Le Mans Classic, as I remember it...

For the trip I decided to bring two temperamental things along, my Pantera and my wife. Both were also along 2 years ago, though different Pantera, but same wife. As it should be. We were going to start Friday morning with a stay-over in Blankenheim, a little more than half way. The rest of the Danes participating asked if we should drive together, but we cordially declined, because Kristian was going to trailer his Pantera part of the way, and I can’t see us going around 90 km/t all day. It would have been too easy to tease Kristian about using a trailer as he knows, but maybe I would need that trailer going home? Nobody can be sure, a trailer en route might come in handy. Also, they chose to take the longer route via a bridge to Funen, we took the shorter Rødby-Puttgarden by ferry route.

The Pantera had been washed and waxed recently, but to no avail (actually that almost ruined my trip, more on that later!). We ran through some heavy rain, and the car was dirtier than I’ve ever seen it before. Polished wheels, exhaust and valve covers were unrecognizable. We got to the ferry, got on board and then I was happy I never got around to giving it a new paint job (more on that thought later!). I was parked in the middle lane, surrounded by tourists with no clue, who seemed to think that fenders are for leaning your door against, while you get your oversize frame squeezed into the car. Obesity is indeed a worry. Nothing major happened though, besides school children taking pictures. We went up for a relaxed lunch, if I had had a paint job I cared about, I couldn’t have done that (I would have to eat those words, more on that later).

Off the ferry, rain was gone for now, and it was getting hot. When nearing Hamburg it was around 30C. No problem, A/C worked of course, would never drive south without A/C working. Queues through Hamburg are always either a pain or a major pain. They have now decided to build another Autobahn crossing the Elb further North, but since that will be 8-9 years into the future, we couldn’t wait for that. So, into the queue. Semi-tough this time, about 45-60 minutes stop and go. So how would that work out? 30C, stop and go, a 600 HP heater right behind my back and a carburetor idling at low vacuum due to the cam-profile from hell this engine has? It seemed to work fine, no overheating with both fans running, and A/C did its part, not really cold, but comfortable. And idle was fine. No sign of distress. Until… When we got through the queue it was time to get a move on. But when finally being able to rev it a bit, it totally died. I was in the left lane naturally and people accelerating all around me (reminds me of my experience in my Longchamp 3 years ago, of course a DeTomaso is in the left lane, come hell or high water), but fortunately there was road works to the left of me, I could dart through pillars into that lane. I let off the throttle, and it could idle, and then a bit more power. But accelerating to get up to speed I couldn’t. We drove slowly a bit, and our road works lane was about to end, so I had to get out in traffic. And older guy in a Mercedes let us out. We drove half speed for a while, then turned off at a Parkplatz, and the Mercedes followed us. Turns out he was a Testarossa owner, wanted to let me know that he had seen a plate fly out from under the car. I never found out what he meant, nothing was missing on my car. And frankly, I’ve never put much credence to things being said by people owning a Testarossa, IMHO the ultimate “look at me, I don’t have a clue”-car. We let it cool for ten minutes, then started it and revved it among the parked tourists. It did lose power at high rpm, but not as bad. We decided to drive on at let it get back to normal temperatures.

A story like that is best when it has a certain layout. Problem experienced, problem diagnosed, problem fixed. However I still don’t know for sure what caused it. I think either vapor lock or ignition module overheating, and my money is on the first of the two. Can that be avoided? Maybe. But putting 600HP of engine heat into a car in 30C start stop traffic for almost an hour and with a carb on top, is asking for trouble. However, it didn’t happen again on this trip.

