1958 Corvette, Chevrolets 56 T bird That Hauled Ass.

By Miguel Caparros

Before you send me a nasty note please read this. I was never much of a TBird fan. I was much more of a Corvette kind of guy.. I bought a basket case 58 Corvette, much like the one in this video. I hot rodded it with factory parts, Duntov cam and lifters ported fuelly heads,M22 tans etc. I replaced every bushing and bearing, Put in big sway bars front and rear, New hand rubbed paint polished all the stainless steel parts and rechromed all the rest of the shiny bits. All new proper interior. Those of you that know the cars I build understand it was with out compromise to quality. The interior was the last thing done and when the car came back from the upholstery shop  I reached in to push the seat back and found that was as far as it went. I wormed my way in and I was miserable.The steering was to close even with it all the way forward the back of the seats was bolt upright and my size 12 EE's were not happy either.  I could drive it but I could not live with it.  Fast forward to 7 years ago when my friend Rick asked me to help him with a 1956 T Bird survivor with 54,000 original miles. We spent 2 years doing a preservation to keep as much of the original car but still make it so it could serve as a standard and win shows.

The first time I got in to drive it I flashed back to the 58 Corvette, another car I do not fit in. When I stopped and thought about it, the things that it had in common were the styling touches even thought they are completely different, The 58 Corvette had more chrome and polished stainless that any Corvette before or after. The 56 Tbird was the same it had more than the 55 or the 57. Hopefully this will give you some insight into my twisted mind. If you want to see the video of the 56 Tbird here is the link. The 1956 T bird

The Mustang Sports wagon.

by Miguel Caparros 

This article was prompted by a posting from Sam Fiorani, another automotive historical journalist on his website, Automotive Travel about the sale of a recently built 1965 Ford Mustang Station Wagon. I remember my initial fascination with the cover and article from Car and Driver magazine 1966 October issue. The car was never officially connected to Ford, but it was commissioned by the account executive Barney Clark of J.Walter Thompson, Ford's advertising agency. The conversion from a GT coupe was done in Italy by the coach works of Intermechanica. Originally sports wagons were know as shooting brakes in England. Wealthy sportsmen would commission local coach builder to build a two door sporty wagon with tailgate from which they could load hunting dogs and guns for some game shooting. Later Volvo actually was the first to take the concept of the sports wagon into major production in 1971 with the P1800 ES.

   

When JWT was done with the car, it was locally sold in New York, where it became a very special daily driver. It was last seen and photographed in a Levittown neighborhood on Long Island.

  

The Red car with the Gold Shelby Stripes is the one in Sam's story. This car had a no expenses job done to it and a modern drive train to make it as useable as any new car.

It is surprising how many individuals have taken it upon themselves to make Mustang wagon conversions. With out really digging to deep, I found 7.  

The Blue 65 has a very pleasing look due to the the slender B and C pillars and the well cut and fitted rear side windows. A white Shelby GT350 sparks the thought, if you are going to build a wagon version might as well make it something truly remarkable. 

A pewter 67 looks real good and classy.

Here is another rendition of a second generation Mustang, this one looks like a 68. Take a close look at this red conversion. The amount of work that it took to graft the top and tailgate from what looks from the photo to be the rear pillars from a 1965 Ford Country Squire. In 65 Ford came up with a system of scooping air from the pillar and directing it across the rear glass to help keep the rear window cleaner.

Here is another red one that seems to have taken its roof, side windows and hatch from the AMC Hornet wagon.

I am certain with the exception of the Intermechanica build, the others used existing production car parts. The rear fender kick up of the Mustang adds complication for using sheet metal and glass from existing cars. If I was asked to do such a conversion I would look at several different donors for the rear would be; the Ford Fairmont Wagon, Pinto Wagon, AMC Hornet wagon, and the Chevy Vega wagon.

