Barnfind Mangusta Video

Has anyone rescued 8MA 0844, also known as the "Odd Goose"? That was the one customized by a CA dentist with Buick parts and a 12" extended nose scabbed on over the original sheet metal? I passed up buying that poor car in the late '80s when the kid that owned it blew the engine...

Thanks for buying the book.

I do not even want to see the modified mangusta. Your description of the modifications are bad enough.

Herb Grass, then a designer at Ford, bought Cassius Clay's Mangusta. He found his managers business card under the dash when he was having it painted. Three days after he bought it, about 1963, the steering got hard and a front ball joint broke. he was three blocks from home and called a flatbed, The driver decided not to tie it down as he was so close to the drop off point and on the first turn it slid off the truck.

A bad beginning. Herb later took it to Australia and, I think, India.

Grase those ball joints!!!

..amazing. Dick, I think of your car as one of the top-3 most interesting factory cars--I'd think of the Spider and 8MA502 (I assume that is right, the red car that was in the 1968 Sports Car Graphic/Winter 1969 Automobile quarterly) and then the Chevy powered car as the 3 most remarkable Mangustas.  Somebody somewhere must know where 8ma502 is...(?)

  But then on the flip side, the Odd Goose doctors car (vin uncertain), 8ma846 (with the Z-28 hood), and 8ma522 (with the factory-says-its-true 2 popup headlights).

I'm curious if anybody knows the chassis numbers of the cars that have been written off; not counting 8ma800 (pretty remarkable rebody), I suppose 8ma1056 (the burn car), maybe 8ma988 (pair of tail-lights only found), and of course the road-racer upside down in the canyon.

I've got to think there are another 50 cars in garages somewhere...and a few with modifications more than the barn find car here--Lee

@leea posted:

Odd Goose doctors car 8MA844

Yuck!

@leea posted:

8ma846 (with the Z-28 hood)

Alleged to be a Shelby mod but no proof. Photo from a for sale ad-

8MA-522 seems pretty darn early for pop-ups but then again, correct answers are not really available.

We have seen this before.

1. Why put a hood bump on a mid-engine car?

2. Why ruin one of the most amazing parts of the car, the front hood>

CRAZY,

The so-called 'canyon racer' 1970 #8MA1212 was crashed by a Canadian owner during an early One Lap of America event due to a blown rear tire in rural NV. It was stripped of all its parts and Pantera suspension mounting points added, as well as the roof being reshaped to near-stock. It then became a moderately successful racing Mangusta campaigned by Lilo Zicron in Ca in 2010. Dunno what happened after it was sold. Featured in both the POCA Profiles and the POCA Newsletter a dozen years ago

@dickruzzin posted:

We have seen this before.

1. Why put a hood bump on a mid-engine car?

2. Why ruin one of the most amazing parts of the car, the front hood>

CRAZY,

I guess, needed room for the high rise manifold Same reason that the Spider used at one time, I guess. Or interesting, 8ma526 taking the Lola approach...

And good news: all recoverable, really. Some day '526 will emerge from under the boxes and look absolutely fabulous, I'll bet...even w/o the hi-comp 327 with a stroker crank 

Scifi, the only explanation I can give to the 8ma522 is that it got shuffled up, I think as someone put it 8ma522 was just the furthest from the door....  Having the dash from the first cars (switches down and 4-wire window motors), glass from ~May 1969, the Mobil chassis plate (from March 1969), single piece seats and single piece door panels, whatever...I couldn't see a picture of the shift linkage, because these early cars should have had the open Zf (no shift box) and not the Bosch alternator (others were Prestolite). Even allowing a hyper mismatch by a subsequent owner, my guess is that the chassis just got lost along the way and was finished as a 2 headlight car (even if a year out of sequence). Can anybody verify when/if the hood and engine covers moved from steel to aluminum? Lee

I might also note here that I was asked by Peter Vack to write a comparison of the fifty year old Mangusta to the new C8 Corvette, as I have both. The artice appeared in VeloceToday.com, a site that focuses on Italian and French cars. He put it on the site about five months ago.  

It turned out to be very interesting.  I compared  the two driving experiences as well as the numerical statistics.  I especially focused on the design and was able to give a good accounting of why the cars look the way they do from an aesthetic standpoint.

I also took all of the pictures and Pete did an excellent editing job as he is very skillful at that..

1970 De Tomaso Mangusta leather | eBay

Looks pretty good, really. An early 2-headlight car (see text and driver's carpet), with switches down would be in the range of 8ma902- 8ma954, and Provamo doesn't list ~13 cars in the range of 8ma910-952) Looks like the carb is flipped (meaning Ford normal , you can see the throttle cable on the driver's side)...The hood mat also looks different (from these pictures, the diamonds look sewed but still the material looks like pebbled vinyl used as with the Ghilbli spider trunk material with embossed diamonds).  Missing rear sway bar, replacement clock, not-quite-right air cleaner,  parking brake restored to the umbrella, rear and front valances a bit modified (for exhaust and around front turn signals)....But a pretty genuine looking car...beautiful interior--Lee

...my god, sold for $315,000 on Ebay...how in the world...looks like one person wanted it badly and the reserve was about 6 figures higher than I'd expected it to be for a car that was neither very original nor very restored...

Wow, that engine looks gorgeous...  underside shots are impressive as well.  Seems much nicer than it was in the video!  The deck lids were off, the engine was out...  They did a lot of work since the barnfind video was made.

Any idea on the VIN, it wasn't included in the listing.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175085483245

104 bids!!!

MH

they were smart to make the engine look right--a repro set of valve covers is about $70, and a repro oil pan (and this is the right repro, but the oil temp sender isn't there, that and not beat up makes it a repro ) is also available. The air cleaner first looked right to me--but I think it is a nice job at a replacement. I don't remember the barn-find video even showing the engine.

  My 3rd favorite thing on the car--the texture on the support bars between the rear fenders and the B column (the one above the correct fuel cap)...I am still amazed at Denis' texture on his air cleaners, that and the undercoating splatter in the engine bay are 2 things I do not dare to try....but I'm going to have a stab at those...some day.

Vin? Love to hear if someone knows, I'm going to take a swing at 8ma924, if someone says higher or lower and gives me another 3 chances.... Provamo has this as "unknown 1391", interestingly dated 2018, without the spoiler on the front...and the barnfind video posted March 2021...Would be curious when it was moved to the 'barn''...Lee

what a contrast, 8ma716 sold at Mecum for $352k....unrestored and very low mileage. Even if the picture of the tool kit has me scratching my head...(we've seen the original tool kit, it like the the rest of the car is the closest detail in existence of how these cars were made...yeah, ok, maybe now with the foam in the seats completely deflated, but geez what a beautiful thing...Lee

somehow the "nice mint" original Mangusta tool kit that was present when in 8MA716 at  Copley has mysteriouly been replaced by a Pantera tool roll. Now the car has 2 jacks????