Glendale resident Herb Smith has a passion for Sabras, but he is not Jewish nor is he a Zionist. Nor is he a connoisseur of the prickly, pear-like sabra fruit that native Israelis have been named after.
His passion for Sabras is actually an extension of his passion for sports cars — and unknown to many people, Sabra is the name of Israel’s one attempt at manufacturing a sports car.
Smith’s passion for Sabras compelled him not only to own some — he boasts of having owned “five Sabras at one time, but now I own three.” He also has compiled three thick, ring-bound books filled with information on Sabras, including dozens of articles about the car — many of them in Hebrew, a language Smith does not know.
Moreover, “In the 1980s I started an organization called the Sabra Connection,” said Smith, “to find and organize people and find out where other Sabras were [located].”
In his study at his home, Smith has a map of the continental United States. Colored tacks indicate cities where Smith has been able to track down other Sabra owners. He said he knows of 58 Sabra owners in the U.S. and Canada, including three more in Wisconsin.
The history of the Sabra is murky partly because the Israeli company that had a hand in building the car — Autocars Company Ltd. of Haifa — was founded back in 1957. As far as Smith knows — and as far as I can tell from my own research — the company is defunct.
The Sabra “was conceived by a man in Israel,” whose name no one seems to remember. Smith said this Israeli “went to England and had it fabricated and designed. The intent was to move it back to Israel for the Israeli economy…. Most [Sabras] were made in England, but the assembly work was done in Israel.” But then the inventor disappeared, and “nobody really knows why he left.”
Sabras were manufactured in conjunction with Reliant Motors, a British company. Only a few hundred were ever made.
Smith, an 81-year-old retired certified manufacturing engineer, said he’s been collecting Sabras since 1970 after purchasing his first from a private individual.
“I like the appearance [of the Sabra] first of all,” Smith said. “As I learned more about it, I realized it was a rare car. It is fast, snappy, light bodied, fiberglass-bodied car. Very fast, because it was a sports car, and like all sports cars, they ride rough; they are ridden for sport.”
As for his cars, Smith has a Sabra consisting of an unfinished chassis, a partially completed Sabra that needs a lot of work, and one that’s ready to roll — a black convertible Sabra GT with a license plate that reads: SABRA.
“I haven’t driven [the GT] since last year, but it still works,” he said. “The fastest I took it was up to 90 miles per hour.”
As the years have gone by, Smith says he has slowly lost his passion for Sabras. He’s now looking for a buyer and said he would sell all three cars to another Sabra enthusiast for $9,500.
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