The Ikenga GT emerged in London during the late 1960s as an extraordinary meeting of automotive experimentation, international craftsmanship and African cultural inspiration. Designed by Brooklyn-born American photographer and designer David Gittens, the car began with a McLaren-Elva competition chassis and evolved through three successive forms between 1967 and 1969. Beneath its dramatic bodywork were ideas that included closed-circuit television for rearward vision, a movable steering wheel and an unusual opening canopy. Equally important was its name. Gittens deliberately drew on Ikenga, a major concept in the Igbo tradition of south-eastern Nigeria associated with personal achievement and the power of individual accomplishment.
The result was neither a Nigerian-manufactured automobile nor a conventional British sports car. It was an international design project created in London by an American designer who traced part of his ancestry to Igbo culture and worked with some of Britain’s specialist automotive craftsmen.
David Gittens Before the Ikenga
David Gittens was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 and developed his career through art, photography and design. Before becoming known for experimental vehicles, he photographed sports-car racing and worked in the creative industries.
He covered racing for publications including Car and Driver and Sports Cars Illustrated. In 1964, he moved to London, where he established a photography studio and worked in fashion and advertising.
Cars remained a persistent interest. John Quinn, who worked as Gittens’s assistant, remembered that Gittens was constantly sketching automobiles and maintained a full-size drawing of the future Ikenga on a studio wall, altering the design as his ideas developed.
The transition from drawings to a working automobile came through Gittens’s relationship with Charles Williams, a skilled coachbuilder associated with Williams & Pritchard in North London.
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Gittens wanted to establish an experimental design operation capable of developing new automotive ideas in Britain, drawing inspiration from the relationship between independent designers, coachbuilders and manufacturers that had long characterised the Italian design industry.
Ikenga GT: One Prototype, Three Design Incarnations
The Ikenga GT developed through three principal forms, known as the Mk I, Mk II and Mk III.
Gittens acquired a McLaren racing chassis from engineer Ken Sheppard. Denis Jenkinson of Motor Sport described the Ikenga as being constructed around a McLaren-Elva Group 7 chassis.
The chassis had previously carried a Traco-Oldsmobile racing engine, but Gittens acquired it without that engine. A Buick V8 was installed for the road-oriented experimental project. Gittens’s project records identify the 1967 Mk I with a Rover-Buick 3.5-litre engine.
The first incarnation appeared in 1967.
The Mk I was low, dramatic and deliberately unconventional. Williams translated Gittens’s ideas and models into aluminium bodywork, creating a vehicle whose visual identity was as important as its mechanical basis.
In 1968, Gittens substantially redesigned the car as the Mk II. The interior became more elaborate, leather trim was introduced and the car acquired fitted luggage. The body was also refined as Gittens continued experimenting with its appearance.
Another major transformation followed in 1969. The Mk III adopted a cleaner, sharper wedge profile characteristic of the emerging direction of late 1960s and early 1970s high-performance design.
The three versions represented successive stages in the development of the same experimental automobile.
The Igbo Meaning Behind the Ikenga GT
The name Ikenga GT was central to the car’s identity.
Ikenga occupies an important place in Igbo spiritual and artistic tradition. Historically, Ikenga shrine figures have been associated with personal achievement, determination and the accomplishments represented by the right hand. Traditional examples can incorporate symbols of strength and perseverance, including ram’s horns.
Gittens consciously connected the name to the Igbo culture in which he traced part of his ancestry.
He also incorporated African visual inspiration into the form of the automobile itself. Gittens described the Mk I’s appearance when viewed from above as resembling an African mask facing upwards. Elements of the body became parts of this composition: the canopy suggested the eyes, a raised intake suggested the nose, while the rear section contributed to the impression of a stylised face.
The car’s African identity therefore extended beyond its name. Cultural symbolism formed part of Gittens’s visual language for the project.
This gave the Ikenga a distinctive place within the history of European experimental automotive design. Its creator was working in London with British craftsmen and a racing-derived chassis while placing an Igbo cultural concept at the centre of the car’s identity.
Technology Ahead of Its Time
The Ikenga attracted attention not only because of its shape.
The cockpit top was pneumatically operated to provide access to the car, with a mechanical system available if the pneumatic mechanism failed.
Rear visibility presented a particular challenge because of the body design. Gittens’s solution included closed-circuit television, with a camera providing a rearward view.
A swing-away steering wheel made entry and exit easier. The car also featured considerable luggage capacity behind the rear axle assembly.
As the project developed, Gittens explored additional technological ideas, including a luminescent roof lining, fluorescent lighting, electronic warnings concerning road conditions, collision-warning concepts and ultrasonic proximity sensing.
Such systems were highly unusual in a road-going experimental car of the late 1960s. Rear-view cameras, parking sensors and electronic driver warnings would eventually become familiar technologies on production vehicles many decades later.
The Ikenga was conceived as more than an exotic sports car. It functioned as a research vehicle, allowing Gittens and his collaborators to explore new approaches to styling, electronics and road-car design.
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Harrods Instead of Earls Court
The Mk II gained considerable attention during the period of the 1968 British motor show at Earls Court.
Experimental one-off cars did not have the kind of recognised platform within the British motor-show establishment that individual designers could find at events such as the Turin Motor Show. Denis Jenkinson criticised this situation in Motor Sport, arguing that British innovators received too little encouragement.
