The inspiration for the SD Swift came from Giovanni Michelotti's 1957 Lotus XI, bodied by Ghia Agile in Switzerland.

Always completely captivated with the shape and having missed out on my chance to buy the one off car some years ago, I started to think about making a car reminiscent of it.  

Early sports racers knew that speed is not just a function of horsepower but of weight and design. After all, with enough power, you can make a brick fly but so what? After watching fellow enthusiasts pursue larger and larger hp engines in pursuit of greater speed and bragging rights, I found myself longing to return to basics.

The Swift started out as a 1/24 scale scratch built resin model, the way I begin most of my projects. It lets me hold my vision in my hand and helps others see that vision when I’m talking about a project.

The challenge we set ourselves was to create a very good handling, lightweight car with a small but powerful engine for its size. To meet that goal it would need a lightweight but strong chassis. This lightweight roadster should be an example of how well a sports car in its most basic form can perform.

In keeping with the back-to-basics design, the car comes with no heater, no A/C and no power steering, and weighs in at less than 1400 lbs.

It uses a Mazda MX-5 1800cc vvt engine to produce right at 140 HP, yielding a horsepower to weight ratio of 10 lbs per hp. Back in the 1960's that was the magic number for F-1 cars if you wanted to be competitive.

One of the nicest things Mazda ever did for sports car enthusiast was to create the formidable little MX5 with its free clearance engine and front and rear sub frames to which the upper and lower control arms were attached.

As we developed a chassis for the Swift it made complete sense to utilize this brilliant engineering and create a tube frame chassis that the sub frames could bolt into. This gives the car 4-wheel disc brakes as well.

We created our own aluminum fuel tank and paired it with a slightly reworked MX-5 electric fuel pump and fuel gauge and part of the MX-5's wiring and computer to give the car the electronic crank fired ignition and electronic fuel injection. Retaining the catalytic converter makes the car also emissions legal.

The car comes with lightweight bucket seats and the readily available 58-62 Corvette windshield.

Foregoing top and side curtains, we made our own lightweight alloy header bar which is nestled over a custom-made rubber extrusion.

We modified the MX-5 steering column and the power steering rack to make it a manual rack.

The wheel base was shortened to 88” and the tire size reduced to give the car a somewhat more vintage road feel.

The result of all of this is a very well mannered vintage feeling sports racer for the street.