If some one offers to sell you their original Prototype 65 Mustang wagon, walk away, Ford never ever made a prototype wagon. The closest they came to it was this mock up from 1966 but the front looks like the 67 and the rear looks like a Gremlin.

Italian Style American Power

By Miguel Caparros


The Pantera was DeTomaso's home run. He comvinced Ford, the second largest auto manufacturer in the world, to market his cars for who they provided the engines for. A car builders dream come true. There is no question that the lines laid down by American architect and designer of the Pantera, Tom Tjaarda have proven to be timeless, even if in the beginning the road was a bit rocky. The Motoring Press was not kind to the Pantera's handling and rightfully so. Tuners like me made a tidy profit from taming the over steer problem of the early Italian Mid engine cars. The Pantera was not alone, the Lamborghini Miura was introduced a few years ahead of the Pantera and suffered from severe snap over steer too, something Porsche drivers were familiar with. But the Pantera and the Miura packed a lot more power than Porsche's of the time, making the problem even worse.

Since the early 50's American car lovers have been trying to have their cake and eat it too. There is no denying that after WWII some of the most beautifully styled cars were coming out of Europe. Light in weight, sexy and slippery in shape, all they needed was a big dose of american horsepower. I had the pleasure of first hand knowledge of most of these cars that were produced by combining European Style With American Muscle.

A fellow car nut, Mike Gulett, thought enough to chronicle 25 of the best know efforts under the book titled, "European Style With American Muscle". Starting with perhaps the most outrageous, the AC cars in Britain were an upscale alternative to MG and Triumph sports cars. The swooping lines of the aluminum body AC powered by a Bristol inline six, made all the right noises and was a very pleasant car. Along came a Texan by the name of Carroll Shelby and the rest of the story is in Mike Gullet's fantastic book.

Having served time with Ferrari as a youth and owning enough Alfa Romeo's to start a museum, I was very partial to Italian coachwork. Some did the unthinkable by putting in American cast iron overhead V8 engines where Twin cam 4 and 6 cylinder engines resided. I was also warned that there was a special place in hell for those that would replace a Ferrari V12 with a cast iron Cadillac motor.

As Mike's book so clearly shows there were alternative to being Sacrilegious. Start with an Italian car with no engine affiliation. But it is not just limited to the Italians, one of my favorite is the English made Jensen Interceptor. Equipped with big Chrysler V8's, these car were referred to as "Gentleman's Express". Big comfortable, opulent, fitted with the best in leather, wood and Wilton wool carpets, only a big Chrysler V8 could provide the refinement and brutal power that this big 4 seat smoking room on wheels deserved
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Mike Gulett is in my opinion one of the worlds foremost authority on Renzo Rivolta and his series of Iso Automobiles. Arguably the most successful manufacturer of American powered Italians. Get his book it is cheaper than flying me to tell you about it.

DeTomaso Mangusta

by Miguel Caparros

The Classics DeTomaso Mangusta 1967-1971 See the Video

The DeTomaso Mangusta was the predecessor to the now very famous Pantera of 1971. Although the cars are very similar, the Mangusta and the Pantera shared very few parts. DeTomaso had figured out early on that there was no way his small company could tool up to build exclusive engines and transmissions for his car lines. He instead decided to explore the limits of design and engineering that were to bold for Ferrari and Maserati who were the established exotic car manufacturers and at this point conservative in design and innovation. Innovation can sometimes lead to great success or to disaster, DeTomaso was chastised for the handling of his cars as was Lamborghini's first mid engine car the Miura. A few exotic tuners and I were able to tame the snap over steer problems with slight geometry changes to the suspension and by increasing the the rear tire foot print of these cars.

DeTomaso had decided to get a major automotive manufacturer to supply him with a light weight v8 to take his creations out of the realm of the limited production Four cylinder cars he had been building to becoming a manufacturer of thousands of high performance cars instead of hundreds.

