Tom Meade: Thomassima Supercar_update

To allow newer readers to become familiar with Tom Meade and his involvement with Ferraris, what follows is a transcription of a past article:

Tom Meade --Artist and Craftsman

Tom Meade was born in Hollywood and raised in Australia and Hawaii. At a very young age he developed a passion for beautiful cars. In 1960, after a four year hitch in the Navy, he returned to Newport Beach, California, where he stumbled upon a Ferrari Testa Rossa. He coveted the car, even though it was priced far beyond his reach --at $4000.

The owner of the car told him about a warehouse in Rome full of used race cars that were being sold for a song. That was it. Meade packed a tennis bag, and with only $50 in his pocket, hitchhiked his way to Rome. He combed the city for the famous warehouse, which of course turned out to be a myth, just like the streets paved with pizza. He heard about a Ferrari being used on a Dino di Laurentis movie, but by the time he arrived at the set it was gone. However, he was offered the part of a British army officer in the film, and was cast opposite David Niven. The months of nighttime shooting left his days free for car hunting, but the results were still zero.

After the film wrapped, Tom ventured to Modena, Italy, home of Maserati --and Mr. Ferrari. While on a tour of the Maserati plant, he spotted a beautiful shape covered by a tarp. He asked the guide what it was, and was told, "scrap." but Meade pulled up the cover and discovered the remains of the prototype 350S V-12 built for Stirling Moss to drive in the 1957 Mille Miglia. After much begging and negotiation, the car was his... for a mere $420! With only nickels left, he found a friendly farmer who let him keep the car in the barn with the cows. Tom slept in the hayloft, ate off the land, and immediately went to work rebuilding the car. He made a daily trips to the Maserati factory to root out parts and eventually was given free run of the racing department. When the car was finished, he shipped it back to the States and hitchhiked his way home again. Back in America, he sold the car $2,700 --a huge profit for the time.

With the proceeds from his big sale, Meade returned to Modena, rented an apartment for $8 a month, and began brokering Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, and Bizzarinis. He was the only American broker in Italy at the time, and became the “go to” guy for foreigners seeking Italian sports cars. His business began to grow, and he wanted to begin creating custom coachwork, so he moved his operations to a large warehouse, and his business continued to flourish.

Eventually he was selling many cars a month, with a large and well-equipped shop staffed by skilled craftsmen, many moonlighting from their day jobs at Ferrari or Maserati.

In 1962, Meade named his first custom-bodied car, built on a Ferrari 250 GT chassis, Thomassima 1, which in Italian means “the maximum from Thomas.” It was unfortunately lost in the floods of Florence. The first of his famous Nembo Spyders came in the mid 1960s, also built on a Ferrari 250 GT chassis. In 1967 he built Thomassima 2, a truly beautiful creation. In 1969 he built the third and final Nembo Spyder, S/N 2707, built as a lightweight competizione street version. A Lebanese Ferrari dealer out of Paris commissioned the car. The dealer took the car to Beirut and both he and the car have never been heard of since.

Also in 1969 came the Thomassima 3, which created a sensation when exhibited at Italy’s automobile manufacturers’ show in Turin, the most important and prestigious event of it’s kind in Europe. It was necessary to move the surrounding exhibits further back, to make room for the dense crowds surrounding Meade’s creation. The resulting worldwide publicity included his life story on 60 Minutes and a talk show appearance with Walter Cronkite and Roger Mudd. Mattel manufactures Thomassima 3 as one of its Hot Wheels collection. Feature articles followed in Road and Track and Motor Trend magazines.

As a result of the acclaim over Meade’s bold styling and beautiful designs some customers brought their production Ferraris to Meade and asked him to modify them into something unique and even more beautiful. Sometimes Meade fully re-bodied them, and other times he only modified parts of their factory original bodies, such as the 250 GT/L Lusso “Speciale,” offered here at Monterey, which he customized with covered headlights.

Meade –living in California now, recalled in a recent interview that these “semi-customs” gave him a great satisfaction because they allowed him to add his personal touch to some of the great designs of the period. While he did not keep records, he believes his total lifetime production of modified and custom bodied Ferraris and Maseratis is less than 50 cars, making them exceptionally rare today. Praise for his work was abundant in the period, and his cars are increasingly sought after by modern collectors.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuTnwtjJy1I

 

-pictured below top: Tom Meade (left) shakes hands with Enzo Ferrari (right) as Enzo hands Tom his personal contact information after a 40-minute conversation at the Modena Autodromo Race Track (now defunct).

