The (one and only) '0846' Debate Thread

Steve

You seem to be questioning the veracity of MF's about the front of the chassis. Previously there was a very hard position that MF couldn't be influenced, was the last word on all of this. I assume you believe that's all still true yet I fear your last post could be misconstrued against you by subsequent posters. Can you respond to the post below? I've tried to come to your defense (even though it may not appear so at first) and I think there's an opportunity here for community of enthusiasts to improve cordial and principled discourse.

There's typing mistakes for which I need to correct in the question. "lemans for Daytona". And "66 or 67", otherwise I think it's s a good opportunity to silence the critics of your motivation and prove your benign intent and character.

After this question I have no plans to monitor or rebut the response. I agree entirely with Rob Lay, that we lack a good faith civility in all of this. And I've seen correspondence about how strong you feel about your reputation on this forum, so it may be an opportunity to be taken or avoided. It would be something if taken would be celebrated for you and the forum yet equally disappointing if avoided.

 

Great Posts. Exactly on point.

Agree.

Not a lot in terms of the market value -- if these were generic cars with generic race history. In either case, the car is worth something more than $20-$25 million.

However, if the car has won an iconic race, and is one of just a few in the world, the value could, conceivably, double.

It doesn't matter, because I don't think Napolis is a seller. My guess is he'd sell the P4/5 before he'd sell 0846, and I don't see him selling the P4/5.

 

Until Pipers current full inventory is disclosed no one has any idea what may be lurking within it, he has amassed his collection since the days when these cars were current.

I doubt he let any of the crown jewels go when he sold Jim 003 and any spares that went with it, more a clear out of the lesser parts that were surplus to his requirements.

Jims chassis does not have the p4 rear end 0846 did have when it left Ferrari for the last time, it also does not have its original chassis stamping, both facts point in the direction that the chassis of 0846 was not in one piece when it hit the scrap heap.

How it was pieced back together to produce the chassis that is now in Jims car is still to be discovered, the current P3 rear end that replaced the P4 one had to come from somewhere, who knows it could have even been the one that was originally chopped out and discarded when Ferrari converted the chassis to full p4 spec prior to Daytona.

Once in Pipers ownership he probably then had the extra mounts installed to that p3 rear end so he could use both types of engines.

 

You are making an assumption that the chassis was cut into pieces when it left the factory to be scrapped. That would have taken work and effort. Ferrari at the time typically pulled all of the useful parts off the chassis and then it sat in the "boneyard" area. Once there it was likely salvaged by Tom Mede as he was liked by Enzo and was allowed to take parts and pieces from there for his "projects".. There is no evidence that the chassis was cut up, and the photos of the chassis during the restoration process don't show welds that weren't there from the original building process. Moreover, the motor mounts at the firewall area look to be all P4 (as they should be) and they appear consistent with what was done on 0846 back in period.

The chassis number on these cars was a simple tag that was riveted to one of the rear chassis tubes where it could be readily seen in the scrutineering process. These were quickly and easily removed and there is evidence that these were sometimes changed so that the engine numbers and chassis numbers were correct for each car and matched the paperwork. To remove the chassis tag when the car was scrapped took probably about one or maybe two minutes. There is no evidence that the chassis was "in pieces" when it left the factory and actually there is evidence that it was in one piece when it went through Switzerland where Marcel saw it with paperwork that it was headed for England and owned by Piper. Chassis damage from Le Mans was not huge. Look at the photos of the Le Mans aftermath and the tubes are still there, the area were the tire flailed around and damaged the end of the fuel cell, but it didn't take out the chassis tubes.

This chassis may have been refurbished when in the possession of Tom Mede, but that is also speculation. The only thing we know is that Marcel saw the chassis in Switzerland and the papers with the chassis said it was headed for England to be delivered to Piper. If the chassis had been damaged or in pieces or missing chunks of the chassis Marcel would have noted it. Go back and look at the posts were Marcel it is documented as to what he saw and when.

Most likely the rear end of the chassis was modified by Piper to fit the 3 liter motor when he decided to build the car and sell it and those modifications seem to be limited to the very back end of the chassis.