The Shelby connection. In 1964/65 Shelby was looking for a replacement for his mid engine sports racing car, the King Cobra. Perhaps a relationship forged during their professional racing days from when both DeTomaso and Shelby were racing drivers led Shelby to consider using a version of the backbone chassis of DeTomaso's light weight Vallenlunga sports car. The relationship led to Shelby supplying DeTomaso with his high performance version 289 cid engine from Ford. The Shelby version of the 289 as used in the Cobras put out a very strong 306 horsepower. With additional Shelby modifications the 289 could put out as much as 400 hp.This power plant made the Mangusta a very serious performance car. The US version came with the 225 hp engine, and I am certain that the these engines were either modified or replaced with the more powerful versions by their owners. I can not find any facts as to how many cars were delivered with the 289 or the 302 cid engine. Just over 400 Mangusta's were produced and it is said that fewer than 200 survive today 

Check out additional related links for this story.

The Mangusta body was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro while he worked for Ghia.

Shelby's focus was drawn away from DeTomaso when Ford asked Shelby to take over the Ford GT 40 development.

Argentine born Alejandro DeTomaso Founder of DeTomasa Automobili SpA Modena Italy. Designer and manufacturer of sports and luxury cars from 1959 to present. 

See The Video

A Fishy Story Or How Plymouth Got The Jump And Lost The Race To Ford.

By Miguel Caparros

The 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang was the first Pony Car. Chrysler Plymouth did their best to try to steal the thunder of the April New York Worlds Fair Introduction, by releasing the Plymouth Valiant Barracuda on April first, two weeks before the opening of the Fair. Chrysler did a great job incorporating the large glass fast back onto the mundane Plymouth economy car and actually created a niche for the car.  It was not until 1965 with the introduction of the "S" package that the Barracuda was actually taken seriously as a performance car. Plymouth was ahead of the curve in SCCA Road Racing and the Barracuda was always in the running in the early Trans Am Series.

It was not until the 1967 introduction of the second generation A body Barracuda that the car was taken seriously by the enthusiast. With a truly fresh design and the addition of a coupe and convertible to the fastback, sales were brisk but nothing in comparison to the Mustang and the Camaro Firebird duo from GM. For such a low production numbers, Chrysler gave its buyers every thing from the legendary 225 six to the ground pounding 2 four barrel 426 Hemi V8.

In my opinion the best balanced of all the "Cudas" was the1968-69 340 powered fastback. Find a nice one of those with the S package, a "6 pack" intake and carburetors, some modern tires and suspension and you would have a butt kicking very usable street, track and show car. Although the 3rd generation of cars with the big block power are very celebrated today. The second generation A bodied cars were the most graceful with well designed lines with little or no gimmicks.

1970 saw the introduction of the 3rd generation Barracuda along with its brother for Dodge, the Challenger. By far the most aggressively designed of all the pony cars, they were also the biggest. The need for space for the big block motors led Chrysler to build their new Pony cars on the "E" platform shared with the full size Belvedere and Coronet. In racing Dodge and Plymouth Super Bird aero cars were the cars to beat in NASCAR and on the drag strip that duty fell to the Cuda, and Challenger. In 1970 the hottest racing series was not NASCAR, it was the SCCA's Trans Am Series. With the win on Sunday Sell on Monday mind set all the manufacturers had official and un-official road race teams. The crowds were huge with some venues having as many as 70,000 attendees. The #48  Plymouth Cuda AAR (All American Racing) with Dan Gurney, Sweede Savage and Sam Posey. A friend of mine bought the ex Dan Gurney/Sweede Savage car and I had the opportunity to flog this car at Infineon Raceway (formerly known as Sears Point, California) My first reaction was, "my god, this thing is huge" and that it was. It felt wider than any thing I ever drove on  road course and only exceeded when I drove Ken Epsman's 1963, Mercury Marauder with no power steering. Check out Sam Posey's Road & Track article of his reunion with the sister to the car I drove and his original 1970 race car.