While the Earls Court Motor Show was taking place, the Ikenga was displayed at Harrods in London.
The exhibition brought the car before a large public audience and helped generate press attention around Gittens and his experimental design project.
American interest followed. The Mk II received prominent coverage in the April 1969 edition of Car and Driver, where it was associated with the striking description “World’s Wildest Street Racer”.
Ebony also devoted a substantial feature to Gittens and the Ikenga in its September 1969 issue. The magazine presented Gittens within the wider creative environment of his London studio, where automobile design formed part of a broader range of artistic and technological interests.
By this stage, the Ikenga had achieved international recognition despite remaining a one-off experimental vehicle.
The Death of Charles Williams
The project suffered a major setback in 1969 when Charles Williams died suddenly during development of the Mk III.
Williams had been crucial to the Ikenga. Gittens produced the creative concepts and models, while Williams possessed the specialist coachbuilding ability required to translate those forms into aluminium.
His death disrupted the wider plans for the Ikenga design enterprise.
Determined to complete the latest version of the car, Gittens transferred the unfinished Mk III to Harold Radford’s coachworks in Chiswick. Gary Williams, who was not related to Charles Williams, worked on the vehicle at Williams & Pritchard and later at Radford. Sports-car builder Roger Nathan was also involved in getting the car completed and running.
The body consisted of aluminium sheet formed over a steel supporting structure, while Radford handled further interior and finishing work.
Despite the disruption, the Mk III was completed in time for a major television appearance.
Tomorrow’s World, Turin and Stockholm
In October 1969, the Ikenga Mk III appeared on the BBC programme Tomorrow’s World, which specialised in presenting new technology and ideas about the future.
The television appearance itself brought an unexpected difficulty. Gary Williams later recalled that the car would not start when the team reached the BBC studios at Shepherd’s Bush and had to be pushed onto the set.
Afterwards, Gittens transported the car to Paris, where it was driven for filming, before continuing to Italy.
In November 1969, the Ikenga appeared at the Turin Motor Show, an appropriate setting for the type of independent automotive experimentation that inspired Gittens.
The car subsequently travelled to Sweden. In 1970, the Mk III appeared at the Swedish International Motor Show in Stockholm.
By this point, the Ikenga had become more than an attempt to create a conventional production sports car. It functioned as a travelling demonstration of Gittens’s ideas about styling, technology and the possibilities available to independent designers.
Plans for limited production did not develop into a sustained manufacturing operation.
What Happened to the Ikenga GT?
The sole underlying Ikenga prototype survived beyond the original project.
Its later history included a period at the Manx Motor Museum. The car appeared at auction in 1998 and was sold again in 2008 to a buyer in the Middle East.
Its subsequent ownership has remained largely outside public view, and the precise present location of the prototype has not been publicly established.
Gittens, meanwhile, continued designing.
Decades after the automobile project, he returned to the name Ikenga for an innovative gyroplane. His Ikenga 530Z eventually entered the collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
The aircraft reflected the same broad creative interests that had produced the Ikenga automobile: unconventional engineering, industrial design and a willingness to combine technology with a distinctive personal vision.
Conclusion
The Ikenga GT occupies an unusual position in automotive history because it cannot be understood solely as a British sports car, an American design project or an African cultural statement.
It contained elements of all three.
A Brooklyn-born American designer working in London acquired a McLaren-Elva competition chassis, collaborated with British coachbuilding specialists and deliberately named his creation after an important concept from the Igbo tradition to which he traced ancestral roots.
Between 1967 and 1969, one automobile evolved through three increasingly sophisticated design incarnations. Along the way it incorporated closed-circuit rear vision, an unusual canopy, a movable steering wheel and other experimental concepts that anticipated technologies later made commonplace by the motor industry.
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Commercial production never followed, and the death of Charles Williams deprived the venture of one of its most important craftsmen. Yet the Ikenga travelled from London to Turin and Stockholm, appeared on British television and attracted coverage in major American magazines.
Its significance lies not in how many cars were manufactured, but in what a single experimental automobile represented: a moment when racing engineering, specialist British craftsmanship, American creative ambition and Igbo cultural identity came together in one of the most distinctive automotive projects of the 1960s.
Author’s Note
The story of the Ikenga GT demonstrates how technological history can emerge far beyond established factories and famous marques. David Gittens approached the automobile as a designer, photographer and independent creative thinker, while Charles Williams and other British craftsmen supplied the specialist skills that turned those ideas into metal. Most significantly, Gittens gave the project an identity connected to Igbo ideas of personal achievement, placing African cultural heritage within the international design culture of the 1960s. The Ikenga’s lasting importance comes from that remarkable combination of cultural confidence, experimentation and craftsmanship.
References
Denis Jenkinson, “We Must Progress”, Motor Sport, March 1969.
Gordon Cruickshank, “Historic Scene: Sixties Swinger”, Motor Sport, August 2016.
David Gittens, Ikenga GT Automobiles and Dwij Project Archive.
“Ikenga”, Ebony, Vol. 24, No. 11, September 1969, p. 114.
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “Gyro 2000 Ikenga 530Z”.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Ìkèngà Shrine Figure, Igbo Peoples”.
M. Angulu Onwuejeogwu, “The Ikenga: The Cult of Individual Achievement and Advancement among the Nri, Igbo of Southern Nigeria”, 1973.
