That Time Forgot: Zender Fact4 BiTurbo (and related concepts)
I’ve had many people I know mistake this thing for a fantasy car. But that’s all going to change today. Today, I’m going to talk about the history behind the Zender Fact4 BiTurbo, along with, as a bonus, all of the other things Zender made over the years.
Zender GmbH was a German tuning company founded by Hans-Albert Zender in 1969 as Firma HAZ in Bassenheim, Koblenz (later moved to Mülheim-Kärlich). The current incarnation of the company is actually Italian and apart from the name Zender, he has apparently nothing to do with the company; we’ll get to that later.
Zender (above) originally began producing bucket seats; he later branched out to the production of various bodyparts for cars like Fender flares and other such things made of fiber-reinforced plastics. He later branched out to a dealership business named H. A. Zender Exklusiv-Auto.
Zender would later produce parts for race cars such as the Volkswagen Scirocco Group 5, making fender flares and front and rear spoilers for the Sciroccos out of fiber-reinforced plastics. But Zender long dreamed of manufacturing his own cars to the world, and so he decided to experiment with the use of carbon fiber parts for both the body and chassis to make his own car. The first car he came up with? The Vision1.
Presented at the 1983 Frankfurt Motor Show (this will become a recurring trend), the Vision1 was a stunning car for the time, featuring swooping lines and futuristic elements for the time, such as butterfly doors and full all-wheel drive with manual locking differentials.
Using an Audi Quattro as a base, the Vision1 took both the 2.1L inline-5 engine and the chassis to make a futuristic supercar. The engine produced 300 horsepower and could do 270 km/h (168 mph). I believe only one was produced. Of course, Zender wanted to push for having his car enter production, and so he developed the Vision1 further... into the Vision1S.
Presented at the 1984 Frankfurt Auto Show, the Vision1S was a development of the Vision1. While it did use the same chassis and engine from an Audi Quattro, the Vision1S did feature some stylistic changes and a modified engine; this time, the engine featured a different camshaft and different intake and exhaust manifolds, allowing it to produce 340 horsepower. The car also retained the same scissor door setup. It appears at least two Vision1Ses were produced.
Ever wanting to advance his concepts further, Zender decided to build another prototype to showcase at the next edition of the Frankfurt Motor Show. What he came up with was appropriately called the Vision2.
Presented at the 1985 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Vision2 was created with the sole intention of seeing the effectiveness of using the underbody of the car as a diffuser. As such, this car was strictly a shell car; it had no interior, and most importantly, no engine. While it is disappointing that this car could not run, I must say that the design of the rear of this thing is mad. Only one was produced.
A convertible version of the car was also produced, but this was not a full-sized car, but rather, a smaller-scale model. This model never received a name as far as I’m aware, but a website calls it the Vision2c, so we’ll go with that.
Of course, Zender wanted to bring his concept even further, designing a new car to take the underbody diffuser concept further. What did this lead to? The Vision3c.
Presented at the 1986 Geneva Motor Show, the Vision3c was intended to be a continuation of the underbody diffuser development as seen on the Vision2. While it did have an interior, the car, just like the Vision2, was non-functional. As usual, only one was ever built.
As usual, Zender wanted to refine his design further, and employed the help of designer Günther Zillner to aid in this venture. To do this, they based their next car on the Vision3c and decided to make it a fully functional car. What came out of this was appropriately named the Vision3, which was presented at the 1987 Frankfurt Motor Show.
Unlike the previous two cars, the Vision2 and the Vision3c, the Vision3 was fully functional, featuring a Mercedes-Benz 5.6L M117 V8 engine sourced from a Mercedes-Benz 560 SEL. It produced about 300 horsepower and the car was capable of doing 270 km/h (168 mph).
Also unlike the other cars, there appears to have been three or four Vision3s produced; one of the most famous ones is purple and registered with a German license plate reading “TR ZE 11”. Whether it has been sold to a private owner is unclear to me, although it appears like the car is still under the ownership of Zender. All of the Vision3 prototypes also look slightly different, with some featuring elements other don’t have like louvers on the hood. Unlike previous Zender cars, however, the Vision3 featured scissor doors.
Of course, Zender himself is still trying to push to get his car into production. With the continued help of Zillner, Zender designed yet another car; this one would turn out to be arguably his most well-known one yet, helped by the fact that a Hot Wheels model was made of it.
This, of course, was the Fact4 BiTurbo, which was presented at the 1989 Frankfurt Motor Show.
Notable as being the first car with a full-carbon fiber monocoque, the Fact4 BiTurbo sported a crisp silver paintjob, scissor doors and Pirelli P-Zero tires (the same brand as used on modern Formula One cars). The Fact4 BiTurbo had lines somewhat reminiscent of a Ferrari F40 and caused quite a stir.
