Bonhams – A trans-Atlantic trio of rare mid-century Chrysler Ghia show cars, offered from the prestigious Ramshead Collection, will bring a touch of La Dolce Vita to Bonhams in the New Year as highlights of the Scottsdale Auction on January 26, 2023.

Leading the glamorous group is the unique 1957 Chrysler Ghia Super Dart 400 concept car which was displayed at that year’s Torino and New York Motor Shows and most recently won a class award at the esteemed Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. This striking, futuristic one-off showcased what was to come in automotive design and was equipped with Chrysler’s powerful 400hp Hemi V8 powerplant.

This highly original and preserved example has covered just 49,000 miles with three owners from new.

Also displayed at the New York Auto Show was the 1962 Chrysler Ghia L6.4, which in later life was a Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance entrant. Largely hand built in Italy at Ghia’s Carrozeria, the L6.4 had a limited production run of just 26, with owners including Frank Sinatra. Stunningly preserved, this treasured collector car – one of just 17 surviving – is another low mileage example with just 33,000 miles recorded.

Completing the automotive triptych is the 1954 Chrysler Ghia GS-1 Coupé, its striking turquoise over tan livery complementing its lines, inspired by Virgil Exner, the Chrysler designer known for creating the marque’s ‘Forward Look’. The elegant show car was one of nine examples produced, of which only five remain. The subject of an exceptional restoration, the GS-1 is a three-times class winner at Pebble Beach.

The three showstoppers are the headliners of the Ramshead Collection of 14 cars, curated by the late John White of California, a renowned and respected collector and frequent exhibitor at Pebble Beach and other prominent events.

CARS OF THE JOHN WHITE/RAMSHEAD COLLECTION

• 1957 Chrysler Ghia Super Dart 400
• 1954 Chrysler Ghia GS-1 Coupé
• 1962 Chrysler Ghia L6.4
• 1961 Chrysler 300-G Convertible
• 1948 Dodge D24 Custom Coupé
• 1953 Buick Skylark Convertible
• 1941 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible
• 1953 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible
• 1992 Wayne Davis Custom Trailer
• 1962 Lincoln Continental Sedan
• 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix Convertible
• 1955 Chrysler Imperial Newport Hard Top
• 1953 Ford Mainline Ranch Wagon
• 1949 Dodge Wayfarer Two-Door Roadster

The son of a Dodge automobile dealer, Mr. White was a ‘petrolhead’ from an early age. His childhood collection of model cars developed into the curated Ramshead collection of mid-century Americana which was kept in a private museum that resembled a showroom of the era.

The impressive collection offers 13 collector cars, representing the great names of the American automobile industry, from Buick and Cadillac to Lincoln and Ford, mostly offered at No Reserve.

The 2023 Bonhams Scottsdale Auction will be the eleventh sale hosted at the prestigious Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Arizona. Further important collector cars are being invited through December 1. Contact motors.us@bonhams.com for more details.

Bonhams, founded in 1793, is one of the world’s largest and most renowned auctioneers, offering fine art and collectables, motor cars and a luxury division, including jewelry, watches, wine and whisky. The main salesrooms are in London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Hong Kong, with auctions also held in Knightsbridge, Edinburgh, and Sydney. With a worldwide network of offices and regional representatives in 22 countries, Bonhams offers advice and valuation services in 53 specialist areas. For a full list of forthcoming auctions, plus details of Bonhams specialist departments, please visit bonhams.com

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The post Ramshead Chrysler Ghias to headline Bonhams Scottsdale appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

If Jay Bernstein is ever having a bad day, he knows he has a quick remedy just one turn of the key away.

Doldrums don’t last long behind the wheel of a DeTomaso Pantera, and Bernstein can attest to that first-hand, thanks to his glorious yellow Italian-American supercar.

“It’s got this sound,” says Bernstein, with a touch of amazement. “It’s very visceral. You’ve got this roar right behind you, and it’s a mid-engine car so you’ve got this engine maybe a foot from your head. It’s just such a powerful sound. And it’s a five-speed and it just doesn’t stop pulling. It pulls and pulls. Those cars were capable of 160 mph!”

