[DeTomaso] Fascinating Ford memo

[Mike Drew]

Hi guys,

A few weeks ago Matt Stone was on a road trip and dropped off his entire archive of De Tomaso documentation and literature at my house. POCA was in the midst of negotiating its purchase and the premise was that it would reside with me, as the POCA historian. However Scott Mead has the ability to professionally scan and digitize the whole thing, so it was decided that it would go to him (ironically Matt and Scott live just miles apart and I am 400 miles north). He archive is too precious to trust to shipping, so I will have to hand carry it down there in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime I had a thumb through it and found a fascinating internal Ford memo. 

The Ford parts book lays out the serial number breakdown for each model year, thusly:

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It?s pretty black and white, and clearly rather arbitrary given the non-linear production sequence of the cars. Also, I think it was generated partway through 1973, and if so that means it stated what DID happen with the 1971, 1972, 1972 1/2 and 1973 model years, and what was SUPPOSED to happen with the 1974 model year. 

However I had heard of numerous anomalies?1974 cars titled as 1973 and vice versa. I knew that Ford played fast and loose with the truth to title 1974 Panteras as 1973 models in order to sell them in California (since the emissions laws in California changed for the 1974 model year which made it impossible to sell 1974 Panteras there, apparently?). This was particularly known for the GTS models. Conventional wisdom has it that 52 of the 150 GTS Panteras were retitled as 1973 cars so they could be sold in California while the remaining 98 were sold in the other 49 states as 1974 models. 

But then I stumbled across this document, dated April 4, 1974:

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Besides listing 40 (of the eventual 52?) 1974 GTS models as 1973 cars, it also listed a whole bunch of random 1973 cars as being officially 1974 models!  I can only guess what may have led to this latter change?cars laying unsold in warehouse or dealer inventory that they didn?t want to have to discount as ?last year?s model?, or perhaps cars that were stuck in the pipeline and hadn?t arrived in the USA before some arbitrary cutoff date and thus couldn?t be considered 1973 cars? Or ???

In any case, it?s a fascinating peek into how incredibly micromanaged (and haphazard) the Pantera program was, even at the end. 

Mike


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