Featuring a Audi 3.6L V8 taken from an Audi V8 (yes, that was the name of the car) fitted with twin turbochargers, the Fact4 BiTurbo produced 440 horsepower and could do about 305 km/h (190 mph). The entire carbon fiber monocoque only weighed 55 kilograms (121 lb)! He attempted to put this into production, but production never came to be; only one was built.
Zender would later expand upon this concept with the Fact4 Spider.
Originally presented at the 1991 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Fact4 Spider wowed the crowds with its 3 kilogram (6.62 lb) doors which, as usual, swung upwards. The car features some stylistic changes from the original Fact4 BiTurbo, especially with regards to the rear.
The Fact4 Spider was powered by the same 3.6L Audi V8 as the Fact4 BiTurbo, only this time, it wasn’t turbocharged. The engine produced 247 horsepower. In 1992, a second version of the Fact4 Spider was released, this time, with a curved hardtop. This version was presented at the 1992 Geneva Motor Show.
After the Fact4 family was designed, Zender would go on to design four more concept cars: the Progetto Cinque (lit. “Project 5”), the Escape6, the Thirty7 (stylized as “307”) and the Straight8. The first of those designs was the Progetto Cinque.
The Progetto Cinque was designed for Alfa Romeo; Zender had just approached them as a tuning partner and wanted to show them what he could do. Using an Alfa Romeo Type 916 Spider as a base, he fitted the car with the 3.0L V6 producing 189 horsepower. Alfa’s chief designer Walter de Silva actually came down to Zender’s base to inspect the car himself, and thus began “a long and successful partnership”, as described by Zender. The car was also presented at the 1995 Frankfurt Motor Show.
Away from the convertibles that Zender was designing was a small, nimble, lightweight coupe known as the Escape6. Presented at the 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Escape6 was a highly lightweight coupe weighing only 850 kilograms (1874 lb). Using a Lotus Elise for a chassis, the car was fitted with a Volkswagen Group VR6 3.0L V6 producing 173 horsepower. The car featured, as usual, a composite body on a tubeframe chassis.
Zender’s thirtieth anniversary was fast approaching, and so, he wanted to design a car that would commemorate that event. He then designed the Thirty7, named as such because it was the 30th anniversary of the company and it was their 7th concept car design. Still using a Lotus Elise chassis as a base, the Thirty7 this time used a Volkswagen Group R4 1.8L engine producing 237 horsepower. It was first shown off at the 1999 Frankfurt Motor Show, but also went to other shows as well afterwards.
The last concept car Zender would design was another convertible known as the Straight8. Taking a practically unmodified BMW Z3 M as the base, the Straight8 had a custom tubeframe body made of composites fitted around it. The engine, a BMW S54B32 3.2L inline-6 producing 317 horsepower, was retained. The car itself also had a TVR ChromaFlair-esque paint called “Vert Soleil”, which could change its colors based on the lightning of the area. The car was first presented at the 2001... guess where.
After the design of the Straight8, Zender went back to solely tuning cars, and shut up its German operations on 1 September 2008; the dealership apparently continues to exist to this day. Some time later though, Zender apparently was spun off into a separate business deal based in Caorle, Italy; Hans-Albert Zender does not appear to have any involvement with any of the company’s management, as it is now run by Marco Dei Vecchi and now tunes Italian automobiles like Alfa Romeos and Fiats. However, it appears Zender is still in cahoots with Dei Vecchi, as it seems like he has given his blessing to the running of the Italian operation, as seen in the above photograph where Zender (left) is meeting and presumably talking to Dei Vecchi (second from left) at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten all the history of Zender out of the way, let’s actually get to what you came for: the actual casting.
The Fact4 casting was designed by Larry Wood and introduced in 1991, at a time when forgotten concept cars were being produced by Hot Wheels, such as the IAD Alien and the soon-to-arrive Vector WX-3.
The rear of the Fact4 features some decent detail, mimicking the actual car... sort of. Also notable was the inclusion of side view mirrors, a relative rarity, even nowadays.
The base features few markings apart from the logo and copyright information. I can honestly see people not being able to identify this car, but this was at a time where little other information other than copyright and the Hot Wheels logo was placed on the base; this lasted from about the mid-’80s to the mid-to-late-’90s, at which point it was presumably mandated to put the name of the casting on the base unless it couldn’t fit.
For a casting of its time, the Fact4 has had a ludicrously long life, spanning eighteen years from 1991 to 2009, where it was last seen as one of the Birthday Cars in this paintscheme. Presumably forgotten concept cars like these were truly starting to get forgotten.
Now that I’ve gotten everything out of the way, I hope you, the reader, are a bit more informed about the Zender Fact4 BiTurbo and the history of the company as a whole. This was a fun article to write, and even though my original draft was wiped out via a stupid Tumblr glitch, I’d write something like this again any day.
- Grunty