Driving again, building confidence for every km. Until the next little incident which turned out to be a potentially lethal physics lesson relearned. I had just filled it with gas, a little more than I used to do before I converted to outside filler, and drove to park for some refreshments etc. When parked I saw that fuel was pouring out of it, in front of the left rear wheel, where the tank and fuel pump is. And the thousand degrees hot headers of course. Out of the car, get the fire extinguisher, and hopefully I just overfilled or something so it would stop running out now. Plenty of non-useful spectator comments, and few (Danes by coincidence) offered advice and tools. But the fuel kept pouring out, by now it must have been around 5 liters. Stuck my head in to have a look, it was pouring 3 inches from the headers. Looked under the car, couldn’t see a leak in the tank or the outlet which is at the bottom. I pulled on the overflow hose, and yes that changed the rate of fuel coming out. Pulled the hose up from between the tank and the ss tank cover, and the pouring stopped. Apparently the capillary effect had been shown in practice, and I was later told by members of the Pantera community that I was not the first to try this. When we remove the round overflow canister on the other side of the engine compartment and let the hose hang down, if we then fill up so fuel runs out, the capillary effect can empty the tank. Don’t say that nothing you learned in school had value. Capillary effect, lifting a box without hurting your back, drinking and sweet talking girls really has been useful later in life…

So with one to two total losses of power and one potential all engulfing fire sorted out, we drove on. At this time the wife thought it had been a little too eventful, and I understand. So from that on my answer to any car related question was: “Nothing to worry about”.

The rest of day one was rather uneventful, till we reached Blankenheim where we met up with Janne and Johanna from Finland, Thomas and Espen from Sweden/Norway and Kristian/Trine and Erling/Lone from Denmark. By the way, this would be as good a time as any to sort out once and for all, which country had most participants. Denmark of course (per capita), three Panteras present, which is almost half the club. But who’s counting? The evening ended in the bar (add that sentence to any day of this summary), a few kill stories and then to bed.

Below: my car and Kristian's trailer. And no, they never met up!

On day two we split up, I wanted to go south of Paris to avoid queues to avoid the heat issue again. Erling and Kristian had to go to the Bergerons to pick up tickets, Janne went along. We made a lucky choice, because we had almost no traffic on the highways, 130-150 km/t all the time, and made great time, and made it to Saumur well before the others. Just a word about speed. Yes there were open stretches of motorway in Germany, but with my wife/anchor along, we never went faster than 150. I wanted to, she didn’t. You can guess the rest. No big loss, a Pantera at 150 km/t feels like 200 km/t because of the noise…

In Saumur we saw a lot of familiar faces, great to see them again, and the conversations and friendly teasing took off immediately. I was more popular than when I arrived at the Spa trip last year, because this year I had remembered to bring my wife. You know how it is when you pack extensively, there’s always a risk of forgetting something. Not this year.
After parking and checking out the cars I hadn’t seen before, and people hadn’t seen my Pantera before, it was dinner time. Dinner was interrupted by an annoying speaker some might say, me. I took the chance to explain what DeTomaso ownership had meant to me, how it fulfilled three dreams for me, tears were flowing, and in the spirit of giving something back to the community, I had brought a copy of my book Tuning Made Easy, one per car and distributed that. I just can’t stand when my fellow DeTomaso owners complain that their car isn’t running well . It’s available at amazon.com etc. There, dear publisher, I said it. Guy has got to make a living…

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Next morning we were on the road. Charlie, our friendly tour organizer had said the evening before that it was “wheels up” at 9:30. Not in the reception at 9:30, nor starting to pack at 9:30, but all paid for and car packed and ready to drive at 9:30. Fair enough, there has to be a bit of discipline when dealing with a group of that size. At 9:30, all were in the parking lot except Charlie, and we waited about an hour. Small detail with the hotel bill I believe, where the French had decided to go from one way of paying to another. Sometimes it seems like the French want to make the world stop, to hinder all progress for mankind. You can imagine the holler when Charlie finally arrived at the parking lot. Exact “wheels up” times were mostly ignored for the rest of the trip.

