[DeTomaso] Mike's tale of De Tomaso book
Joseph F. Byrd, Jr.
byrdjf at embarqmail.com
Sun Dec 20 18:30:21 EST 2015
I like that!
Joe / NC
-----Original Message-----
From: DeTomaso [mailto:detomaso-bounces at poca.com] On Behalf Of Scott Martin
Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2015 17:34 PM
To: detomaso at poca.com
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Mike's tale of De Tomaso book
I agree with this, but think we should go should go a step further and have POCA sanction the book.
Mike and everyone else that has DeTomaso history knowledge should put it all into a definitive book on Detomaso, the person and the cars, and POCA endorse it as the most complete, factual book on the marque. It might be a multi-volume set and POCA might want to fund and own the rights or let someone else publish it. If the club agrees to the concept, a committee can be created to work out the details.
I suggested to our new President that the club needs to sanction an official DeTomaso registry to have an official documentation of what cars were produced and how many are still remaining. There are a number of people around the world with unofficial registries, these should all be combined in a listing that POCA maintains. I offered to help with this.
Clubs like Shelby and Ferrari have official registries and history books, I think it is time for POCA to step up to this. But we can't lose our roots of providing social events and member activities.
Scott Martin
-----Original Message-----
From: Laurie Ferrari via DeTomaso <detomaso at poca.com>
To: detomaso <detomaso at poca.com>
Sent: Sat, Dec 19, 2015 12:06 am
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Mike's tale of De Tomaso book
I have two questions for Mike and a comment to All,
1. When will "YOU" write a BOOK? You are long over due. Obviously you have far more information than even a gifted bear; you've got the knowledge of historical
facts, technical facts, and all those thousands of pictures you've taken and
gathered through so many years, is it not yet obvious that YOU should be the author of your own book? Heck... the letter you wrote here is nearly a book in
itself.
2. Just curious, did there happen to be a picture of my little ole car in those
batches of familial photos? : )
3. Cheers and Happiness to All. It's going to be a really GOOD YEAR!
(better be!) I even agree with what Judy said in her last two posts.
Laurie
_______________________________________________________________________
______________________
[DeTomaso] On writing a book on De Tomaso....
MikeLDrew at aol.com [1]MikeLDrew at aol.com
Fri Dec 18 12:59:12 MST 2015
__________________________________________________________________
All,
Herewith, my thoughts on the trials and tribulations of producing a book on De Tomasoa|.
More than a year ago, I got an e-mail out of the blue from Daniele Pozzi, a
college professor in Italy. He was committed to writing a book on De
Tomaso, focusing on the man and his life rather than on the cars. He had my
address (among numerous others) as a potential source of help and information.
I replied right away, but heard nothing back.
Six or eight months later, I was again contacted by Dr. Pozzi. This time
when I replied, I mentioned I had replied earlier and learned for some
reason he had never received that. He seemed quite excited when he learned of
my position as Profiles editor, and my ability to support him with images etc.
We went back and forth, as he discussed his vision for the book. He
wanted to tell the whole story of De Tomaso (so he said) and end it with coverag e of how De Tomaso has touched the lives of thousands of people around the world, and made it possible to forge lasting friendships through his cars.
Thus he was especially keen to get photos and information from club meetings such as the POCA Fun Rally and the various European meetings.
It took me a few weeks, but I scoured my archives and, not wanting to leave anything out, I gave him over 46,000 (!) individual images I'd collected
over the years. I did help by filtering them somewhat, and I put crucial
historical images whose value I thought was important in key folders, and organized the others in various contexts (Fun Rally photos, Euro meeting photos,
individual car photos, people photos etc.). I burned them to USB sticks
and sent them to him. During this time, he had been peppering me with
questions, asking me to fact-check certain technical details (he appears to be more of a historian than a traditional 'car guy'), etc.
The Italian postal service leaves more than a bit to be desired, and it took almost two months (!) for the sticks to arrive. But in the meantime, things had taken a bit of a turn.
It was never clear to me if Dr. Pozzi had the idea to write a book, and then found a publisher to produce it, or if the publisher wanted to produce a
book, and found a guy to write it. But clearly their relationship was not
all that it could have been. Pozzi had a very clear image in his mind of what he wanted his book to be--he wanted it to be positive and uplifting, and a primary goal was to show the happiness that De Tomaso's works have generated among many people like us.
The publisher had different ideas, and thought that was totally stupid.
