Bob Norwood is building the P4 again.

It certainly helps !!

Here's a rather taller Mark Gerisch, driving the ex-Marchetti #5 car at Chicago Historic Races, Road America, in 1996.
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Wow. Under the heading of insanely unsafe we have a race car that puts the drivers head 3" ABOVE the roll hoop. Which I guess is an improvement over the 50s cars with no roll hoop at all the the entire drivers head sticking up in harms way.

 

Here's a link to an Edward Hattersley © copyright photo of the came car at Road America in 1999:

http://www.hattersley-photography.com/Subject-Areas/Transportation/imagepages/image22.htm

Note that (although I did point this out to him) the photographer has his image captioned as '1967 Ferrari 330P4'. Doh !

Car got a slight bump on the nose that year too. See .... I don't miss much.
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Almost as bad as it was, when Mike Parkes drove the real P3 #0846 back in '66 (before the pedal box was modified).

(Image copyright Rainer Schlegelmilch © .... courtesy of 'Barchetta': http://www.barchetta.cc/german/pirro/Galleries.Eventi/Schlegelmilch/B_93.htm )
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Looking forward to seeing yours, Michael.

Here's one of Jan Friburg's Norwood P4 that Andreas took, back in 2003, which he kindly shared with me.
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Here's a couple of photos of Mike Studley's Norwood P4 (the 4th car of the first series) - originally built for George Shelley of Miami.
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Here's one that maybe some of you fellow Norwood P4 aficionados may be able to help me with.

Years back, I found the small photo below on the 'Net. I think it was somewhere on this website:

http://www.thewarfields.com/Cars1.htm .... if it was, I can't find it anymore. (Robert J. Warfield wasn't the most helpful, IIRC).

I'm presuming this was scanned from a magazine article. I thought I had most of them. Can anybody shed any light please ?
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Paul, thanks for the PM. Your pics are bringing back lots of great memories through what's in the background of many:

In the 1st pic of post #69, unless it's the exact spot where all of them were built, one of the earliest, if not the first incarnation of the 288GTO repro. in the background, right where I saw it during one of my all-too-rare visits. Jeeez, just how long was it in that spot?
Assuming it's that first one, it was started just after I left, early summer 1984.
It's astounding just how beautiful the P4 is under the skin, too.

In the 4th pic, is that James himself at the parts washer (back when we were all a bit skinnier....sorry James, couldn't resist )?

In post #74, the car to the right of the P4 is the 308 Funny Car (Bob never really left his roots) with a supercharged 512 motor. The centrifugal compressor must have been off of a land mover, it was about as big as a dinner plate.

The overhead shot of the "sales area" shows the Yellow Bird DP Porsche that scared teh *&%# out of me. With the boost turned down (I tried to behave, honest), it kicked sideways on me under light throttle just from the boost coming in. I was in love.
Wonder what ever became of those DPs.......

That just might be Margie in the Road America pic. She was a tall one (taller than me back then), always reminded me of a prettier Angelica Huston, and drove a Boxer at the time.

One of those semi-recent visits to see Bob was my first time to see one of the post-Boxer based P4s, and I'm guessing it was the same yellow one discussed here. It was in from Florida for something, and drop-dead gorgeous. he told me it's driven on the street regularly.

In post #78 - Just a little bump on the nose? That'll buff right out. It's good to see these doing something other than just looking pretty.

Is yours one of Bob's?

 

FerrariChat has always been useful for finding out about these cars - even back in the days of the old FerrariChat forum.

See: http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/251280/165223.html .... Quotes from that thread include:

(He says nada, biting his tongue. )

Fortunately, I was right-clicking and saving photos back in 2002, small as they were then.
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I LOVE THIS THREAD


doug

 

Not a problem, Kurt. It needed an explanation.

I also have a larger version of the photo of the guy working on the motor of the yellow Norwood P4, captioned 'Greg'. Ring any bells ?

IIRC, it was either Jim Hopperstad or David Moore himself who told me it was she.

No, Kurt .... Mine's just a 'poor guy's' Noble P4 replica. Love her just the same though.

 

Greg Johnson - note the groovy paints!

 

Thanks, Doug. I'm pretty much enjoying it myself too. But I've gotta go and do some other (boring) stuff for a while.

So to keep you guys happy, here's a few old photos of the 6th Norwood P4 built (originally for Dr. Allen Meril of Dallas, TX) ....

.... while it was up for sale at Exotic Car World in Arlington, TX, at end of 2002. Photos courtesey of Mike Weaver, proprietor of ECW.

Enjoy !
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Didn't know Greg...............got a kick out of the Milli Vanilli pajama pants.

Is there something wrong with me that I mentally want the blonde to move out of the way in those Exotic Car World pics?

 

Thought I also ought to post these two photos, as really they 'belong' with the ones above.

This particular car had a rather special motor - a 5-litre Batten billet V-12 fitted with TestaRossa heads, rather than the usual 400GT/i motor. Here's Bob Norwood himself, setting the car up on the dyno, prior to being purchased by the car's current owner in January 2003.
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YES !!

 

Best thread ever ?

DFW guys; any chance of a get togeather at Bobs new place ? I've never been to it. Kurt, James ?