Then we visited some Chateau. Don’t expect to get from me the proper tourist rendition of what we visited, and this is not meant to put it down, because we visited beautiful Chateaus with interesting stories, but that’s just not my forte I suppose. And visiting Chateaus kept our wives from shopping for a few hours, not bad. But I’d rather write about the driving there. It was said once that owning a GT car means that “Getting there is more than half the fun”. I had to read that a few times, did it mean that a GT was half as fun? Of course not, it meant that the drive was a lot of fun, actually more fun than what you drove there for. Whether that applies here, is up to each individual. But driving in a line of Panteras instead of the usual crap cars back home is great. And to drive slowly through small quaint towns where the exhaust resonates on the castle walls and people gives you thumbs up is also great. Frankly we didn’t drive very fast, only a little above the limit, we were good citizens.

Some had technical problems, some worse than others, a ripped oil pan was among the worst. And a leaking brass float repaired in a lawnmower repair shop. An accelerator bracket had to be fabricated with a hammer and a header bolt. A broken dist gear pin (what was Ford thinking, has this ever happened to a Chevy!?). Electrical problems. No brake lights. Clutch problem. One plug fouling. Oil consumption. Broken alternator bolt, alternator hanging by the wires. To mention a few…

I had no more problems after the quite eventful first day. But whenever someone had problems, in true DeTomaso owner style people stopped what they were doing to help out. And many creative ideas came up, some very creative. On one occasion three possible solutions were voiced, and the owner of the car heard the alternatives, weighed the pros and cons, and made an informed decision about which solution to pursue. However that didn’t fully stop the groups with the two alternatives from working on their idea, until the owner had said no thanks more than a few times. We really want to help when we can, and can be hard to stop!

Also a lot of washing and cleaning was going on. While I had suggested to Lori that she’d swap her normal morning running routine for a routine that included washing all our cars, it never seemed to happen. But it’s great to hand wash your car as the sun is rising, not too hot, and still quite quiet. And when another owner arrives to wash his car, a “Morning” will suffice, this is quiet-time, to wash and contemplate DeTomaso-owning life. A slight detour: Having an interest in cars and engines can bring you in many directions. My last car adventure before this trip was off-roading in a Swedish forest. I slept in my Jeep in minus 5 degrees C and when I wanted to brush my teeth in the morning, I had to remove ice from the toothbrush first. Not to mention the “toilet”-shed experience, I’ll spare you... DeTomaso ownership going to France and Le Mans and washing the car in the morning sun is better I think…

When arriving at Chateau du Something Charlie had in usual great style arranged we could park in the courtyard, giving the Chateau a bit of style. Unfortunately getting into the courtyard involved mastering a road through a small forest more suited for my aforementioned Jeep. Biggest obstacle though was at the big old metal gate by the main road, to keep that securely locked there was middle part in the ground with a 3-4” metal rod sticking up. Not Pantera friendly at all. But our not small Finnish participant Janne, with typical Finnish Sisu, got out of his car, wriggled the rod and stone a bit, and eventually pulled it all up including the stone it sat in, almost like Arthur and The Sword in the Stone, and threw it to the side. No, he doesn’t have green skin, but he has other talents as we’ll see later. So we could very slowly drive through the wood and into the courtyard. Now the poor French school classes forced to see chateaus had something interesting to look at. Fortunately they didn’t climb all over the cars, actually they did what their teachers told them to! How not 21st century…

,,

In the evening Amaya and I snug away from dessert to watch the EM football finale. The kind of football you can play without being covered in foam, mind you. Amaya being Spanish had her favorite of course, and she was not subtle about it during the game. I’ve always been an Italy fan, even when they played like crap, and this year they had played well, and Pirlo was the best player of the tournament. When you open the dictionary to find the word “cool”, right next to the picture of Steve McQueen, there is a video of Pirlo's penalty goal in the quarter final! So I had put on my Italia sweatshirt that evening. Unfortunately, the Spanish had the luck and the referee (two of the goals were offside) on their side, but yes, they played a bit better. So they won. Hhmmm. That was one bitter pill to swallow. But seeing Amaya jumping around with joy helped a bit. Maybe. Another bitter’ish pill was the fact that only I and the lovely Eileen from the UK wanted Italy to win! We sat there a large group of people with one thing in common, Italian cars, and most of the group wanted the Italians to lose! What’s that about?! I understand that driving an Italian car doesn’t make one love all things Italian, but still? Next time, buy a Seat!

