[DeTomaso] Tjaarda Pantera at the Seattle Italian Concours d'Elegance

[Mike Thomas]

We were very pleased to have the Tom Tjaarda Pantera, the orange car with
the silver front/rear facias which has been seen recently at Monterey,
sitting amongst the members of Panteras Northwest at today's Italian
Concours d'Elegance in Seattle.  Bruce Wanta, the current owner, and an avid
car enthusiast, took Best in Class for DeTomaso with the car.

It has been in the care of Park Place Motors of Bellevue, WA recently, where
we at Panteras Northwest were glad to assist Mr. Wanta and Park Place in
hooking up with Kirk Evans on a set of dropped floor pans and a flat
firewall kit.  Bruce is a rather tall individual and was considering having
to remove the beautiful custom seats, in which Tom Tjaarda had his signature
embroidered, to place pads on the floor and firewall just to enjoy the car.
The new firewall kit was custom upholstered to match the dark gray with
orange stitching in the rest of the car, and it all looks very nice.

Panteras northwest had only two cars at the show, myself and Chris Kimball.
We took second and third, respectively, to Mr. Wanta's car.  It was
interesting, however that still another Pantera was on the grounds.  Park
Place always has a display with a couple of their current For Sale cars: one
happened to be a beautiful red '72 in very stock original condition for
which they are asking $49.5K, a bit over market, but this is a really nice
car with 10" Campys on the rear, low mileage and a long Northwest history.

The attendance was down at the show in general as they had only the third
rainout in 22 years, and I'm talking wrath of God type rain: it was a
monsoon for about two hours, and off and on for the rest of the day.  Still,
we had 92 cars present from all makes Italian, down from the record 144 of
last year.  The feature this year was competition cars, which included one
of the very rare Lamborghini Diablo GTRs, a 1962 Alfa Zagato Competitione, a
1971 Alfa coupe, and, courtesy of Mr. John Shirley, THE very first Ferrari
Testa Rossa, the prototype, in absolutely stunning condition.  However, the
real star of the show, and overall winner, was a 1948 Ferrari 166, the
second car ever built by Ferrari and the oldest numbers matching Ferrari in
existence, having the very first engine block ever cast by Ferrari in 1946,
and it sounded incredible as they backed it out of the trailer between rain
storms.  An amazing car, it has been in the same family for 45 years, having
been purchased by the owner's father in 1964 for a mere $3,800 (no, I'm not
missing any zero's), but one could only guess at it's value today.  With the
recent auction record set by a 1961 Ferrari California Spyder at (I believe)
$11.5M, one can be sure this car could go well past that.

Despite the rain, it was still great to be out with so many beautiful
Italian bodies.  If you are ever in the Seattle area over the Labor Day
weekend, it's a must see.

Thanks.  I'll have pics out to the POCA website soon, and you should be able
to see this years' show results in a week or so at www.italianconcours.org.

Mike Thomas
Panteras Northwest