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quote:
Originally posted by Si Targa:
These pics I have found in an issue of the british "De Tomaso Drivers Club News".
They show a badly burnt, BMW engined Guara from the UK.
Does anybody know what happened?
Franz


Boy, I hate to see that happen to ANYONE. I really feel for them.

Are you sure it is a UK-based car? Look at the steering wheel - it is on the left.

They didn't give the owner's name, did they?
This is currently owned by Roger Brotton who is currently restoring my Deauville and I saw this sorry thing just before Christmas whilst on a visit to his garage.

From the very best of my memory it suffered a fuel line fire but according to Roger the all important chassis remains in tact. He is having a new rear body panel made up and is confident of being able to restore the thing, here’s hoping anyway!

I did get the impression he may be willing to take an offer if any of you are feeling brave?
I guess he's going to have to hand-fabricate any missing body panels, since there are no more factory ones.

It does look like it may have been a fuel fire, but I wonder why?

A somewhat daunting task - anything that got melted or is suspect will have to be sourced from the original car or hand-fabbed. But hey - it'll keep him off the streets and out of trouble, as my dad would say...
Hi Charlie.
I think the factory had made only 2 RHD Guaras.
A blue one, which was delivered to Australia and a yellow one, which became the demonstrator car from Modena Cars, London.
All other Guaras in Britain should be LHD cars, like Rick Lee's Coupe and Spider and a blue Barchetta too.
Franz
I found a little more info about this car...
-snip-
It was owned by a fellow in the UK, Andy I think his name was, and is an
early, BMW-engined car. He was humming along, singing a song, when a
high-pressure fuel line (remember these things are fuel-injected) broke free and sprayed
down the engine bay with fuel, resulting in Guara flambé.

The car was totalled and taken to a wrecking yard, where it sat for a year.
Phil Stebbings bought the whole thing for 2000 pounds (!) with the intent of
restoring it, as Ric Lee has some extra body panels, wheels etc. But he
quickly became overwhelmed at the magnitude of the task, so he looked for someone to take it off his hands.

Which, of course, is where Roger Brotton comes in...:>Wink

Roger now owns it and it is waiting in line, somewhere between his two
Deauvilles, Mangusta, Mini and Longchamp, awaiting restoration. He intends to chuck
the original Guara body and come up with his own, unique body for it.
-snip-
quote:
Originally posted by Si Targa:
Hi Charlie.
I think the factory had made only 2 RHD Guaras.
A blue one, which was delivered to Australia and a yellow one, which became the demonstrator car from Modena Cars, London.
All other Guaras in Britain should be LHD cars, like Rick Lee's Coupe and Spider and a blue Barchetta too.
Franz


Ah, thanks Franz. I didn't know that. I had just assumed that since the factory basically hand-built each one, that they would have hand-built the UK-ones with right hand drive. Especially Ric Lee's spyder, since that was basically a totally custom car, and he was, ahem, a good customer of DeTomaso!

You learn something new every day...

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