Yes, Claude is still around and he reached out to me about this car a while back. I sent him a message today asking if he remembers how it arrived at his distributorship in context to the bumper. I feel like I am kind of asking a lot of him because it was more than 45 years ago and he sold a bunch of DeTomaso cars.
But Claude did not export the car to the US. He sold it to a European owner. The car was later sold to someone in the US and the bumper could have been retrofitted for DOT compliance.