[DeTomaso] Dear Pantera Diary...

[Bill Lewis]

Charles, great pix!!  Looks like a great time.  I have to admit that I don't/didn't know what a Ren Alpine was/is.  Give us a paragraph about who, what, where, the Basqe Country is.   Thanks, Bill





> From: charlesmccall at gmail.com
> To: detomaso at realbig.com
> Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2011 23:28:09 +0200
> CC: yuragagarin1961 at yahoo.es
> Subject: [DeTomaso] Dear Pantera Diary...
> 
> Had a great day today. Amaya and I crashed a party being hosted by the Basque Country Renault Alpine club… We don’t have an Alpine, and are not members of the club but a member invited us to come along, and since the weather was perfect we did exactly that. 
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> We didn’t know what to expect as we knew exactly nobody, but when we pulled into the parking lot at 9:30am, there was already a decent sized group of people who welcomed us as though we were long-time friends. I don’t ever remember feeling so welcome in a new group, which was really nice. 
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> We hung out for roughly 45 minutes, checking out the cars and getting to know everyone. We took off for what would be a 4.5 hour drive through the mountains. 
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> The cars were really neat. Good old fashioned carbs. Nothing electronic. Very little muffling. Cars from back when cars were cars, and some of them sounded really great.
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> The roads were simply amazing. Probably roads meant for a small, light car like the early Alpines, as the Pantera GT5-S occupied just about the entire width for many of them. On the rare occasions when we ran into oncoming traffic, we basically had to come to a complete stop and pull onto the shoulder to allow us to pass. Cycling is a big-time sport in this area, and since the weather was nice, the roads were covered with groups of between 5 and 30 cyclists. This made for some exciting moments, as there wasn’t really room for both cars and bikes at the same time. I don’t know who was more surprised after coming around a curve and finding ourselves face to face! The mountain roads were all 2nd or 3rd gear curves, with more than one that could only be done in 1st. Switchback after switchback, for hour after hour. 
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> I burned €115 worth of gas today ;-)
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> The other odd thing was that after 4.5 hours of wrestling a widebody car with no power steering around switchbacks, the palms of my hands were actually sore!
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> Some pictures of the day’s events may be found here:
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> http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=29811
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> Charles McCall
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> 1985 DeTomaso Pantera GT5-S #9375
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> "Raising Pantera Awareness Across Europe"
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>  <http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=2323> http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=2323
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