[DeTomaso] NPC - interesting design story - 240Z

[Himes, Terry (397C)]

Fun Story:

Since seeing my first Pantera in 1973 I was always looking for a Pantera. In 1980 I found one for sale in Philadelphia. I was living in 
Cherry Hill, NJ at the time. It was at a Datsun (Now Nissan) dealership. A sales person had it, and it had been restored and upgraded.
But it was way out of my price range.  He said, why don’t you take a look at this 1980 280z (demo). It was black & gold (two-tone) and 
looked nice so I took it for a spin. When I came back, he said “Why don’t you take it home for the weekend” and leave your Mustang here.
(old salesman trick). I did and loved it. Not the famed 240z but it was a sweet car, which I put 286,000 miles on.  I sold it for $500 and
it was still running strong.

Ice Story:
When my daughter was learning how to drive, I still had the 280z. I told her she needed to learn to drive a stick… so she did.  When we 
had a big snow and ice storm, I took her to the high-school parking lot and she learned how to recover from a spin-out.  We did spins 
and donuts until the cops showed up. ;-)  They were actually supportive and let her ride-along while they did spins, while driving
forward and backwards. 

Terry




"A Purple Heart proves you were smart enough to hatch a plan,
 stupid enough to try it and lucky enough to survive!"
 
Terry W. Himes 
JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Dawn Spacecraft Team
Rosetta Sequence Team Lead
Phone: (818) 393-6261
Cell:     (818) 653-8213
thimes at jpl.nasa.gov
🇺🇸
 

On 3/13/18, 8:55 AM, "DeTomaso on behalf of Jeff Detrich" <detomaso-bounces at server.detomasolist.com on behalf of jjdetrich at gmail.com> wrote:

    https://zhome.com/History/StylingMatsuo/MatsuoZStory1.htm
    
    For many of us, the 240Z was how we got into sports cars. This is a good
    story about how it came to be. Lots of pictures of prototypes.
    
    Jeff
    6559