They wanted a straight historical biography without all the happy kumbyah
stuff. There was a meeting in the publisher's office, and one can imagine
what an Italian business confrontation looks/sounds like. Lots of yelling and
arm-waving, and at the end of it, they took his manuscript and fired him from the project!
My images arrived just after this all happened, so none of them were
incorporated into the book. (The only things he got from me that were included
in the book were photos of Dave Jacobsen's beautiful Pre-L Pantera, which was a Profiles centerfold car--I had sent those to him earlier, and numerous photos of that car are scattered throughout the book including on the cover, and Dave is rightly given photo credit).
Shortly afterwards, you may recall that Ed Mendez was contacted by a US publisher looking for some help in producing an English-language version of the
book, and he shared that info with us. Several of you expressed interest,
but I contacted the publisher directly and asked him WTF since I was already deeply involved in the project?
The publisher immediately phoned me in surprise, as he had no knowledge.
It turns out that there was a big book fair in New York City, and the Italian company had showed off an Italian-language mockup of the book, and was seeking a US partner to produce an English-language version alongside of it.
Both editions would be printed at the same time in Italy. They assured
everyone that this was a turn-key, ready-for-print book that only needed translation, so Dalton Books bought it.
This outfit is known for producing really, really, REALLY high-quality car books--limited-edition leather bound box sets on the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost that sell for $1750, that kind of thing.
They hired an Italian-to-English translator to translate the text (one who supposedly had a good grasp of both languages but didn't really know automobiles specifically), and when that was done, they sent the text to me for fact-checking and editing.
The translation left a lot to be desired; there was more than a little flat-tire English, where it would be obvious that the writer didn't speak the language fluently, and re-writing the factually correct text into proper,
flowing English was a big job. However, there were a LOT of factual and
technical errors, which took quite some time to sort through and correct. That process alone probably took me 20-30 hours, as when I read something that I believed to be wrong, I had to be able to prove it to them (and myself) so had
to do a lot of independent research. The Italian publisher got quite
annoyed, because I pointed out loads of technical and historical inaccuracies, which needed to be corrected in the English language version, and then they felt compelled to change those same errors in the Italian version.
(One example--Pozzi got it backwards and thought the Vallelunga prototypes were made in fiberglass and the production cars were in aluminum, but we all know that is demonstrably untrue; there are only three known aluminum Fissore prototypes and all the Ghia cars, including the one De Tomaso owns today , are fiberglass).
There were some 'facts' that I believed were incorrect, but I couldn't
prove it. I would then ask Pozzi to seek confirmation from his sources, as I
thought perhaps he had got a story turned around or something? But by this
time, he had lost all interest in cooperating with the project that had been taken away from him, and although he was very polite and friendly to me, he basically said he was too busy to devote any more time to it, and told the Italian publishers to take a flying leapa|.
More disturbing to me, however, is that the book ended very prematurely in
the story. Most people know that De Tomaso suffered a terrible stroke in
1993. It left him permanently paralyzed and unable to speak, but his brain
was completely unaffected. He then entered into an absolutely heroic
period of intensive rehab, determined to conquer his condition. He gradually
improved somewhat, and was able to communicate in a very guttural manner, which only a handful of people were able to understand.
Even at that, he successfully negotiated the sale of his 51% ownership of Maserati to Ferrari for many millions of Euros, then launched the De Tomaso Bigua, which then evolved into a joint venture with Qvale, and then blew up
spectacularly. Even as that was crashing to earth, he was involved with a
grand scheme with backing of the Italian government to import sturdy, simple Russian 4x4 SUVs in KDC (knocked-down kit) form; the trucks would arrive as
1:1 scale kits, and would be assembled in a new purpose-built factory in the economically depressed south of Italy, and would be powered by a
Belgian-made diesel engine sourced from a partnership with Chrysler. This was
a VERY
complicated deal with a lot of moving parts.
The profits from this enterprise would then be funneled to De Tomaso Automobili, who would use them to produce a new Vallelunga (Porsche Boxter-competitor, likely powered by a Saab turbo motor), and ultimately a new P antera.
Unfortunately, that whole deal blew up too, after De Tomaso had accepted a
huge pile of Euros from the Italian government. When the plug got pulled
and he was unable to pay it back, De Tomaso went into liquidation, then the brand was sold, and more Italian economic soap opera took place for a few years afterwards, with the family not involved.
Anyway, even though both the Qvale and SUV deals fell apart, they were VERY ambitious projects, and were not merely vaporware--real cars were produced in both cases. This was a very significant and tragic end to the story of De Tomaso, both the man and the corporation--and it was completely absent from the book.
