[DeTomaso] Another blast from the past....

[Scott Carpenter]

Thanks for sharing that Mike... Though now I am scared after reading the
part about the 'Dash-1' ZFs.... My '71 still has the original 'Dash-1' ZF
and a 377 Stroker.. Guess I should take it easy on her.. :-)

Scott
#1523

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <MikeLDrew at aol.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 12:14 AM
Subject: [DeTomaso] Another blast from the past....
To: detomaso at realbig.com


Hi guys,

Reading old newsletters can be emotionally wrenching (reading about the
demise, suffering and eventual death of far too many club members), but it
can
also be uplifting and fun.   Here's some great first-hand stories from an
article in the Feb '99 PCNC newsletter, which originally was published in an
Acura NSX club newsletter...

Mike

======


Tales From The Pantera Service Department
by Paul Nichols

The year was 1973, and I was 20 years old.   Like just about any
post-adolescent male living in the greater Los Angeles area, I had cars in
my blood.
Two years earlier, I had purchased my first sports car: a 1967 Saab Sonett
with a 3-cylinder, 2 stroke engine producing a whopping 60 horsepower.   I
assembled the car from the ground up—I had no money and the only way I could
afford a sports car was to pay $850 for someone else’ s basket case.

As a result of this little re-assembly project, I decided that I wanted to
work around cars—sports cars in particular.   So I applied for a job at the
Lincoln-Mercury dealer in Long Beach, California, where, as fate would have
it, the management had developed the largest Pantera-only
sales-and-service-department in the country.   A whole building and five
service bays were
dedicated to Panteras, run by a service advisor who had previously run an
aircraft shop and treated the cars like they were airplanes—to the absolute
delight of Pantera owners.

I landed a job doing the pre-delivery prep for many of the cars that the
dealership sold.   This job also included cleaning out the cars that were
traded in which meant that I got to play with LOTS of sports cars—not only
Panteras but Porsches, Citroen-Maseratis and even the occasional Mangusta.
  For
a 20-year old kid, I thought I had the coolest job on earth.

Here are a few real-life stories from the dark recesses of the Pantera
service department.

GUESS HOW MANY TRANSMISSIONS IN THE PILE AND WIN A PRIZE

As I’m sure you’ re all aware, the early Dash-1 ZF 5-speed gearboxes were,
to put it kindly, somewhat less than reliable.   Too much torque from that
big V-8.   What you may not know is that early on nobody knew how to fix
them.  If (when) they broke, you simply replaced them with a new one.   As a
result we ended up with lots of broken gearboxes which no one had the heart
to
throw out because “someday we’ll find someone who can fix ‘em.”
Eventually we created a pile in the corner which contained at least 100
useless
gearboxes.   It was a mess.   The service manager, being the meticulous
aircraft mechanic type, despised this lack of order and one day quietly had
all 100
of them hauled away to the dump.

YOU THINK YOUR PANTERA IS HOT STUFF?

The service bays at the dealership consisted of a corrugated metal roof
supported by posts but were more-or-less structures that were open to the
air.
 This proved to be a good thing one sunny southern California afternoon.

A customer, who happened to be in the neighborhood at the time, pulled in
to the service department complaining of   ‘smoke coming out from underneath
the hood.’   Thinking that this was just another overheated Pantera, one of
the mechanics casually started over towards the car.   He quickly saw that
the smoke was indeed smoke—not steam—and, deciding that discretion was the
better part of valor, chose not to open the deck lid.   The car burned to
the
ground.

Later, after the fire crews left, the mechanic who-shall-remain-nameless
got on the service department PA system and said something like “Ladies and
gentleman, welcome to Murphy Lincoln-Mercury, home of the hottest Panteras
in
town.”   We thought that was hysterical.   The service manager didn’t.