-pictured below bottom: Thomassima II with P/4 Can Am cars, being tested the same day, seen in background on trailer.
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

A Slice of Life, An Altered State: An Afternoon with Tom Meade

By Chad Glass

Having arranged a meeting today for conversation and coffee, I sped down Sunset Boulevard in Westwood, pretending I was in a Ferrari. The drive en route to have a second meeting with Tom Meade, whom I had been introduced to the prior Wednesday evening, became an exotic trip without having to leave town. It was sunny and mild as I downshifted through sweeping s-curves and hills. Tighter and turning, I could feel the front end gripping with the steering input; not bad for my modified Nissan, and enough to have me fantasizing about brief snapshots of a race I was never in, of memories I never had.

What was real was the journey to visit someone who not only had Enzo Ferrari himself provide his personal contact information to (and talk for 40 minutes with Tom –an unheard of event for nearly anyone in the world—to speak with Enzo for one or two seconds is a long time), but pay a visit to a man who perhaps outdid much of that marque’s iconic styling in it’s vintage heyday of the 1960s. Included in the pantheon of Italian coachbuilders of Pininfarina, Giugiaro, Bertone, Ghia, Vignale, Zagato, etc... the American born Tom Meade defies tradition, being perhaps more Italian than all the prior mentioned. Goggle the word “Thomassima” (Toe-MASS-ee-mah), and read about his rise to notoriety.

As for me, being a storyboard artist in the Hollywood industry, I was excited to be meeting a car designer, and yet more amazed to be meeting someone who had rebodied and redesigned Ferraris specifically. As I have grown more interested in Italian automotive design, while dabbling in trying out some sketched designs of my own, I was eager to have Meade look at what I had drawn, but more interested in experiencing what this man had to say in general.

Being a student of the world, I tend to absorb things that are interesting with free abandon. To be given an opportunity to learn something --anything-- from someone such as Meade, is a privilege and honor. Yet I choose to take it all in fun. Whatever we would discuss I already knew would be interesting. It would be because it’s about cars, extraordinary cars. Between gear shifts while looking down at my directions, creeping down the last street, I neared his residence and pulled off to park in the shade.

His residence is designated as a whole number and a half, like “367 ½”. So even though I am actively looking for a half-number, walking around the premises, I become challenged to find the front door. The half number somehow doesn’t make itself very obvious. I eventually find it by calling his phone number and listening for the ringing. It works as I find myself standing on the landing of a unit one floor up and across from his.

Upon arrival and greeting, Tom wants to go back to the corner coffee shop where we had first met. I sense and get the idea that this is the main rendezvous for future meetings. Coffee sounds great and I find that is but a short drive from his place. As we make our way through some back streets, I voice that to Tom: “I see, this is some kind of back way; I can see we’re near it already.”

“Yes, just like in Modena, I know all of the back ways to places,” he says as we approach nearer.

Arriving shortly, he suggests an ideal place to park, a sort of secret spot. He is correct and this makes everything flow very nicely, like the lines on a Ferrari. And finding a table outside on the sidewalk, among the din of the traffic and the people, he plunks down a thick book for me to see, what appears to be a collage of pictures and articles –memory lane for him, an expose’ of his life for me.

Straight away I open the thing as he begins to describe what I was looking at: Black and white pictures, all crisp and vivid, then color, abound. Very nice, and they all look like Ferraris to me, beautiful ones from the 60s and early 70s, but something strikes me:

They’re almost Ferraris. I see familiar cues making me want to say what model that one is, what this one is, to show him I know about Ferraris, and….. I can’t place any of them. They’re not Pininfarina or Bertone designs. They’re his. But they look like factory production cars.

“That’s a Nembo Spider,” he says.

“Wow,” I say, “that is just gorgeous, the best spider version of a Ferrari I’ve ever seen.” I could stare at it for the duration of our time together, but other pictures await.

Page after page I have the same kind of reaction. The different models of cars are all equally as compelling to see, somehow looking a little better than the factory cars. They’re at least models that Ferrari should have built.


stay tuned for next week's installment