Bernstein bought his Pantera in 2012 and in the process fulfilled a dream he had been revisiting since the early 1970s. Not everybody remembers when the Panteras were prowling American showrooms more than 45 years ago, but Bernstein does.

“I’ve always wanted one. The first time I saw one was back when I was in med school in Louisville, and I saw one in the window at a Lincoln-Mercury dealership and I went inside and sat in the car and it was just beautiful,” he recalled. “From then on I always wanted one.”

Bernstein says the first shot he really ever had to get one was when he met up with the owner of one at a big car show almost in his backyard in Rockville, Md. “The show is a really big deal here. It’s a big destination show. And when I saw this car I struck up a conversation with the owner, who was also a car enthusiast like me. And I asked him if he was interested in selling it. Well, he has like ADD with cars — he has a car for a few months and then sells and then buys something different and then has that for a while and then sells it. Well, a few months later I was able to buy this car from him and it’s just a great car.”

The previous owner had bought the car on eBay back in 2008, Bernstein learned. Two owners before that, the car belonged to a physician in San Antonio, Texas, who apparently had two Panteras and elected to sell one of them. Before Bernstein bought the car, it had spent some time under the care of Pantera expert Ron McCall, who did some repair work and maintenance on the car. Bernstein has since become a friend and customer of McCall as well.

“They are relatively simple in how they are designed, but not everybody can work on them,” Bernstein noted. “Ron McCall lives about an our from here and he’s kind of the Pantera guru. He’s a wizard and lives and breathes this stuff.

“The odometer is in the [80,000s], and that could be right, I don’t know. The car is definitely not a garage queen, it’s been driven. It’s a very nice driver. I’ve had cars before that were kind of perfectly restored and concourse condition, and I ended up selling them because you were afraid to drive them. This is a beautiful car. It is not perfect, but it’s perfect for me.”

A Semi-Italian Visitor

The 1971-74 DeTomaso Pantera really had two claims to fame that separated it from almost any other car in any corner of the Earth:

— It was an Italian car with good ol’ Uncle Sam V-8 power — a pseudo exotic that wasn’t quite as foreign to American car guys as a Ferrari, Lamborghini or their ilk.

— It was probably the only mid-engine rocket ship that wasn’t priced in the stratosphere. The same guy who was buying a Corvette or Cadillac in the early ’70s could consider a Pantera and not have to sell his house or be threatened with divorce.

The Pantera was born when sports car builder Alejandro DeTomaso, an Italian who migrated to Argentina, convinced Lee Iacocca and the Ford brass to sell his new car in the U.S. The idea appealed to Iacocca and other Ford execs who no longer had the Cobra in Blue Oval stable.

The car would be a spinoff of DeTomaso’s Mangusta model sports car, which had led a checkered existence and was produced in low numbers from 1967-’71. Ghia designed the racy, wedge-shaped body of the car. Gian Paulo Dallara engineered the monocoque chassis and Ford supplied the 310-hp, 351-cid V-8 that would propel the Pantera to ridiculous speeds for the time period. Power was delivered through a five-speed transaxle. The cars were loaded up with power rack-and-pinion steering, independent front suspension, alloy wheels, four-wheel disc brakes and air-conditioning.

The Pantera debuted at the New York Auto Show in 1970 and the Modena, Italy assembly plant soon began building and sending cars to select Lincoln-Mercury showrooms in the U.S. The price tag of about $10,295 was a big pile of greenbacks for the early ’70s, but a far cry from the Ferrari 365 GTB/4s and Lamborghini Miuras of the world.

The Pantera may have been the hottest thing this side of the Atlantic when it came to pure performance. But as its relatively short life span would suggest, the car had its shortcomings. The Pantera seemed a bit out of place in traditional Lincoln-Mercury showrooms, and were strange foreign beasts to Blue Oval mechanics. Quality control seemed lacking and the car was criticized for a myriad of problems. Magazine scribes loved the car’s performance and excitement factor, but groused about the car’s fit and finish, ergonomics — drivers over 6 feet tall were in for a tight fit — and sauna-like cockpit.

