[DeTomaso] Some Jr Wilson history

Wed Sep 10 18:07:57 EDT 2008

I ran my Pantera the same year Junior crashed....with the exception of the racers who knew Junior no one knew Junior was still driving a Pantera since it looked more like a Porsche GTP.  When he crashed at Silver State every piece of that custom GTP body came off. His cage hardly had a nick on it.

MikeLDrew at aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 9/10/08 12 47 35, JDeRyke at aol.com writes:

> THere were several. I used to visit Jr regularly in Salinas CA. He built
> three different engines and three different cars that I know of. First came 
> his
> street Pantera. He built a sprint-car Fontana block out to 427 cubes w/SVO 
> A-3
> heads. That combination never satisfied Jr whose ambition was to beat JR
> Gottlieb's phony 'record' of 199+ mph average in a NASCAR-style Z-28. Turns 
> out that
> 'record' was never actually timed- there was a glitch in the setup of the
> timers so the organizers guessed at the ET and thus the avg speed. Gottlieb 
> was
> never able to repeat his time and Jr was 'only' able to do a real 177+ mph
> average in his black Pantera.
> 
>>>Right--that's the one that's in Sweden now, but with a nicely built 351C.

> Then he bought a Pantera that had caught fire & burned in FL. 
> 
>>>Actually, it was a VERY nice car, a red '74L that didn't burn. It had 
been involved in a very light front-end accident that barely tweaked the fender. 
Junior got a great deal on that car, but only wanted it for the body. He 
cut the inner wheelhouses out of the car and sold them to me; one of them went 
into my car, and the other one is now in Jim Kuehne's possession. I also 
got the wiring harness. I believe that harness is in Mad Dog's car now.

> Jr bought the
> scrap and repaired it strictly for racing. He built a monster-motor 572-inch
> Boss 429 engine of some 860 horses, for it. The giant engine was not pushed 
> back
> in the chassis, so the entire front of the longer block protruded into the
> cockpit behind an extended bulkhead cover. Good thing Jr was a small guy!
> 
>>>I believe that was the final iteration of his first car.

> In the final iteration, Jr cut the whole floor & chassis out of the Pantera
> and had a tube frame built locally at   a shop not far from Tony Harvey's 
> old
> home. This Pantera was somehow still street licensed (CA license- 55 HE HE).
> 
>>>Yes, on paper it was still the same '74 Pantera he got from Florida. :>)

> Interestingly, all the Panteras had stock suspensions, calipers & solid 
> rotor  
> brakes. Jr wasn't much into slowing down..... 
> 
>>>The tube frame car used some/most of the stock suspension components, 
although he re-engineered the rear suspension and had the shocks mounted almost 
straight up-and-down. I think the tube-frame car got Wilwood or similar brakes 
too.

I got a few rides in his first car at the Virginia City Hillclimb; although 
he did have to brake heavily in several places, the stock brakes were up to the 
task because the course was so short (5.5 miles I think?)

> His big problem was, the big
> block machines weighed over 4200 lbs without driver and navigator and all 
> the
> tires he could find were unreliable on pavement at those enormous speeds 
> with
> that much weight. The dirt track wing attacled directly to the rear of the 
> ZF
> further loaded the rear tires. Bonneville salt is cool and moist but 
> blacktop
> heats up rubber.
> 
>>>That was the reason for moving from the stock Pantera (which was heavier 
than a standard Pantera by several hundred pounds, but nowhere near 4200 I 
don't think?) to the tube frame, which shed 1000 pounds or more.

> After 5 rear tire blow-outs above 200 mph (without serious damage!) in
> Panteras, 
> 
>>>He got very lucky. In one crash in his first Pantera, the right rear 
tire blew, and the spinning carcass reached up and ripped the battery out from 
the shelf where it was mounted, behind the passenger seat, and then the car 
started spinning. He did innumerable 360s while staying mostly in the center of 
the road. The decklid was unlatched (he always ran that way to reduce rear 
end lift), and in his first half-spin, the decklid whipped up and smashed down 
atop the roof. Since the car was black, everything went dark, and Junior 
thought he had gone upside down.

He crested a rise while spinning, and the corner workers saw him approaching. 
Eventually the car left the road and buried itself halfway up the door; I 
think he had to break the windshield out to get out. So the car was pretty 
beat up (demolished right rear quarter panel, decklid, roof, windshield, and 
other damage) but you'd never know that to look at it today!

> the last car he built was a GTP-style single seat fiberglas body, on a
> different tube frame with an even more powerful version of his Boss 429. 
> 
>>>I believe he just removed the Pantera body from the tube frame and 
designed a new body for it--I think he only had one tube frame however. It may have 
been modifed along the way?

> This
> thing's only real relationship to a Pantera was the DeTomaso tail lights and 
> a
> couple of cockpit switches. It's ZF ran a 2.65 ring & pinion- stock is 4.22. 
> Jr
> once tested this frightening machine at 265 mph on the interstate near 
> 'Vegas
> very early in the morning... The GTP car was totally destroyed in Jr's only
> serious crash that ended his SS career. 
> 
>>>The body was destroyed but the chassis and drivetrain was salvagable. He 
had removed the Pantera body and had it hanging in his shop when he built the 
GTP-style body; after the crash he repaired the chassis and installed the 
Pantera body once more.

He had extensively modified that body to fit the chassis; among other things 
he narrowed the roof side-to-side by a very considerable amount, and made it 
removable. He normally drove it on the street as a Targa, with the top 
removed.

> >He was self sponsored and told me the
> GTP version was 'what you get if you spend $10,000 a month for 3 years on 
> your
> Pantera....' Last I heard, Jr still had the tube framed Pantera with a bored 
> &
> stroked 460 in it, but it was for sale for about the cost of the engine.
> 
> >>>Yes, that's the car that is now in England, apparently it was purchased by 
a dealer who bought it to sell. I was amazed that Junior was offering the 
car for sale for only $50K; the amount of money he had invested in that car was 
simply staggering....

Mike
> 

**************
Psssst...Have you heard the news? There's a new fashion blog, 
plus the latest fall trends and hair styles at StyleList.com.

(http://www.stylelist.com/trends?ncid=aolsty00050000000014)
_______________________________________________

Detomaso Forum Managed by POCA

Archive Search Engine Now Available at http://www.realbig.com/detomaso/

DeTomaso mailing list
DeTomaso at list.realbig.com
http://list.realbig.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso

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