[DeTomaso] The Fake Pantera Lives????

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/7/09 16 50 36, boyd411 at gmail.com writes:


> I checked all the Vin numbers on my car , and the body tags and no where 
> did
> I find a  surround with the place for the Vin # cut out. . My car is a 
> 1973
> L and may be different from the model you cited . It has the Vin on the 
> dash
> in the corner of the windshield, a partial Vin on a Detomaso tag near the
> master cylinder and the full Vin on a plastic tag with additional info ion
> the drivers side door jamb. None of them had a cut out section with a 
> plate
> over the Vin #.
> 
>>>Your cutout plate, like mine, has probably been removed when somebody 
reupholstered the front trunk.   There is only one real, official VIN on the 
car, and the others are just copies for convenience.   The official VIN is 
stamped on the top of the box that supports the brake vacuum booster, the 
carpet had a rectangular cutout there, and the the plate with the cutout section 
goes on top of that.   Do you have carpet on top of your brake booster box, 
with nothing else?   If so, peel it back and you'll find your car's actual 
VIN underneath--hopefully it matches the others!

And your friendly Pantera vendors will gladly sell you a reproduction 
cutout plate, so that you can trim your carpet, and then you can affix it in the 
appropriate spot to return your car to its original appearance. :>)

The 'partial VIN' on a tag next to the booster is almost assuredly your 
Body Service Number--a five-digit number, beginning with a "5", and having no 
relationship to the VIN whatsoever.   It's sort of a secondary VIN, a number 
used internally by Ford to identify the cars sequentially, because although 
the bodies were numbered sequentially at the Vignale factory in Turin, by 
the time they were trucked to Modena, and shuffled in and out of storage lots 
etc. before they ran down the final assembly line, the cars were no longer 
in numerical order.   The BSN allowed Ford to document changes, with 'all 
cars after BSN such-and-such now have this feature', something that was 
somewhat impossible to do with the VIN, unless the change was one that took place 
in Turin, and not Modena.

Cheers!

Mike