Things got better after a year or so and the car was probably hitting its stride by 1973, but then the gas crisis hit. Fast cars that carried big V-8s were the last thing on many Americans’ shopping lists. There were new emissions standards that neutered such high-flying machines, and new safety standards — namely bumpers — that that the Pantera couldn’t meet without some substantial re-engineering.

Panteras were ultimately discontinued in America after 1974, but continued to soldier on for many years abroad with Ford of Australia supplying the engines. Between 5,600 and 6,091 cars were sold in the U.S., depending on which source you believe. A large number of those cars are far from factory-spec these days.

“Pantera owners are crazy about modifying their cars,” Bernstein pointed out. “A lot of other marque owners pay a premium for originality and untouched and all that. A lot of Pantera people modify them up the kazoo. That seems to be a thing with Panteras — crazy exhaust systems and all kinds of stuff. But [mine] is pretty stock.”

Bernstein says the driving experience of a Pantera is definitely different from most cars. The fun factor is off the charts, but it isn’t an all-day cruiser where the driver can just sit back, relax and chill out.

“You have to be very careful because the car is very low. Other drivers don’t always see it and you have to be careful and look around. The other thing is the car has very bad visibility when driving. You have to be really careful because there is really no rear quarter view from in the car. You can see straight behind you, but that’s it; not to the sides … But it’s like a go cart. Very responsive. You have to hold onto the wheel. It handles great, it’s flat and its mid-engine so the weight distribution is very good. And the sound is just fantastic. If you ever get close to one, have them start it up and rev it up and you’ll know what I mean.”

Bernstein knows he’ll have to keep answering the question “What is that?” for as long as he owns the car, but he’s happy to comply. He gets plenty of puzzled looks when he takes the car out for exercise in and around Rockville, but he gets a lot of grins, too. “Yeah, people don’t know what is — well, some people do, but a lot of them don’t — but you see a lot of people wave and give you a thumbs up,” he says.

“I love the car. It’s definitely one of my favorites. Even my wife [Sandra] likes that car, and she doesn’t like all my cars. So that’s a plus!”

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The post Car of the Week: 1972 DeTomaso Pantera appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and Photos BY Tom Maruska

Since the last update of the 1956 Mercury XM-Turnpike Cruiser’s restoration in the Oct. 17 issue of Old Cars, I have continued rust repair on the body and work on the upholstery. Once I completed the rust repair on the front of the car — particularly around the bumpers, grille inserts and headlamps — I was done with the sheet metal work all the way around the sides of the body. I still have some work to do on the structure on the underside of the roof that holds the butterfly roof panels in place. There is also extensive fabrication work to be done at the bottom of the windshield, as well as around the bottoms of the quarter and rear windows, not to mention the bottoms of the doors. I will also need to completely fabricate a new hood and deck lid.

The metal work at the front end would be easy compared to the work around the bottoms of the windows, so that’s where I began.

The rust behind the front bumper pods on both sides of the car was extensive. I used my plasma cutter to cut off the rust-perforated pieces, then used those cut-away pieces as patterns for cutting new pieces that would get welded together and then onto the body.

You may recall from my earlier updates in Old Cars that Ford Motor Co. sent the complete, new rolling Mercury chassis to Carrozzeria Ghia in Turin, Italy, to have the body constructed. Since the lower control arms were in place when the car arrived in Italy and this was a one-off concept car, Ghia saw no need to leave access to the control arm bushing bolts should replacement be required some day. Since the under-body roll pan was completely rusted away, and I had to remove the control arms for restoration, I needed to have access to the bolts when I reassembled the suspension. Once the control arms are back in place, I will install flush-mounting covers over new access holes with just a small screw attaching the new panels at the very bottom. They’ll then be finished along with the rest of the body and will disappear from view. I sincerely doubt this car will ever sit out in the weather again, and it will likely be driven very little, so it’s probable the control arm bushings will never need replacing again.

The deck panel just behind the front header panel and under the hood also needed to be replaced. It was, like everything else, rusted beyond repair, so it needed to be cut out and replaced. The center section that the hood latched through was still solid, so I left that in place and made the new panel to go around it. When I removed the rusty panel, I found more rust in the structure beneath it and, of course, I wasn’t surprised. I cut out and replaced the rusty pieces below, then welded a new top panel in place.