The next day we went to a nice outdoor go-carting track. I had written in the massive email stream that goes on among the participants in the days up to leaving for the trip, maybe unwisely, that the others should be aware that, though I hadn’t go-carted more than maybe 10 times, I had never finished worse than 2nd or bent some ribs trying. Just to stir up the pot, to get the excitement going. Since go-carting for me has mostly been company events where the competition had been secretaries and fat bosses, my result list should be put in perspective perhaps. Now I was to compete against people who were used to performance cars and racing at least on an amateur level, and from what I could hear of conversations before the start, quite competitive. For me winning was not important, the important thing was that we were together, that we had fun, and that nobody should get hurt. Yeah right!

We were 34 to race, 17 teams and an hour endurance, 2x15 minutes each (and some practice first). Since my wife didn’t drive, I had to find a team mate. I teamed up with the strong Finn Janne, and that was a good choice. Without offending Janne, he is a big guy and that is not always an advantage in these low powered go-carts, but as we all know, Finns can rally and F1, and apparently also go-carting.

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It would be tempting to do a full turn by turn summary of the go-carting but I think some may find that too much. So here’s the short version. I started in the cart, and we started in the sequence of the training times. I started 4th, if I remember right Roland Jäckel was first, then Mike Drew, then Kjetil, then me. Go! After one lap I was 2nd after Roland, approx. 10 meters behind, I couldn’t catch him, and he couldn’t shake me either. After 15 minutes Janne took over, and as it turned out, he was one of the fastest in that group. I had had fastest lap in the first session, and we were second. But Janne was faster than the others in that group, and when he came in we were 1st! My turn, we had a good lead, and if I didn’t do something foolish we would win. So my aim was to keep it on the tarmac, not do fastest laps, and indeed my best time was beaten by Mike and Kjetil. I did spin once, with a little nudge from the friendly Kjetil, but got back on track immediately, so no disaster. Then it was Janne’s turn, we had about a 15 seconds gap, enough to win going steady, but maybe not enough to make a mistake. Janne drove beautifully, though he later told me he didn’t know we were winning. In the end we had a gap of 9 seconds, and were declared winners.

Now how do you behave after winning? Gracefully or bragging like hell? In the bigger scheme of things this victory means very little, but for bragging rights, we couldn’t have beaten a better bunch of people. So when we received our 50 cents medals we did a small victory dance of course. At the evening dinner Janne and I agreed to wear our medals. Strangely nobody offered us a victory beer.

In the coming days a lot of people came up to me and asked how I did it. “Mikael, how did you win, what’s the magic you used, please tell us?!” Here’s the secret. There’s an old saying in racing: “To Finish First, First you have to Finish”. My version is: “To Finish First, First you have to team up with a Finnish guy”

There was also a Europe/US competition. And the Americans were declared winners! How can that be? Europe was first and second, US third. So how could US win the continent competition? Apparently US came 3rd, 4th and 5th, and Europe 6th. So with a lot of creativity it was decided that the continent competition should be based on exactly the first five places. And that 3rd, 4th and 5th should count just as much a 1st and 2nd. I don’t think that in the history of sports there has ever been a situation where the number 3, 4 and 5 placed teams were declared winners against the 1st, 2nd and 6th placed. Well it was soon the 4th of July, guess they needed some encouragement, and let’s not forget that in the fight for Freedom and Democracy around the globe, we Europeans often take a back seat and let the Americans do the hard work, so I guess we owe them. So congratulations USA, good driving and creative thinking . Competition between friends is great.

OK, I could of course write about go-carting forever, and I know you want to hear more, but I’ll stop here.