When I read it and found this out, I sent a strong WTFO note to both
English and Italian publishers and the author? Pozzi then confessed that when
the project first started. Isabelle and Santiago promised full cooperation (without which the book would have been more or less impossible) under the condition that Pozzi agree to conceal the truth about anything that happened after 1993!
What kind of historian or journalist would agree to such terms? In any
case, that's the deal Pozzi made, so all talk of those later failed ventures
was eliminated. I find it especially pathetic, because if you are really
interested in the MAN, it is something the family should be proud of. But
instead, they are ashamed of the fact that the ventures failed and want to whitewash history and pretend they never happened.
So the text in the book more or less indicates that he had a stroke in 1993, then sat around in a poopy diaper, drooling on himself until he died in
2003. To me, THAT is pathetic, but that's how they wanted the story told.
Charlie and I know for a fact that's not true, because when we met him in 2001, he was absolutely FEROCIOUS, animated, loud, arrogant, and full of piss
and vinegar. Although I happened to feel that he was a complete jerk (as
did seemingly everybody else who knew him), he was far from the vegetable the book makes him out to be.
So, with all that said, when the book arrived the other day, I was
absolutely blown away at the high quality of the resultant effort. The book is
considerably larger than I was expecting (it's 13x11 inches) and the
photography is simply stunning. There are beautiful photo spreads of most of t
he
cars in the De Tomaso family collection (although since they don't have a GT5 or GT5-S, those are absent, and apparently their Pantera Si broke down and they didn't want to bother towing it to be photographed so it's absent too).
There are historical photos directly from De Tomaso's family archives that have never been seen before, and will never be seen anywhere else.
And there's the story. Given their well-established propensity for
shading the truth, one has to wonder exactly how accurate it all is, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt about their telling of their early
history at least. It's certainly educational (I learned a lot!) and
fascinating.
So at the end of the day, even with all the caveats and asterisks, this is far and away the best De Tomaso book ever made, and if you have even a passing interest in the marque, you owe it to yourself to get a copy!
Mike
P.S. It's worth noting that purely by coincidence, another Italian-market
book on De Tomaso has just been printed; it was released on September 30th.
It's in Italian only and seems to be a much more modest effort (208
pages, paperback?). I've only seen pictures of the book, but the few pages I
saw revealed images I'd never seen elsewhere, so that might be worth digging up as well if you're really a nut about this stuffa|.
Here it is on the publisher's website:
[2]http://www.edizioniilfiorino.com/catalogo/sport/0488/automobili-de-tomaso.ht
m
Not available on Amazon USA, but it is available on Amazon Italia:
[3]http://www.amazon.it/Automobili-De-Tomaso-Dante-Candini/dp/8875495947
and from numerous other European retailers as wella|.
-------------- next part --------------
All,
Herewith, my thoughts on the trials and tribulations of producing a
book on De Tomasoa|.
More than a year ago, I got an e-mail out of the blue from Daniele
Pozzi, a college professor in Italy. He was committed to writing a
book on De Tomaso, focusing on the man and his life rather than on the
cars. He had my address (among numerous others) as a potential source
of help and information. I replied right away, but heard nothing back.
Six or eight months later, I was again contacted by Dr. Pozzi. This
time when I replied, I mentioned I had replied earlier and learned for
some reason he had never received that. He seemed quite excited when
he learned of my position as Profiles editor, and my ability to support
him with images etc.
We went back and forth, as he discussed his vision for the book. He
wanted to tell the whole story of De Tomaso (so he said) and end it
with coverage of how De Tomaso has touched the lives of thousands of
people around the world, and made it possible to forge lasting
friendships through his cars. Thus he was especially keen to get
photos and information from club meetings such as the POCA Fun Rally
and the various European meetings.
It took me a few weeks, but I scoured my archives and, not wanting to
leave anything out, I gave him over 46,000 (!) individual images I'd
collected over the years. I did help by filtering them somewhat, and I
put crucial historical images whose value I thought was important in
key folders, and organized the others in various contexts (Fun Rally
photos, Euro meeting photos, individual car photos, people photos
etc.). I burned them to USB sticks and sent them to him. During this
time, he had been peppering me with questions, asking me to fact-check
certain technical details (he appears to be more of a historian than a
traditional 'car guy'), etc.
The Italian postal service leaves more than a bit to be desired, and it
took almost two months (!) for the sticks to arrive. But in the
meantime, things had taken a bit of a turn.
