Bora euro bumpers?

Hi, I have a friend who has a Bora with the US bumpers, he's looking to see if the euro bumpers are still available. I see that there are a few places with current reproductions but are there any new (or used but great condition) old stock available? Any leads?

 

My 1973 US front bumper, now removed (with careful attention to future replaceability), was never much real deterrent nor protection. Once removed, the absence of any brightwork distraction save for the center Trident was so far superior that it was the clear best path. For my taste... your aesthetic may vary. Trial placement of Euro grillework seemed way overwrought, gaudy, unnecessary.

However, Carello lights seemed a nice touch. Now recutting the screens, and seeking the slimmer Euro turn indicators. Added lightness too.

Anything more in the grill opening now seems to me to be just excess embellishment to the design lines... and not likely as seen in Giugiaro's original drawings anyway. The very minimal rear bumper remains, for now... as it seems the best compromise and not objectionable looks.

 

Very interesting perspective...can you post a larger picture of the car please?

Thank you!

 

The new reproduction ones tend to be of higher quality in my experience. I have a NOS set I bought a long time ago along with all the other pieces. Not for sale.

Is your friends Bora a 75 & up or earlier? Very different amounts of work involved in converting. A few more parts involved as well.

 

The only kits I've seen in the last few years have been from harringtongroup.com or Mr. Fiat. The latter look very much like the former, but at a higher price. Neither kit has the grille and lower valence you need for a 75+ car. My kit came with the car. I think it was made by Maurice Laporte in New Zealand and it's high quality and complete, but I haven't seen any evidence he's still making it. The Pf my car had had the front bumper/grilles installed, but just had adapters made to mount the stainless rear bumper to the rubber bumper mounts. It looked...... odd, but he claimed to prefer it. Maybe. His records showed that he'd paid $6000 to have the "easy" front installation done, not including the bumper itself. I suspect that when he got the quote to install the rear he had seizure of the wallet. I am finally finishing the job. The '73 and '74 cars would be much simpler to convert and look pretty good as-is.

 

As my car is one of the last build, No. 1000, when I had the car converted, I still was able to source parts from Maserati directly. That included the rear valence which made things quite a bit easier, even though we fabricated our own valence before I was able to get one from the factory. We were able to incorporated replacement shocks for the rear bumper which worked well, while permitting the bumper to look factory installed, and wasn't too difficult a change to make. Of course we had to fabricate mounts for the front and rear but my mechanic was quite a genius and did it so that everything looks perfect. We even came up with the proper trident for the front. The early European cars had a little beak that pointed down towards the trident and that was added also as it wasn't on the late US cars. Sadly, my mechanic passed away a few years ago so I can't query him about exactly what was done.

 

I did a Eurofication of my Merak some three years ago. I will try my best to address some of the key comments in this thread.

The grill trident is common only to the Bora and Merak, The correct Bora/Merak trident is available through the Merak Group. The widows peak that is located just above the grill trident may be made available for purchase if there is significant interest, This piece would need to be welded to the existing underside of the front hood.as it was done by the factory. Otherwise, the front Euro conversion is relatively easy to do. The rear requires more work. The rear valence is available but may require some minor reshaping of the front most part. The OEM Euro muffler by design has two non-functioning interior tips. This has been corrected with a true 1 into 2 exhaust tip configuration, with the exhaust tips having the same OD as the non-Euro single exhaust tips found on the American Boras. Lastly the OEM rear bumper mounting brackets were of horrible quality. New mounting brackets made of 304 stainless steel with correct angle orientation have been manufactured for trouble free mounting.

Apart from the vastly improved looks of the Eurofication process, the Bora and Merak receive the benefit of much improved handling due to the reduction in sprung weight. The suspension will work exactly as originally intended by the Maserati factory.

Just Sayin!

Ciao,
George

 

For '75 and later Boras (or at least for US974) there is quite a lot of work to do beyond this, especially if you intend to keep a European style exhaust system with the transverse muffler. Both the rear structure and the subframe have to be modified. The bumper support structure juts out through the grille area (formerly hidden by the rubber bumper), so it has to be removed. The transaxle mount has to be moved down to clear the new muffler location and since about an inch was milled off the back of the transmission rear cover to bolt on an adapter mount, that has to be replaced or restored. Of course, you need a new exhaust system, too. Some of the ones sold have only the rear transverse muffler and not the "L" cross section mufflers. While you're there, it would be a good idea to install Euro headers.... It adds up!

