Bizarre Italdesign Aztec for sale

Looking like the spawn of a Subaru SVX and 90s Corvette that had speared through the movie set of Back to the Future, the 1989 Italdesign Aztec is something you don’t often stumble upon.

But that’s what has happened to Japanese car importer Iron Chef Imports, which came across the Aztec in a Japanese auction yard and promptly shared the interesting find to social media.

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Designed to be an exclusive collector’s item that looked toward the future, pictures from italdesign.it reveal it was powered by an 186kW Audi inline-five cylinder engine. The unit seems to be nestled so close to the firewall it would have done well to double as a massage machine.

Then there’s its actual seat layout, where individual glasshouses separated the driver and passenger in a design that could have been inspired by Le Mans cars or an X-wing fighter – or both.

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Adding to its bizarre personality, the passenger is also greeted by what look like a steering wheel. However to the benefit of the driver and detriment to his company it was a control console and not used for steering.

Keeping to its futuristic theme, exterior-wise there was a control panel installed in its right flank just fore of the rear wheels consisting of a speaker and code pad, here the driver input different codes to hear the status of vitals like coolant or oil levels. On the left hand side a similar arrangement stored a torch, screwdriver, fire extinguisher, and tyre inflator.

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Regarding the most polarising aspect of the vehicle, Giorgetto Giugiaro was responsible for the Aztec’s build and design, a man who also penned the BMW M1.

As for price and build, Iron Chef Imports wrote “[Italdesign] was originally hoping to sell 50 of them, but at $750K and upwards retail, at a time when 'greed is good' took a dive with the stockmarket, they ended up selling something like 18.”

The particular example the importer found online is up for a $300K bid and wears 3000km on its odometer.

Kristian Appelt, director of Iron Chef Imports, also tells MOTOR the original owner bought the car for US$2.2million on account of it being chassis number one and being signed.

Unfortunately, though, if you're interested in your own unique wedge-shaped slice of weird the selling Aztec rolls under the hammer in Japan today.

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