Ikenga #cartefacts are are here
David Gittens was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied at the Los Angeles Art Centre in Industrial Design/Automobile Styling. He worked as a photographer for Car and Driver from 1960 to 1964 before designing the Ikenga.
Ikenga is the name of a West African mythical two-horned figure that stands just over three feet high and is a visually attractive machine with a feline futuristic appearance.
Gittens built the first version of the car in 1967 on a McLaren-Elva Group 7 chassis. The bright green bodywork was made in aluminum by Williams & Pritchard. The car had a mid-mounted Rover Buick 3.5 engine. The windscreen, cockpit roof, and cockpit sides hinged upwards in one piece along the line in front of the wipers.
Ikenga was updated to MkII version in 1968. It featured phosphor luminescent roof panels for interior lighting, full width fluorescent night lights for city driving and a fold-away steering wheel. The car was featured in many publications around the world and was demonstrated at motorshows accross Europe.
In mid-October of 1969, David Gittens together with Roger Nathan and Radford coachbuilders completed the Ikenga MkIII. The car was show in Paris and Turin. The car featured such things as pneumatic operation of the cockpit top, for ease of entry, closed-circuit television for rear-ward vision, ultra-sound distance proximity sensors, a Perspex boot lid that doubled up as an air brake, and other interesting features. The build quality could have been compared to the best of the best Italian coachbuilders.
Ikenga was intended as a two-seater high-performance vehicle suitable for continental touring. Production of up to 150 units was planned but it remained a one-off.
