprietor of anadol-stc16.com, for taking the time to answer some of my questions by e-mail. That's Ali's car illustrating the Turkish magazine article above.
--Kurabiye bir köpek'nin sahibi
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