Reply to "1968 Mangusta need to ask 2 questions"

One thing that has always bugged me....is the rumor mill surrounding 67 vs 68 vs the rest of the pack......

Goose #508 spent a lot of time in our local club and one over zealous owner always called it a 67 Goose. Upon looking at the dates on the window glass, all the dates were March of 68.....meaning that while some parts of the car may have been welded-screwed-hammered together, the fact remains that it could never have shipped in 1967 with windows dated 1968!

I've not seen any earlier cars personally or for that matter any of the immediate later cars.... I know a couple of guys that haunt this site have early cars up to about #524 (with a hipo 289) but I don't know what the window dates are.....

508 also had the steel hatches and steel hood I believe. The heater wasn't connected to anything, and there were a couple other odd things about it...perhaps rear valance..... but the rest "looked" like the rest of the later cars for the most part. There were chassis difference etc........as changes evolved over time.

What also gets lost with the Goose, is model year vs production year.... We never really got a "1969" or a "1970" Goose....you got what was shipped....regardless of when it was actually made. Serial numbers were "probably" shipped mostly in order...but I can only imagine some production line hiccups......

I know that my car has parts from some other cars that were built around the same time...in the interior bits...where the grease pencil markings are off a bit numerically.....likely someone grabbed a part due to a defect somewhere and the ripple effect happened until the original "problem" parts were finally replaced and then peace and harmony returned to the production line.....HAH! In Italy???

Anyway, I think you can understand what I am saying.

So rather than worry about what year you have, pay more attention to when the car was built via date codes on the glass, on the Girling brake calipers, and also the engine cast iron parts....although the latter may be off (earlier dates than glass) by as much as 6 months or so as a guess.

If one were to bet that the glass went in towards the end of the production process, you may add a month or so to the latest date you can find, for when your car actually rolled off the production ramps!

Ciao!
Steve
PS: All of this is based upon pure speculation from what I have found with American Ford cars.....and my experience with piles of them. I could likely be applied to Panteras also. But I think records for them are way better than for the Goose. Just wasn't a priority!