It was never clear to me if Dr. Pozzi had the idea to write a book, and
then found a publisher to produce it, or if the publisher wanted to
produce a book, and found a guy to write it. But clearly their
relationship was not all that it could have been. Pozzi had a very
clear image in his mind of what he wanted his book to be--he wanted it
to be positive and uplifting, and a primary goal was to show the
happiness that De Tomaso's works have generated among many people like
us.
The publisher had different ideas, and thought that was totally
stupid. They wanted a straight historical biography without all the
happy kumbyah stuff. There was a meeting in the publisher's office,
and one can imagine what an Italian business confrontation looks/sounds
like. Lots of yelling and arm-waving, and at the end of it, they took
his manuscript and fired him from the project!
My images arrived just after this all happened, so none of them were
incorporated into the book. (The only things he got from me that were
included in the book were photos of Dave Jacobsen's beautiful Pre-L
Pantera, which was a Profiles centerfold car--I had sent those to him
earlier, and numerous photos of that car are scattered throughout the
book including on the cover, and Dave is rightly given photo credit).
Shortly afterwards, you may recall that Ed Mendez was contacted by a US
publisher looking for some help in producing an English-language
version of the book, and he shared that info with us. Several of you
expressed interest, but I contacted the publisher directly and asked
him WTF since I was already deeply involved in the project?
The publisher immediately phoned me in surprise, as he had no
knowledge.
It turns out that there was a big book fair in New York City, and the
Italian company had showed off an Italian-language mockup of the book,
and was seeking a US partner to produce an English-language version
alongside of it. Both editions would be printed at the same time in
Italy. They assured everyone that this was a turn-key, ready-for-print
book that only needed translation, so Dalton Books bought it.
This outfit is known for producing really, really, REALLY high-quality
car books--limited-edition leather bound box sets on the Rolls-Royce
Silver Ghost that sell for $1750, that kind of thing.
They hired an Italian-to-English translator to translate the text (one
who supposedly had a good grasp of both languages but didn't really
know automobiles specifically), and when that was done, they sent the
text to me for fact-checking and editing.
The translation left a lot to be desired; there was more than a little
flat-tire English, where it would be obvious that the writer didn't
speak the language fluently, and re-writing the factually correct text
into proper, flowing English was a big job. However, there were a LOT
of factual and technical errors, which took quite some time to sort
through and correct. That process alone probably took me 20-30 hours,
as when I read something that I believed to be wrong, I had to be able
to prove it to them (and myself) so had to do a lot of independent research. The Italian publisher got quite annoyed, because I pointed
out loads of technical and historical inaccuracies, which needed to be
corrected in the English language version, and then they felt compelled
to change those same errors in the Italian version.
(One example--Pozzi got it backwards and thought the Vallelunga
prototypes were made in fiberglass and the production cars were in
aluminum, but we all know that is demonstrably untrue; there are only
three known aluminum Fissore prototypes and all the Ghia cars,
including the one De Tomaso owns today, are fiberglass).
There were some 'facts' that I believed were incorrect, but I couldn't
prove it. I would then ask Pozzi to seek confirmation from his
sources, as I thought perhaps he had got a story turned around or
something? But by this time, he had lost all interest in cooperating
with the project that had been taken away from him, and although he was
very polite and friendly to me, he basically said he was too busy to
devote any more time to it, and told the Italian publishers to take a
flying leapa|.
More disturbing to me, however, is that the book ended very prematurely
in the story. Most people know that De Tomaso suffered a terrible
stroke in 1993. It left him permanently paralyzed and unable to speak,
but his brain was completely unaffected. He then entered into an
absolutely heroic period of intensive rehab, determined to conquer his
condition. He gradually improved somewhat, and was able to communicate
in a very guttural manner, which only a handful of people were able to
understand.
Even at that, he successfully negotiated the sale of his 51% ownership
of Maserati to Ferrari for many millions of Euros, then launched the De
Tomaso Bigua, which then evolved into a joint venture with Qvale, and
then blew up spectacularly. Even as that was crashing to earth, he was
involved with a grand scheme with backing of the Italian government to
import sturdy, simple Russian 4x4 SUVs in KDC (knocked-down kit) form;
the trucks would arrive as 1:1 scale kits, and would be assembled in a
new purpose-built factory in the economically depressed south of Italy,
and would be powered by a Belgian-made diesel engine sourced from a
partnership with Chrysler. This was a VERY complicated deal with a lot
of moving parts.