To the old hands - I just assumed I had Maurice's work; I can't find any records that say so. Is there any way to tell if the parts are OEM? None of the ones I can see have any markings.

Thanks.

 

It does add up, but if you can do the work your self the reward is handling as it was intended by Maserati, not the DOT. The suspension system was not designed to handle all that weight at polar ends.

Ciao,
George

 

I've driven my car WO the bumpers at either end and also at the track with them on. I honestly don't think it's that big a difference in the Bora. For a Bora this is more about appearance and functionality. The heavier bumpers actually function as bumpers. The more stylish SS ones are a disaster as a bumper. I have similar ones on my 70 Espada. Someone tapped the front ones @ the license plate and never fixed the issue. A new license plate completely hides the dent in the SS portion but the entire flimy 3 piece bumper assembly with a riveted on grill assembly had to come off this fall. I'm in the process of trying to straighten that out. It's going to be very expensive. Take a tap like that on a later Bora and it's of no issue. The front rubber bumper on a Bora can be adjusted to be pushed further into the front cavity and ends up looking far better. The later Pantera did a better job of integrated the heavier duty DOT bumpers and the pushed in version up front looks much more like that. See Ivans #1044 on his website. That said a lot of people prefer the original look quite a bit more. But it's just decoration and not a true bumper. The Bora and Merak are also not the same car though. The Bora carries a lot more rear biased weight what with the V8 and that gorgeous hatch.

If you have the 75 and later version of a Bora converting the rear internally to take earlier under valence, earlier exhaust layout and simple horizontal SS bumper is the the real crux of the work. The big rubber version admittedly looks more like a diving platform. This is where the Maserati engineers made a huge mistake surpassed only by the rubber bumpers on the Khamsin and the Espada. The Bora's implementation was quiter beautiful by comparison and these along with the moon pie hubcaps made the car look sportier, more aggressive and modern in appearance. The issue for these Italian car makers is they didn't necessarily have enough funding at a terrible time in the marketplace (oil embargos and recession/inflation) in order to design and engineer this better. Both Maserati and Lamborghini were barely staying alive. The Countach went through several versions of butt ugly USA bumper designs. The earliest and cleanest versions of that car are the most desireable by collectors even though there not nearly as good all around cars as the 25th anniversary editions.

I've often thought that a differently constructed, thinner front to back, rubber bumper assembly at the rear would improve the appearance a lot. But there's also the issue of where they decided to mount it and all that associated assembly which makes the rear look fatter and lower. I had a friend who left the rear valance and entire sunframe assembly as is and just tacked and earlier SS bumper on in the back. That didn't look right either but it did avoid a lot of work.

With mine I painted the rear valence semi gloss black and put on Michelin XGTs 245/60VR15 tires in the rear and the more aggressive look of those tires blended very well with the later series cars. I had 235/50Vr15s on the front. This was a tremendous improvement over the Michelin XWXs in both ride and handling at the time. Back then XWXs were a very old fashioned tire that behaved in a quite ugly manner at the limit. They weren't a comfortable ride and the wet performance wasn't so good either. Superb at top straight line speeds though. They also charged a lot of extra money just to mount them. The sidewall was so stiff it was a very difficult tire to mount. Tires now are a terrible issue for this and a lot of other cars of this era.

 

Bob... Thanks!! TLA (true life action) insights and experienced observations shared do make driving the cars reliably a lot more fun!

XWX tires... agreed. Kept mine too long — dangerous. Making do now, but thinking AVON as potentially tops in both action and appearance. However must consider fully how large to go on stock 7.5” 1973 Campagnolo wheels. Must see if your described sizes fit w/o interference or weird look etc. Any known difference re my ‘73 and your later Bora? Stance? What re adding spacers?? .25” max??

All driving /performance /&c tips most welcome! Currently re doing Sled ram[emoji41]

Best regarrds


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

Yes, .25" maximum spacers in the rear allows for 245/60-15.
I even got 255 compTA's R1 on there for the track but they would rub on those incredibly smart ribs pressed into the inner wheel wells when you went over a bump on a turn. Not meant as road tires.