Piper isn't talking for any one of a number of reasons. Remember that he contracted for chassis built to a set of plans and imported them to England from Italy based on the amounts paid for the chassis. To import a Ferrari chassis isn't the same thing and it should have been declared as such to the customs and tax folks. Even if Piper knew the origins of this third chassis he may well have not wanted to declare it and pay the import fees on a Ferrari chassis. Moreover if he later sold the car as Ferrari 0846 he could well be prosecuted for importing the chassis as a custom built piece and later knowingly selling it as a Ferrari.

This is pure speculation, but it is just one of several credible theories as to why Piper isn't talking. Piper never had any money and the chassis was routed through Switzerland to obfuscate the paper trail and probably reduce the taxes paid at the time. There is no other credible reason to route the car through Switzerland and incur extra shipping unless you are doing it for tax purposes.

The thought of getting hit with a big tax bill or even worse, fines for misrepresenting the car for tax purposes is a strong incentive to keep your mouth shut. If the car was sold as a "Piper" to Jim then he hasn't done anything illegal and hasn't misrepresented the chassis as far as he knew it for tax purposes. If he sold it to Jim as 0846 the someone is going to ask him "just when did you import that car and when did you pay the taxes on it??" Since he most likely never did import it as a Ferrari he couldn't sell the car as 0846 even if he knew exactly what the history of the car was.

 

Very interesting theory that bears some contemplation and is more logical than some theories......

 

Solofast, you accuse me of making assumptions and then post 7 paragraphs littered with assumptions to justify an alternative theory!

 

The only issue with that was did Piper then volunteer to sell the car at 'Piper P4' money rather than what it could command as P3/P4 0846 to Jim?

Jim was under the impression that Piper had no idea what he had and that was probably reflected in the price paid. Could Piper have reasonably sold the car as 0846, paid off his tax bill and still made a tidy profit? I certainly think so.

 

I think contributors should be very careful about making accusations of tax evasion and such like in relation to all the parties involved. There is some pretty defamatory claims being made in the last few posts.

 

Jim never said what he paid for the car and according to him the price paid was appropriate for a "bitsa", replica, built up from parts and not what a "honest" P4 would be.

I am just suggesting one theory that is entirely plausible as to why Piper is not talking. He may not want to talk about it for any number of reasons, that is his business, and we may never know why he doesn't want to talk about it.

The point I was making earlier is that there is no evidence in the chassis of the car that would suggest that it had been cut into pieces and to suggest that it had is at odds with the photographs of the chassis as it was being restored.

 

But DP has talked about it. He told me he had the chassis made by a good chassis maker in Italy. He told a friend of mine this too. Asked if it was Vaccari & Bosi he replied in the negative.

 

Theories, hypothesis and mere suggestions are VERY different from claims. Alarmist posters should be very careful about making such accusations with respect to what other users post.

 

Are you still, after all of this, trying to assert that this chassis was made from scratch to the P4 drawings that Piper supplied???

This is totally inconsistent with the facts.

Piper may well have believed that all of the chassis that he had built were done at the same time and by the same fabricator. That however is not consistent with the fact that Jim's chassis was, and now we can say because of the MF letter, categorically, made up the remains of 0846, the rear end of which was modified at some later time to fit both the P3 and the P4 engine. Piper may well have believed that this was one of the chassis that he had made the day he sold the car to Jim, but that does not alter the fact as to what the car is and the damage that is consistent with repairs made to 0846 after the Targa Florio incident.

Perhaps the fabricator knew that Tom Mede had the other chassis and he bought it rather than do all the work to start from scratch, and sold the chassis to Piper as new. Perhaps Piper knew all along what he had and, knowing this was a messed up piece sold it off to Jim with the other "lesser" parts for what he could get for them. Piper may have wanted to keep the "better" chassis that he had made for himself for a car he would build at a later date to race with knowing it was a fresh piece and not something that had been beaten from pillar to post and damaged a couple of times.

Piper claimed this was one of the chassis he had made up from scratch, whether he believed it or not is not material, that is simply not true.

For whatever reason the car unquestionably was made from 0846's remains. To suggest differently is to deny the facts, no matter what Piper said to who and when.

 

David Piper will take things through the courts, ask the well known journalist and racer Mark Hales, he had to sell his home after losing a legal debacle with him in recent years.Piper is being accused on this thread of tax evasion now!

Would you like to find a thread on the internet where a complete stranger was suggesting you had done such a thing?

 

Taxes aside, this car will always be a "bitsa" and wouldn't command the price of a clean P4/412P, regardless of what it's built on top of. It's a story car, and there's nothing wrong with that. And I know Jim has said as much in the past.

