[DeTomaso] De Tomaso (Vignale Production) etc

[Pantdino]

That's what I was thinking re interior heat in a 5300- on an 85 deg day with that sloping windshield and half the engine in the passenger compartment the interior would be like 140 deg, no?  

What I meant re the height of the driver may therefore determine the order of comfort between the 2 cars is that I assume a guy 5'7" is very comfortable in a Pantera and would appreciate not baking like a potato.  :-)

So all the post-Ford Panteras had ALL their panels beaten out over wooden bucks?  Or did they have a few thousand cars worth of extra fenders, doors, roofs, etc left over when Ford pulled the plug?

Jim


-----Original Message-----
From: JDeRyke <JDeRyke at aol.com>
Cc: Detomaso <Detomaso at poca.com>
Sent: Fri, Jul 5, 2013 10:25 pm
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] De Tomaso (Vignale Production) etc


There were in fact stamping presses at Vignale, and one of the black marks 
against Ford in the sportscar world after the resale of DeTomaso back to 
Allessandro was Ford's destruction of the original stamping dies. But a 
moment's thought notes that such steel dies weigh many, many tons apiece- hardly 

economical to ship back to the U.S.   Ford management was also totally 
convinced that no more Pantera bodies would ever be produced after they pulled 
out, 
so essentially the dies were deemed useless after they scrapped Vignale as 
a coachbuilder. Ford management once again woefully underestimated the 
Italian car industry and its hundreds of craftsman shops in and around Modena 
that had created body panels by hand since WW1. And of course the dies could 
have gone to Ghia (which Ford kept), for storage or later use....

Ome of the interesting things about the front-engine Bizzarini 5300 (name 
may have referenced their 327 Chevy engines) can be seen in interior photos. 
The cars have a very pronounced windshield slant and what looks like a large 
radio speaker panel in the middle of the rather deep dashboard top. That's 
not a speaker grille; it's an access panel for the dual point distributor! 
Those blocks were set back a long way in the chassis! I've often thought the 
Bizzarini needed a Ford engine (with a front-mount distributor) while the 
Pantera and Mangusta needed a GM engine with their rear-mount distributor. But 
thats not the way things worked out and with points distributors 
disappearing by 1976, it's just as well. I used   to know a dentist in Los Altos 
that 
had two: when we commiserated about Italian wiring troubles, he mentioned 
the 5300s had NO schematics at all, and his later Biz' had all-white wires in 
the entire car.... Limited production? I'll say!   FWIW- J Deryke
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