[DeTomaso] Wilkinson's new GTS mufflers

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

Hi guys,

A couple of weeks ago, Lori and I flew to LA to meet with Hiroshi Miyata, a 
relatively new Pantera owner from Japan.   He and his wife flew to LA for 
two days (!) to spend one day touring the Pantera shops, and the other day 
going to Universal Studios.

We got to see the first production set of Wilkinson's new GTS mufflers, 
installed on an L-model Pantera.   Unfortunately, Steve won't be producing 
these in what I would consider the 'proper' Pre-L/GT5/GT5-S style, but only with 
straight-out tips suitable for use with a big L-model bumper.   If you have 
one of those cars, you'll have to cut the tips off yourself, slice an angle 
out of them, then weld them back on.

Having said that, the new mufflers looked great.   The outside diameter of 
the tips is a fair bit larger than the ANSA tips, and the inside diameter is 
MUCH larger, which will allow much, much better flow.

Unfortunately, the car they were on had been disabled just a few minutes 
before I got there; Bill had yanked the carburetor and ignition system out of 
the car.   It had been running that morning.   Apparently the sound is 
more-or-less the same as the stock ANSA GTS system in terms of tone, and volume 
(which is to say, far from objectionably loud, but certainly not quiet 
either).

Hiroshi posted some photos for me, which you can view here:

http://tinyurl.com/WilkinsonGTSMufflers

This is a Japanese Yahoo page; clicking on each link will allow you to see 
a small-size version of the photo, and you can download the mega-mondo-size 
version (each one is about 6.5 mb).

The price on these things will be laughably cheap.   They will be available 
in both standard steel, and stainless steel; the entire system (headers and 
mufflers) will be in the $800-something range for regular steel, and $
1000-something for stainless steel--considerably less expensive than regular ANSA 
mufflers alone.

At some point he'll send a set to Dan Jones for dyno evaluation.   Stay 
tuned!

Mike