We had many interesting meals, for sure. Sometimes the meat was cooked, sometimes not. We were a big group of people, and that seemed to overpower some of the kitchens we were served by. One place was especially interesting. Called the Wine Museum, there was no museum about it. Outside was parked a motorcycle and a horse. Inside was small tables and chairs, just room for us. Now I’d like to tell you about what we ate, but I don’t think anybody knew. There was goose fat of course, strange bread, pizza blanche, duck meat, snail butter, jam, apple pie, and to drink we got a white wine so sweet it could have been a dessert wine. Highlight was the host, a strange man with suspenders that didn’t waste his time serving or cooking, he had two women for that, all he did was walk around with his large glass of wine and toast with each individual, more than three times, he must have gotten really drunk. Come to think about it, he probably has the best job in the world, right?

On the last evening before the Le Mans Camping, we were at an especially nice restaurant, the posh type where they expect you to step out of the shower when peeing. Right down to the river. I was looking for a pool, I enjoy taking a beer to the pool, swim one lap, drink the beer and pass out. Why not? In this hotel there was no pool, so I asked if I could swim in the river. They said “nest par recommend” or something like that. So no swimming. Instead we walked around the court yard, washed cars, told stories. Great times.

The dinner was great, clearly above the level previously. Five courses if I remember correctly, all good.

(no, they're not attached to his head)

Before we all would part, Charlie stood up for the DeTomaso Club of Spain Awards, an award show only 2nd to the Oscars. Except these awards were for something far more interesting than things like “Best Foreign caterer”. Here are some of the winners.

Hard Luck Award: Roland Bohner and Margarete for ripping his oil pan etc.

Christoffer Columbus Award (sailing west to get east): Roger Brotton and Thelma for getting to the next day’s hotel instead of this day’s

Longest Distance Driven: Kjetil Finne and Lisa, from the Arctic Circle

Longest Distance Travelled: Rutger Evers and Tamara, flew in from Malaysia, picked up the very original Pantera in Holland

Go-carting: Forgot who won, no, now I remember, Janne Maki-Petaja and myself. Gave me an opportunity to do another non-called for victory speech…

The proud winners received not only applause, but also the coveted cup with print of the achievement and the logo of DeTomaso Club of Spain. The latter includes a picture of all Panteras in the club, namely Charlie’s white GT5-S, right out of Miami Vice…

Geoff and Roger C did a funny speech to thank Charlie for the effort and the result, and handed over a gift to his Pantera, some HIDs that he’s wanted for some time. Perfect gift I think.

So to Le Mans. Just driving there seeing a French road sign pointing towards “LE MANS” can give me the chills. Le Mans is just so “big”, it’s the home to all sensible car freaks, the track itself, the history, the cars, the noise. Say it: Le. Mans. Simply amazing. Le Mans Classic is a bit different, it’s not as exciting to follow the race(s), but it adds nostalgia, and who’s immune to that? Plus you can spend a day just walking around the camping and parking areas, 9 out 10 cars are classic sports- or musclecar. You’re really among people like yourself, and as opposed to the real Le Mans, most of the drunken primarily British youth (sorry) has stayed home from LMC.

When we arrived there, we came from Le Mans city where the girls did some shopping. They needed some encouragement to keep the spirit up, now that the luxury was over and it was camping the rest of the tour. We were at Maison Blanche, but by mistake (yes really) my GPS got us to the East of the track, so we “had to” drive the entire Mulsanne Straight, Mulsanne corner, Indianapolis, Arnage, up till the Porsche curves where we were led onto the public road, and there was Maison Blanche camping. From Mulsanne corner and on we were almost alone on the track, tempting to go really really fast, but I had my wife/anchor in the car, so I didn’t need the curbs much. Roland B and Andy were behind me, trusting my sense of direction since I’d been there before, they hadn’t, but they got to try a bit of the track, not bad.