 

Je pense qu'il faut arrêter avec cette Auto.
Il suffit de regarder le tableau de bord, il n'a rien à voir avec 330 P3/4. Le chassis il est neuf, fabriquer avec des pièces qui ne sortent pas de l'usine Ferrari, mais d'un atelier aux Etats Unis.
Les Ferrari sont fabriquer à Maranello. Maranello et nul part ailleurs.
Idem pour le chassis, tout à été refait, la carrosserie?
J'espère seulement que le moteur et la boite sont authentique.
0846 à été officiellement ferrailler par l'Usine à la suite des 24h du Mans 1967.
Et seule l'Usine Ferrari peut officialiser sa résurection. Pas Mauro Forghieri (que je respecte)

I think we should stop with this picture.
Just look at the dashboard, it has nothing to do with 330 P3 / 4. The chassis is new, manufactured with parts that do not come from the Ferrari factory but a workshop in the United States.
Ferrari are manufactured in Maranello. Maranello and nowhere else.
Ditto for the chassis, everything has been redone, the body?
I only hope that the engine and transmission are authentic.
0846 to officially scrap the plant after 24h of Le Mans 1967.
And only the Ferrari factory can formalize its resurrection. No Mauro Forghieri (which I respect)

 

Look, "setting aside" everyone's preoocupation with the frame triangulation (which I think quickly loses the plot, between 'how it should have been done, in a pure structural design sense', and how it actually GOT done, 'because it's late we are in a hurry, and this works')..

What about the OTHER indicators, that match the life of the car, as it raced for the Ferrari team??

The water piping mods to mate the P4 block (this was an early clue, in Jim's papers) and also, the repairs made after the Targa Florio crash, that render the frame "close, but not quite square"...

There's more clues here, than you care to admit as they don't seem to match your personal objectives.

Whatever those are??

 

Well said, you continue the discussion.....I have work to do...

 

I actually think Piper felt he had three identical "0900" frames....

But at some point he certainly became aware of the engine fitment options.
Let's not get carried away lobbing bricks thru his window, on the values.

They were worth fractions of the current values, even when Mr. G made his purchase.

 

Your attempt to draw parallels with a journalist damaging a vehicle owned by Piper and a forum user putting forward a hypothesis in order to make sense of the murky history of Jim's car is a real stretch.

Once again, be VERY careful making accusations of 'claims' were any reasonable person finds only hypothesis.

 

As the script goes, same crowd that wails for 0858 rails against 0846, because whatever The Anything-But-Kosher Butcher (hence "Piperised") of Cars mutters is Gospel Strewth.

On the other hand, though he left FC as he is "bored to tears with trolls" (most of whom fall in the aforementioned camp), James Glickenhaus *Last* response on this subject was sent to the Site Owner/Administrator along with myself a week ago.

(Included in his email was a point about Sale, real-time modification prior to Sale (To either party) as well as repeatedly countering your misunderstanding of the word "scrapped" along with insulting intelligence of Mauro Forghieri by claiming he merely signed some letter that he didn't understand and/or write because he's eye-talyun. Wow. Just . . . Wow);

"The chassis in 0846 today was crash damaged and repaired even though David said it was not crash damaged in any way.

When time stressed a lot of work is not pristine.

Once again. Mauro Forghieri's written statement that 0846's original chassis was scrapped not destroyed and that "the modification of the chassis with vestigial mounts etc." "of course" could have been done by another department of Ferrari."

(Your Aforementioned Fiction reads;

9. He did sign the letter to Mr Glickenhaus. However it is clear to myself and others that Ing. Forghieri does not speak/write in perfect English and the wording of the letter is not Ing. Forghieri's? (Yet double standard applies to your own exchanges (wink-wink, nudge-nudge)));

"He absolutely did in front of witnesses, read it out loud to Minardi the technical director of ACI in Italian loudly stating "Vero" and again read it out loud in English to me which was videoed.

10. He reconfirmed his letter to me."

("Vero" is an adjective, meaning; True, Real, Genuine.

When proclaimed loudly by one Italian to another, it rolls off the tongue real nice. Capisce?)

 

Below is a post that Mr Glickenhaus wrote last year on another site about Ing. Mauro Forghieri . It speaks for itself. What class!!! He clearly shows here what he really thinks of him.

