[DeTomaso] We have lost another one…Wally Baldyga RIP
Mike & Elizabeth
mbefthomas2 at gmail.com
Tue Apr 4 13:08:22 EDT 2023
Thanks Mike. Sad to hear. I watched the YouTube when it came out a while back and enjoyed it very much.
Mike Thomas
Panteras Northwest
-----Original Message-----
From: DeTomaso <detomaso-bounces at server.detomasolist.com> On Behalf Of MIKE DREW via DeTomaso
Sent: Tuesday, April 4, 2023 9:32 AM
To: De Tomaso Forum <detomaso at server.detomasolist.com>
Subject: [DeTomaso] We have lost another one…Wally Baldyga RIP
All,
I just got a call from Gary Archambault in Massachusetts. We have lost
another key member of the community. Wally Baldyga was pretty much the
epicenter of the Pantera community in the northeast. He was one of the
founding members of PONE, the Pantera Owners of the NorthEast chapter
of POCA. Although his day job was as unglamorous as it gets (he owned
a septic service company), as a side hustle he worked on Panteras.
When Ford got out of the Pantera game in the 1970s, famously the former
Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman Gary Hall ran around and bought up the
spare parts inventories of every Ford dealership in the went, and Hall
Pantera was born. What few people know is that Wally did the same thing
on the east coast. He lived on a spectacular farm in Windsor Locks, CT,
near Hartford, with his home and some barns dating from before the
revolution. He had additional barns built and they were all stuffed to
bursting with NOS Pantera parts. He knew an awful lot about these cars,
and he restored quite a few of them, under the aegis of his business he
called De Tomaso Performance.
Perhaps the most famous of them was the PONE express, a Group 4 race
car built with all-volunteer labor among the various members of the
club. Together they resurrected a car which had been completely burned
in a garage fire, and turned it into one of the fastest Panteras in the
world. It routinely exceeded 200 mph at Pocono raceway and was actively
vintage raced by Gary Archambault for years. It was featured on
YouTube a couple of years ago when it was sold:
maxresdefault.jpg
[1]I Found the World's FASTEST Pantera!
[2]youtu.be
Wally had sold off all his other cars, and parts to Steve Wilkinson a
few years ago.
Wally's farm served as the epicenter for club social gatherings, and
the joint Pantera/Shelby club BBQs he hosted each year saw people
coming from all the adjoining states to gather together.
He has been suffering from both colon and prostrate cancer for many
years and finally succumbed yesterday.
He will be forever missed....
Mike
Sent from my iPad
References
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1. https://youtu.be/V21LekTaD58
2. https://youtu.be/V21LekTaD58
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4. https://youtu.be/V21LekTaD58
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