When we arrived, before we could get the tents up, people came up to talk. “Normally you don’t see a Pantera all year, and here’s seven!” kinda thing. At this venue you get proper questions, not the questions you get from people at the gas tank: “What does it cost?” “Does it use much gas, he he?” “Must it make that much noise?” People at Le Mans Classic camping know their cars, and that makes it more fun. I sometimes get the impression that they all would rather have a Pantera than whatever they drive, I know I can’t be objective here. But when combining looks, power and costs, is there a better car out there? Don’t think so. Most GT40s are faster, but come up short in the looks department IMHO. Plenty of musclecars there, but they don’t handle as well. Well I’m rambling, regardless, showing up at LMC camping in a Pantera is great…

My wife and I did the traditional “arrive at Le Mans, erect tent, throw everything into the tent, drive to McDonald’s for dinner”. Yes, enough French food for now. We also bought 24 cold beers and took them back to the camp, free beer, if you can’t make friends, you can always buy them, right?. Jill, Hugh and Sue and George had arranged the RV to arrive, so we had very good breakfast and dinner for the next days. Excellent service and food, much appreciated. Indeed very nice people, so nice it more than makes up for their countrymen’s sometimes obnoxious behavior mentioned earlier.

If you don’t like walking, don’t go to Le Mans. There’s so much to see and it’s big. Campsite, parking, shops, paddock, club areas, different viewpoints of the track. Walk walk walk. Bring good shoes, rucksack and umbrella. We had paddock tickets for the first time, and I walked most of the paddocks with Mike. I thought he knew all about Panteras, but it seemed he knew all about all the cars there. Impressive. Except Panhards, he said that he didn’t know anything about them. Looking at them, I wondered why there were at Le Mans Classic at all. But they’re French, so of course…

Training started, so we found a seat. Simply great to see all those old cars running, and they do not hold back. Even the multimillion $ cars were used to the full, wet track and all. There was one Pantera in the paddock, but I only saw it on the track briefly, not sure what had happened. To me the most beautiful cars besides Panteras were the early Lolas. The best sounding were the GT40s and Cobras. One Cobra had some problems in the turns, but accelerating up the main stretch it was like seeing a movie at fast forward. There were also many Lotus’es and some Porsche 917s. But come see for yourself…

The next morning, it was time for parade laps. There was a GTO session with 23 of the 39 produced GTOs on the track! And then it was time for parade laps for paying spectators. I did that 2 years ago. This year, with twice the HP, I thought best not to. Some people out there thinks it’s a race, and just like the regular Le Mans where several Ferraris with “gentlemen drivers” were involved in crashes, some modern Ferraris were apparently racing not caring about their own cars (up to them), but also created dangerous situations for other people, right in front of where we sat.

During the race, some stayed up and saw most of it. We could walk 200 meters from our tent and see the track. That of course also made sleeping a bit hard. Remember ear plugs.

The Pantera in the picture below should have been centered, but it was simply too fast...

.,,

Saturday had switched between rain and hot sun. Apparently that never happens in California, because my California sourced Pantera’s paint couldn’t take that weather! I had waxed the paint back home, so the rain made beads of water. And when the sun then came, apparently the beads acted as a magnifying glass increasing the heat. When I came back to my car and the rain had stopped, I took the microfiber cloth just to dry and clean it, and I saw that all horizontal areas were spotted. Some said that this could be the result of crappy American thermoplastic paint with no clear coat, something we haven’t used in Europe in decades. I don’t know of course, but since the paint job is already the least professional I’ve seen on a proper car (side markers and doorhandles not removed, door areas painted with a brush) I’ll believe anything. I’ll try to polish it when I have time, but consensus was that I won’t be able to. Looks like new paint this winter

Le Mans Classic ended for us Sunday morning, two days of driving in front of us. The first night we met at the Blankenheim hotel with the Danes and Finns, time for kill stories and goodbuys. And a few beers. We agreed it had been a great great trip. Thank you Charlie. Weather at Le Mans could have been better, but seeing driving in the rain is also interesting. My Pantera had a few challenges the first day, but since then it worked perfectly. 4000 km with a 600 HP race motor in the back is against nature I guess, but we did it. I do have a few things to do to it, clean it, polish/paint it, and do something about my seats, my ergonomics in there were not good. But all in all it did well, 4000 km is a good stress test for any classic car, and it passed the test.

Back home now. Grass and weeds seem to have had a good time. Man, I need a vacation…

The End!