"You'd think this Troll would realize that when Mauro began by stating:

"Chris was hit by a flying wheel" when nothing remotely like than ever happened that Mauro's recollection of what happened 48 years ago wasn't exactly up to par. Coupled with his total backtracking on cross examination when he admitted: "the modification of the chassis with vestigial mounts etc." "of course" could have been done Ferrari." and his recent debacle failing to restore the 8C1.5L F1 car he designed 51 years ago, "Disaster" was the word FS used, the results of the recent 512 Pinin consult, and his aborted new supercar project what you easily deduced is the sad state of MF's current affairs.

The real ultra stupidity of this trolls jumping the shark was his latest Huet comments. Firstly the misinformation that Huet published that this troll loves to parrot "Type 603R gearbox" besides being totally false is easily seen to be totally not true with one's own naked eyes by anyone who's ever looked at 0854's gearbox as real experts like Marcel Massini and Keith Bluemel who not only have looked at 0846 as it exists today but have also after looking at 0846 as currently owned by me recently clearly reported in writing that 0846 owned by me has attended several top concours. Should anyone want to confirm the falsehood of "603 R" for themselves all they have to do is to have a look this summer during Pebble Car Week. Back to Huet's beyond stupid comments. Lets see, it's December 66. You need to mule 0846 to fit a new P4 engine and have her at Daytona for testing in a few weeks. You ( according to Huet) cut off the entire rear end of the chassis? Including the north/south one piece load bearing chassis tubes and what? butt weld an entire new rear section on to the now cut north/south load bearing tubes? Butt weld tubes that give the chassis it's structure and carry oil and water and would flex at the butt welds causing the chassis to destroy itself in short order??? Or you simply weld two additional motor mounts to accept the new motor to the existing chassis and two bushings and you're good to go with no additional work? Even MF's mind isn't too far gone to remember those pesky P3 "vestigial motor mounts" which 0846 originally had. I could go on but what's the point? Trolls gotta Troll. Garbage into Troll garbage out of Troll. If anyone wants to see 0846 for themselves she's often at a major concourse or Historic event. I'll be racing at the N24, then on to Villa d'Este, PF's 85Th, Goodwood FOS, Pebble Week, Greenwich, Road and Track Concours in the Park. If you're at any of those do say hello and have a look for your self at anything you want to."

Mr Glickenhus also lied that Ing. Forghieri said: "the modification of the chassis with vestigial mounts etc." "of course" could have been done Ferrari." He did not say it. He pieced together words from other sentences to make the one above. MF said nothing about remembering those pesky P3 vestigial motor mounts either.

 

I received the following message from a friend today after he read the above post by Glickenhaus:

"And this is the man that now wants us to accept MF's comments without question. The comments of a man whose "recollection of what happened 48 years ago wasn't exactly up to par". Now all of a sudden, because it suits Glick and his trolls, it is up to par!"

 

And yet only one person in this exchange is standing next to a smiling Forgheri in a picture holding a pretty definitive letter signed by one and the same, while the other is relaying what anonymous friends have sent him in messages, commenting on class while displaying none.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62zhnJuYeOQ[/ame]

 

MF did not say the chassis of 0846 was not destroyed. He said it was scrapped and went to the Ferrari scrap yard and did not know what happened to it after. It could well have been destroyed by the way he was talking then.

I will admit that I was confused by Ing. Forghieri's emails to me as they seemed to contradict what the letter said and this is why I thought he'd signed it in error but he clarified some of the meaning behind them in his 6 point document addressed to Mr Glickenhaus dated the 23rd of February, 2016. I have never and would never insult the intelligence of Ing. Forghieri, unlike Jim Glickenhaus who was most unkind and insulting about him in his post to me above (see post 7620).

Actually, Wax answer the forum members this question: Why didn't Jim post the aforementioned earlier 6 point document in Italian and English by Ing. Forghieri that was addressed to him? Instead he gave you the short letter dated the 14th of March, 2016 to post. Why was that then, Wax?????

 

Wax, could it have been that Ing. Forghieri had stated in this document in bold writing that it must be concluded for all legal purposes the SN 0846 had ceased to exist and that Jim's car therefore cannot be designated "0846"? Could it also be that Ing. Forghieri again confirmed in this document that the chassis shows signs of being modified by some other outfit and different from Ferrari current practice???