[DeTomaso] fuel cells, now race car

Mad Dog Antenucci teampantera at yahoo.com
Mon May 28 13:37:04 EDT 2007


Papa Darryll...I love the chicken coupe part best. Keep racing it.
   
  md

Mountjoy <mtjoy at telis.org> wrote:
  Dave and others,

Thanks for the invitation to share a little on my race car. I'll try to be 
succinct and not to put anyone to sleep as there are literally volumes on 
the car.

The car is known as a Sunbeam Lister Tiger, or more commonly as a Le Mans 
Tiger. It is one of two coupé bodied cars, commissioned by Rootes Group and 
built by Brian Lister of Cambridge (plus a development mule), to compete in 
the 1964 24-Hours of Le Mans. The motors (260 CIDs) were supplied by Shelby 
American. My car ran as Nº 9 (the sister car ran as Nº 8). Nº 9's drivers 
were Peter Procter with Jimmy Blumer co-driving. Nº 8's driver is a 
familiar name to Pantera people, Claude Dubois, with Keith Ballastat 
co-driving. Unfortunately my car broke a crankshaft in the tenth hour, at 
full chat on the pit straight. Earlier it had been clocked at 162+ mph on 
the Mulsanne straight.

After Le Mans the car was lent to one of the development engineers from the 
Le Mans effort who changed the suspension, putting a 5-link in back. He put 
in a proper 289 motor with Weber 48 IDAs and made the car very successful in 
the 1965 Championship series. The car was then sold to Alan Fraser Racing 
in Scotland (close ties to Rootes Group) where it was cannibalized to create 
what was known as the Monster Tiger. In the early '70s the remains, 
basically the unibody shell, were discovered literally in a chicken coupe 
and retrieved. It was then cobbled together using Jaguar bits and vintage 
raced in the UK.

In the late '70s it was offered for sale. A man from California ended 
purchasing it, found the Monster Tiger in the Canary Islands, bought it and 
brought the two cars to the USA. He returned the original bits from the 
Monster back to my car and had the car restored. That is when it was 
photographed for Automobile Quarterly, Vol. 22, No 1. Eventually it was 
sold to a man on the east coast and vintage raced in SVRA. In '01 it was 
offered for auction at Monterey and I was the winning bidder. Shortly after 
collecting the car a friend took it for an off-road excursion (don't ask). 
Rather than put yet another bandage on a car that had "evolved" over time I 
decided to do a full restoration, bringing the car back to its post-Le Mans 
period in time. It was an eight-month nut-and-bolt project with sometimes 
five people working on the was up to 15 hour days. What pushed the project 
was that the car had been invited to the Goodwood Revival and accepted for 
the inaugural Le Mans Classic. For the not too faint-of-heart or those I 
haven't put asleep yet there is a pictorial exposé on the car's adventures 
at Goodwood and Le Mans. It can be found at: 
http://www.tigersunited.com/articles/dm-lister/MountjoyLemans.asp

Since then the car has been running mostly at the Monterey Historic and at 
Coronado Speed Festival with General Racing Ltd. It is also at some of the 
Concours events. The car is a blast to drive, right-hand drive, big ol' 
tall, skinny bias tires and all. Get the corner set up just right, turn in, 
feel the tires begin to drift, play with the pedal and wheel, squeeze in the 
power and exit, kissing the far side of the track. What a rush.

It has been featured in or mentioned in various books and periodicals, most 
recently the June issue of OCTANE magazine.

Thanks for letting me share a little. Proud Papa? You bet !

Darrell




Original Mesage:
> Message: 12
> Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 20:47:36 -0600
> From: adin at frontier.net
> Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] fuel cells
> To: detomaso at list.realbig.com
> Message-ID:
> <20070527204736.zcsj6x142s4gwwog at webmail.brainstorminternet.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes";
> format="flowed"
>
> D,
> Why don't you tell the folks a little more about your car? I may even
> have a picture I can link to (the list strips attachements) so folks
> can see it.
>
> David in Durangp
>
> Quoting Mad Dog Antenucci :
>
>> Darryll,
>>
>> Most excellent 'real-world' feedback. When you can make it out
>> here Darryll, Team Pantera Racing will pick up your food, lodging
>> and bar tab...in fact try and make it to Silver State in Sept.
>>
>> Thanks mate!
>>
>>
>> Mad Dawg Antenucci
>> Teampantera Racing
>> "if it was easy you'd do it"


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Mad Dawg Antenucci 
Team Pantera Racing 
  The 1st & still the only vintage race team in open road racing 
www.teampanteraracing.com



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