Sometime in the XM-Turnpike Cruiser’s past, a previous owner replaced the car’s rocker panels, but he didn’t duplicate the body ridge line along the bottom edge so before I moved on, I fabricated correct rocker panels and welded them in place.

The ‘butterfly’ roof panels

The roof section turned out to be tougher than I imagined. There is a lot of structure on the underside of the roof to support the “butterfly” window operating system. And guess what — it was severely rusted and needed rebuilding.

One of the bad things about the butterfly roof and roof panels is there are no adjustments built into the system. It has to be welded perfectly so that the alignment up and down, forward and back, and all the gaps are perfect. To make these panels fit, I tack-welded the butterfly mounts in place, then installed the roof rail trim, installed the butterflies and examined how it looked. Then I would mark the adjustments needed, cut the tack welds off and try again. It took quite a while before I got them just right. The mounts are still just tacked in place and I won’t weld them in solid until I get the roof refinished to a point it’s ready for paint. At that point, I’ll refit all the pieces and “burn” them in with my welder. However, the main roof structure is completely welded solidly in place; just the brackets that mount the butterflies may need to be adjusted and then solidly welded later on.

I should note that before welding parts in place, I coated them with the KBS Coatings rust-proofing product that I’ve been using throughout the project.

Refinishing suspension parts

I needed to take another break from the rust repair and do something for a little while that looked like I was accomplishing something. To that end, I sandblasted, primed and painted all of the suspension parts. These include the coil and leaf springs, the brake drums, tie rods, upper and lower control arms, spindles, axle ends, rear end and backing plates, as well as a few other miscellaneous parts.

I always mask any part with threads or that contact bushing or bearing surfaces. I’ve learned the hard way that any paint on those surfaces has to be removed before installing nuts, bearing and bushings.

I don’t mind jumping around to different parts of the restoration to get a break from one thing or another — it all has to be done anyway. After painting the suspension parts, I was on to another “break.”

New upholstery

One of the reasons I like to order all the parts that I think I’ll need early in the process is that I like to jump around and do different things to break up the monotony. I also wanted to get one of the seats completely done just because I want to see what it will look like. So, I started with the driver’s seat.

I sandblasted and painted the driver’s seat frame with KBS Coatings’ rust-proofing product. I had to do a little rust repair to the seat frame, too. Why would I think this part would be different than any other part of the car?

One of the seat tracks was also rusted off on one end and I had to fabricate a new 5-inch section and weld it on. This part looked like it was likely a production part so I could probably have found one someplace, but I didn’t know how much time I would have spent on the internet or phone trying to find it. So, in pretty short order, I had it made and welded in place. It did take two trial attempts before I got the third piece correctly bent.

The first part of the seat that I finished was the panel on the back of the seat. It’s adorned with a large L-shaped chrome piece with a handle on the top corner and a chrome finger cup under the handle. This is to pull the seat back into the upright position after accessing the rear seat area.

There are two different pipings used on the seats. Gold piping was used between two sections of the orange leather, and white piping was used between white and orange leather. I have a Consew Premier commercial sewing machine that will sew through seven layers of leather and it works great. It’s a double-needle machine with two needles 3/8-in. apart, and you can sew with either or both needles (depending on the project). There isn’t a presser foot especially for sewing with piping so I made one myself and it works perfectly. It rides on the piping and sews perfectly close to the piping for a great-looking seam.

Now I have the back of the driver’s seat completed and the foam rough cut for the seat bottom. I can almost sit in the XM-Turnpike Cruiser and begin to get a sense of the car when it was new from the driver’s seat.

Author’s note: Thank you for your continuing interest in the XM-Turnpike Cruiser! Be sure to watch for more updates in Old Cars and visit www.tommaruskacars.us for additional information on this fabulous and historic car. I will be posting a couple videos on YouTube showing some of this work. Go to youtube.com/tpls63 and then click on “videos.” Once there, scroll to the end for videos of this project.

For More Info
www.tommaruskacars.us

Click here for part 3 of the XM-Turnpike Cruiser’s restoration

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