The profits from this enterprise would then be funneled to De Tomaso
Automobili, who would use them to produce a new Vallelunga (Porsche
Boxter-competitor, likely powered by a Saab turbo motor), and
ultimately a new Pantera.
Unfortunately, that whole deal blew up too, after De Tomaso had
accepted a huge pile of Euros from the Italian government. When the
plug got pulled and he was unable to pay it back, De Tomaso went into
liquidation, then the brand was sold, and more Italian economic soap
opera took place for a few years afterwards, with the family not
involved.
Anyway, even though both the Qvale and SUV deals fell apart, they were
VERY ambitious projects, and were not merely vaporware--real cars were
produced in both cases. This was a very significant and tragic end to
the story of De Tomaso, both the man and the corporation--and it was
completely absent from the book.
When I read it and found this out, I sent a strong WTFO note to both
English and Italian publishers and the author? Pozzi then confessed
that when the project first started. Isabelle and Santiago promised
full cooperation (without which the book would have been more or less
impossible) under the condition that Pozzi agree to conceal the truth
about anything that happened after 1993!
What kind of historian or journalist would agree to such terms? In any
case, that's the deal Pozzi made, so all talk of those later failed
ventures was eliminated. I find it especially pathetic, because if you
are really interested in the MAN, it is something the family should be
proud of. But instead, they are ashamed of the fact that the ventures
failed and want to whitewash history and pretend they never happened.
So the text in the book more or less indicates that he had a stroke in
1993, then sat around in a poopy diaper, drooling on himself until he
died in 2003. To me, THAT is pathetic, but that's how they wanted the
story told. Charlie and I know for a fact that's not true, because
when we met him in 2001, he was absolutely FEROCIOUS, animated, loud,
arrogant, and full of piss and vinegar. Although I happened to feel
that he was a complete jerk (as did seemingly everybody else who knew
him), he was far from the vegetable the book makes him out to be.
So, with all that said, when the book arrived the other day, I was
absolutely blown away at the high quality of the resultant effort. The
book is considerably larger than I was expecting (it's 13x11 inches)
and the photography is simply stunning. There are beautiful photo
spreads of most of the cars in the De Tomaso family collection
(although since they don't have a GT5 or GT5-S, those are absent, and
apparently their Pantera Si broke down and they didn't want to bother
towing it to be photographed so it's absent too). There are historical
photos directly from De Tomaso's family archives that have never been
seen before, and will never be seen anywhere else.
And there's the story. Given their well-established propensity for
shading the truth, one has to wonder exactly how accurate it all is,
but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt about their
telling of their early history at least. It's certainly educational (I
learned a lot!) and fascinating.
So at the end of the day, even with all the caveats and asterisks, this
is far and away the best De Tomaso book ever made, and if you have even
a passing interest in the marque, you owe it to yourself to get a copy!
Mike
P.S. It's worth noting that purely by coincidence, another
Italian-market book on De Tomaso has just been printed; it was released
on September 30th. It's in Italian only and seems to be a much more
modest effort (208 pages, paperback?). I've only seen pictures of the
book, but the few pages I saw revealed images I'd never seen elsewhere,
so that might be worth digging up as well if you're really a nut about
this stuffa|.
Here it is on the publisher's website:
[4]http://www.edizioniilfiorino.com/catalogo/sport/0488/automobili-de-toma
so.htm
Not available on Amazon USA, but it is available on Amazon Italia:
[5]http://www.amazon.it/Automobili-De-Tomaso-Dante-Candini/dp/8875495947
and from numerous other European retailers as wella|.
References
1. mailto:detomaso%40poca.com?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BDeTomaso%5D%20On%20writing%20a%20book%20on%20De%20Tomaso....&In-Reply-To=%3C3c4293.32525d66.43a5bf90%40aol.com%3E
2. http://www.edizioniilfiorino.com/catalogo/sport/0488/automobili-de-tomaso.ht
3. http://www.amazon.it/Automobili-De-Tomaso-Dante-Candini/dp/8875495947
4. http://www.edizioniilfiorino.com/catalogo/sport/0488/automobili-de-toma
5. http://www.amazon.it/Automobili-De-Tomaso-Dante-Candini/dp/8875495947
_______________________________________________
Detomaso Forum Managed by POCA
Posted emails must not exceed 1.5 Megabytes DeTomaso mailing list DeTomaso at poca.com http://poca.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso_poca.com
To manage your subscription (change email address, unsubscribe, etc.) use the links above.
More information about the DeTomaso
mailing list