More later when I clear out the backlong and get a chance to breathe....

Nice write-up Mikael - thanks for sharing? I've only got a billion photos - we'll probably look at them this weekend. Glad you made it home ok... and glad you took the path less travelled and made the trip. That's what made it fun.

Great story, great writing. Thank you.

-G

Great read! Thanks for sharing Mikael. Sure wish I were there.

Fantastic stuff Mikael. Thanks for sharing it with those of us who couldn't make it. I love the GT (getting there) concept. Absolutely true!

Way to go Charlie. Another successful project.

Just found one picture I wanted to add...

I've decided to paint the car this winter. Now comes the many sleepless nights of color-choosing... I don't care about originality on this car. And I don't care if the color was originally available on a Lambo or a Lada. And I don't want to have red/yellow just to keep it's value high. I just want the color I like best. I have a list of 5 colors right now in my head...

Right now:

Red, as is
Blue met like my Longchamp
Fire truck glow in the dark yellow
Medium grey metallic
Black

Any votes?!

Burgandy red, a la Johnny Woods or Colin Bradshaw.

Oh, that wasn't on your list... Oops. Still gets my vote!

Can someone tell me how to post pics I've been trying for 6 months iv tried every labtop and desktop in the house every time I double click upload pic nothing happens #1006 thanks

Mikael,

Clearly your day job is being a writer for a comedy show. That was a hugely entertaining read. I know it's been a while since you posted, but I only just finished reading it all tonight. I felt like I was there except I still have the $10,000 and can't remember hearing my wife complain about how camping is akin to sleeping in the muddy trenches of Normandy in WWII. Thanks for such a great account of the LMC trip and for sharing it. Thanks also to Charlie for organising and all who shared in the adventure.

As far as the new paint, listen to Charlie. He (and Jonny Woods) has great taste. Dark wine red looks stunning on an early Pantera with all that chrome.

Oh, and for the record, the GT40 is one of the sexiest shaped cars ever designed. Just ask Mike Drew, or anyone who owns one.

Good luck!

Mark

quote:

Can someone tell me how to post pics I've been trying for 6 months iv tried every labtop and desktop in the house every time I double click upload pic nothing happens #1006 thanks

Only problem I've ever had is if the picture is too big, in kilobytes, if they're not, it just works. Maybe the forum admin can help you?

quote:

being a writer for a comedy show.

That's always been an ambition of mine, can you put me in contact with the right people?

quote:

Originally posted by No Quarter:
Just found one picture I wanted to add...

I've decided to paint the car this winter. Now comes the many sleepless nights of color-choosing... I don't care about originality on this car. And I don't care if the color was originally available on a Lambo or a Lada. And I don't want to have red/yellow just to keep it's value high. I just want the color I like best. I have a list of 5 colors right now in my head...

Right now:

Red, as is
Blue met like my Longchamp
Fire truck glow in the dark yellow
Medium grey metallic
Black

Any votes?!

When I'll re-do mine, there will be flake in it.
I recommend to keep that in mind. Sophisticated taste is overrated.

If I recall correctly, there was originally pink pearl on Charlies white GT5 from factory... So it's not like De Tomaso was uptight with colors. LOL.

-Janne

quote:

I have a list of 5 colors right now in my head...
Red, as is
Blue met like my Longchamp
Fire truck glow in the dark yellow
Medium grey metallic
Black

Red - Looks great, but pretty common and possible undesirable association as a "wannabe Ferrari."

Blue - Your Longchamp is beautiful. Ferrari has a number of nice blues:

[IMG]Fichier:Blue Ferrari 355 GTS rl.jpg[/IMG]











And, I've always like silver on the Pantera.

Hi Mikael!
Thanks a lot for the great story!
I vote for red, as your car is now.
Sportscars look great in sharp red, not to forget the result of red being an agressive color.
I see many wanting to change colour to a more personal one, to stand out from the crowd. That means red is soon to be rare.
Mine stays red! (sorry, there was no red smile)