He was/is always a car guy first and not a slave to a particular brand.
He found out the limits to the NSX block the hard way as he apparently is doing with Japanese motors. Watching one of them exceed mechanical limits must be spectacular.
I remember the shop on 35 when he was into Porshes and had his 964 turboed track "funny car" stolen. Wonder if that was ever recovered.

 

He's out East of Dallas, easy once you've been there once, and the P4 shop is nearby, but not at his place. Not exactly the surrounding you'd expect to find such machinery (a li'l bit country). I'll probably head out there once it warms up a bit - I can let you know. It's an all-day trip for me, unfortunately; as Bob puts it, "If somebody wants to see me, they better really want to see me."
James should be able to get there. We should have a Boxer visit.

Bob has also tested the limit of the Boxer motor - similar result, on one of his first, before deciding that smaller twins were the way to go. Boxer motor + single big compressor = boom.
Unless it's been found recently, DoomI never resurfaced.

 

I'm most definitely in.

 

There's a P4 replica in those pic's??

 

Here's a couple more photos of that same (6th) Norwood P4, taken at 'The Italian Gathering', in Columbus OH, in September 2006 ....

.... not long after the car had undergone a year-plus-long and very comprehensive total nut-and-bolt rebuild. Sorry - no Blonde.

Found them here: http://www.evansauto.com/ig2006/ig2006pics.html
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Several years ago I moved Norwood Autocraft from the northwest highway location to Rockwall TX, to slow things down, because I was never fond of the service industry. James Patterson does a good job with this & I am proud of the tradition he's carried on. There are a few things on this thread I would like to respond to:

#1 The threat and law suit from Ferrari, was not a threat, I was sued by Ferrari when a customer crashed a 512 Twin Turbo Boxer into a tree going a 126 MPH in a 10 MPH zone in a park! Ferrari sued me in response to a lawsuit from the family. Working with ferrari lawyers we worked out details of other cars I was building, they were preticulary unimpressed by the F40 i was building.

Rule #1: You can not build a copy of a current production Ferrari. The GTO's are not replica's as we just do a rebody the cars are still registered as 308's. The P4's can not be baged or called real Ferrari's. Although they have a lot of Ferrari part contents.

I do some of the prototype work on P4's and GTO's & I work on my personal GTO and my Bonneville 308 (We are running this car at Bonneville this year as well as the big block with GTO "Team 300" & MR2). The production work is done at P4 by Norwood at TRM's shop which is headed by Tim Taylor. Derik Kennedy is a third partner who handles sales & information. Tim's shop is 2 miles from my shop in Rockwall, and the body's are built at Danny Day's shop nearby in Forney TX.

IMSA GTO was a short wheel base (308) car, we developed 2 engines; 308 2 valve & a 308 4 valve for this project. The body's were built by Jim Carpenter and the chassis' were built by Huffaker Engineering. Three of these cars were built in yearly 1990's, I have not kept track of these cars.

Few people who have collections of REAL Ferrari's have REAL P4's & if you had one you wouldn't drive it on the highway or race it. The current values are between $10-20 Million dollars.

A little bit of history:
The first P4 was a modified Boxer chassis with a fiberglass body from David Piper & a Boxer 512 flat engine built in 82' or 83', the last time I saw this car it was in Belgium.
In 1986 we started on the improved P4 with Ferrari V12 engines (365- 400's & 412's).
Car #6 was Dr. Meril's & had a scratch built V12 Testarossa with 4 valve heads.

The new car was inspired by the availabilty Ferrari V12 engines (456 - 575), These are fabulous engines, another factor was the issue of customers wanting their P4's modified to be more correct.
Tim Taylor is in charge of getting all these details correct (Lots of Details)

Current construction projects:
New P4- 2 cars in production
GTO rebodies- 4 cars
GTO Bonneville car- Restoration Preperation
308 Bonneville- Repairing damage from garage fire, building 2.0 liter motor for Class G at Bonneville- Car currently holds the F record (23 yrs old)
MR2 Bonneville- Tim is going to run this car in the 1.0 liter class which it currently holds the record
Tomassima Restoration Project- I did the 250 engine last year

Drag Race:
Modified Class- We have run a toyota celica with a modified 3RZ 2.5 liter motor 1,600 horse power car weight 2,200 LBS
Promod- This year we are running a celica with a 4.8 liter motor (My Design) 2,800 Horse Power car weight 1,800 lBS

250 Base Cars:
I have not built a 250 base car since 1982 ( Lots of People Have Asked!) Reason: I don't like using up good restorable 250's & the price for donors is impractical. When we build 308's into GTO's the base chassis is always a goner, burned or heavily wrecked, I can't imagine anyone would restore or repair this stuff! We are currently starting to supply parts (Particulary GTO body pannels). For restoration on original cars.

Here is a link to my website:
www.bobnorwood.com
www.P4bynorwood.com

Thanks,

Bob

 

Let me be the first to welcome you to Ferrarichat!

It is an honor to have you on this site. Welcome!

 

Welcome aboard, Bob. Hope everything I wrote prior to your post was acceptable. As you can see, you have quite a following on here.

Best Regards, Paul.

 

Hi Bob, welcome to fchat!