Maimi Vice Testarossa to be auctioned in Monterey

Did I read that article wrong .. it says that Ferrari objected to the use of Corvettes with Testarossa panels and donated to real Testarossas. Where did the Pantera connection come from?

Ferrari objected to the use of corvettes with daytona body panels. The pantera with testarossa panels was the stunt double for the real testarossas.

Doug M

Do you have a reference for that? The link above doesn't mention it. Just curious.

quote:

Did I read that article wrong .. it says that Ferrari objected to the use of Corvettes with Testarossa panels and donated to real Testarossas. Where did the Pantera connection come from?

Do you have a reference for that? The link above doesn't mention it. Just curious.

Actually, the article talks about the Daytona Spyder replica and that Ferrari North America was upset about all the attention the replica was getting, so the Daytona replica was destroyed in an episode and replaced with the then-new Testarossa.

And that's when a replica Testarossa was built on a Pantera to be the stunt double and stand in for the delicate Ferrari Testarossas for all the action scenes.

I'm still looking for a reference .. how do you know a Pantera was modded as a Testarossa? Is that Pantera rumor or is it in print somewhere? If true .. wonder where the car is?

With credit to Wiki:

Ferrari filed a lawsuit demanding McBurnie and four others to stop producing and selling Ferrari replicas.[1] Miami Vice producers, on the other hand, wanted no legal troubles, and accepted Ferrari's offer of two free 1986 Testarossas on the condition that the replicas be demolished.[6] Carl Roberts offered to build two new Daytonas for the 1987 season (third season of Miami Vice).[6] When Roberts learned that the Daytona was out, he proposed a trade.[6] He would build Miami Vice a Testarossa stunt car in return for the doomed Daytona.[6] Carl's original plan was to remove the Daytona skin from the Corvette and replace it with Testarossa body pieces, but this resulted in poor results and led Roberts to devise another plan.[5][6]


The Ferrari Testarossa used in the episode, Freefall.
Roberts searched and found a 1972 De Tomaso Pantera, which was perfectly suited for the Testarossa body pieces.[5][6] The Pantera was rigidly modified to withstand the duties of filming.[5] It was raised 1.5 inches for additional ground clearance,[6] 2.5 inch wall-thick square tubing was used to prevent potential roof buckling and added a reinforcing railing that doubles as a skid plate,[6] an auxiliary braking system designed to assist drivers in controlled spins, the master cylinder was repositioned in the brake line to enable it to feed the rear wheels enabling the driver to lock the aft end on command,

If you google search Miami Vice Pantera, the wikipedia reference pops right up with a much longer write up.

Doug M

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Originally posted by Robbie:
I'm still looking for a reference .. how do you know a Pantera was modded as a Testarossa? Is that Pantera rumor or is it in print somewhere? If true .. wonder where the car is?

I remember reading the Popular Mechanics' on the Pantera/Testarossa stunt car as part of their feature on the 'Cars of Miami Vice' way back when. It also spoke about the simple reason why they chose white, there was a real black Testarossa in a prior episode didn't show up well in a night shoot. I guess Michael Mann liked filming in the dark .

Garth's Banzai Runner web page has the reference to the 1987 Popular Mechanics feature with pictures.

Here's a post with a few pics from F-chat with info about the poster's friend who was involved with the car and the show.

http://www.ferrarichat.com/for...tarossa-pantera.html

Here are the pics...

And here's the July 1987 Popular Mechanics article on the Miami Vice Pantera Testarossa stunt car.
https://books.google.hu/books?...#v=onepage&q&f=false

Hmmm... Looks like those pics only show up if you're logged into the F-Chat website, so here they are as attachments...

Another...

And another...

And an action scene from one of the episodes...

Very interesting .. thanks. I suppose the car got crushed after the program ended. It would be a big collector's item now.

It's kind of funny that Ferrari objected to a Corvette-based replica but was OK with a Pantera-based replica. Must be the Italian brotherhood. :-)

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I suppose the car got crushed after the program ended. It would be a big collector's item now.

Actually, it didn't get crushed. I have an old magazine article somewhere about the car and where it went following production of the TV series. I tried to contact the then-owner about 10-11 years ago without success. I need to see if I can find it.

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It's kind of funny that Ferrari objected to a Corvette-based replica but was OK with a Pantera-based replica.

Well, the Pantera-based replica wasn't the star of the show; it was merely a stand-in for the delicate Ferrari beauty queens when it came time for the stunt work. I'm sure Ferrari didn't mind if an old Pantera was beat up, abused, and possibly wrecked during filming in order to save one of their real Ferrari star cars. The Daytona replica on the other hand was the star of the show, which is I'm sure what Ferrari objected to.