I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE ACTUALLY PAYING ME TO DO THIS, AND BY THE WAY, MY
FRIENDS ALL HATE ME

The service manager was anal-retentive long before the term became part of
everyday vernacular.   An example of this was the fact that every new
Pantera was taken into the shop to be re-tuned and tweaked prior to
delivery.
After the cars went through an exhaustive pre-delivery inspection, I was
instructed to take each car out and put 100 miles on it just to make sure
everything was right.   My regular route included a ride down Pacific Coast
Highway
with the return trip including the twisty canyon road exiting Laguna Beach.
 I may hold the record for the most Panteras driven by a single person!

FINDERS-KEEPERS

As I mentioned, part of my job was to clean out the trade-ins.   I found
some very interesting items...

— A bag of Marijuana in the glovebox.   The car’s previous owner showed up
the next day to ask me if he could get something out of his car that he’d
forgotten.   The smirk on my face told him that he was too late.

— $65 in change that had fallen inside the door of a 911 because there was
a small hole in the door pocket where the owner evidently threw his loose
coins every time he got in.   Didn’t the guy eventually wonder why his
change
seemed to vaporize?

— A loaded 9mm handgun.   The car had been owned by a jewel dealer who
routinely carried a weapon for obvious reasons.   I decided that keeping
this
item was probably not in my best interest and called the customer.

— An 8mm movie of the type usually screened at bachelor parties.   Two days
later an announcement was made over the intercom that there was to be a “
service training film” shown at lunch time.

20 BUCKS SAYS THIS GUY HAS A HEART ATTACK

Part of the pre-delivery prep was the installation of the worthless Ford
radios that came with the cars.   This process included installation of the
antenna, which required the drilling of a small pilot hole in the fender.
Then a hole saw was used to create the 3/8” hole for the antenna.   After
installing what must have been a hundred of these antennas, I knew exactly
where
the pilot hole had to go.

Quite often the customers wanted to watch as their new car was prepped.
Most of these people were very nice and were justifiably excited about
getting their beautiful new Pantera.   I would always welcome them into the
shop
and share their enthusiasm.   But others were obnoxious and were convinced
that they had to supervise me because I couldn’t possibly know what I was
doing.   For them, I always had a special surprise.

The prescribed method of antenna installation was to carefully lay a paper
template on the fender, then gently tap a small punch with a small hammer to
create the pilot hole.   For the benefit of my ‘special’ guests, I would
go to my toolbox, pull out what became known as “Hammerzilla”, (with a punch
to match), walk to the proper spot on the fender and, not using the
template, place “Punchzilla” on the fender and violently hit the punch with
the
hammer.

Now Pantera owners, being the sort that they are, didn’t think this was
nearly as much fun as I did.   They usually reacted by turning white and
rushing either me or the service manager to demand that I be kept away from
their
new baby.   Incidentally, I never had to pay to have a fender repaired; I
always got it right.

THANKS FOR THE RIDE BUT I’LL WALK FROM HERE

The sales manager, Lyle, had a favorite demonstration route for showing off
the performance of the Pantera.   It consisted of a long, straight, lightly
traveled piece of road followed by a very steep, very twisty run up Signal
Hill in Long Beach.   One day, a customer came in and wanted to drive a
Pantera.   Being the good salesman that he was, Lyle immediately got behind
the
wheel and took him up “The Hill.”   At the top, the customer asked if he
could drive.   Again, being a good salesman, Lyle got out and started
walking
around to the passenger side of the car.   The ‘customer’ promptly hopped
across the car into the driver’s seat and sped away, leaving Lyle standing
on
the top of Signal Hill with no car, no phone and no one around to help.
After standing there half an hour, pondering how he could get back without
any of us knowing what had happened, he concluded that it was hopeless and
called me for a ride.   Neither the car, nor Lyle’s dignity, were ever
recovered!

{Paul Nichols owns Cobalt Design Group, a graphic design firm in Atlanta.
He is also the associate editor of NSX Driver, the newsletter for the NSX
Club of America. }
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