Tom Meade: Thomassima Supercar_update

Many thanks, Shawn. I enjoy sharing this information that would otherwise go unheard of. Yes, Tom has many pictures, heretofore unseen publicly, but will not permit me to post them.

 

from:
http://chadglass.blogspot.com/2012/03/tom-meade-update-march-2012-part-5.html

excerpt:

February in Norway en route to Modena

“I learned electronics in the navy, on North Island, San Diego, my home base. I also went through bootcamp there. As an aircraft electronics engineer, I served for four years on aircraft carriers: two years on the Oriskany, and two years on the Yorktown.

“With my Merchant Marines/Navy I.D., they told me all the freighters leaving from California went to the far East, and that the closest port with passage to Europe was in New Orleans. So I left Newport Beach, California, and hitchhiked, bound for the port at New Orleans with 50 bucks in my pocket. While still in California I was picked up by an Australian, a plumber. Having lived and gone to school in Australia before, he and I hit it off well and became fast friends.

“We both headed straight to New Orleans and got an apartment together in the French Quarter off Bourbon Street, during Mardi Gras. While staying there, there was a break in to our apartment. But it was the police who broke in –breaking down the front door without a warrant, guns drawn. It scared the hell out of us. After scaring us half to death they realized they were looking for someone else.

“After the time in the French Quarter, I found a freighter shipping out of the Port of New Orleans, the SS Nardo, a Norwegian grain freighter. As a mess hall boy, I landed in Stavanger, Norway. And I was sick for the entire 35 days onboard, which was strange. Of the four years I was in the navy I never got seasick. So in order to function I had to make myself throw up before serving food. After a while, of throwing up so often, there was only green bile coming up. Their remedy was a suppository up your butt. But I didn’t do it. It was unappealing to me. But I did feel better in a prone position.

“With the dry heaves, in order to have something to throw up, I had to eat crackers. That was the only way to cope, as the Norwegians do not consider seasickness as an excuse to not perform duties. The way the freighter tossed and rolled, I didn’t know my name anymore. The Norwegians also loved blood pudding, a jello-like serving of fish blood. It stunk and was nauseating. It only helped me to throw up.

“The Norwegians onboard would also be constantly painting the ship with this anti-corrosion silver paint. And it would get everywhere, including the smell. They would go directly from painting to eating. They had paint all over their hands and it wound up on the dishes and silverware. So they would end up eating paint, literally. Already nauseated, I avoided the contaminated dishware as much as possible.

“So immediately upon leaving the shores of America, and with the immediate onset of nausea at sea, I had to adapt to unfamiliar conditions, which is something I have had to do ever since. But the overseas passage seemed endless. As they paid me a seaman’s salary, I earned only very little money at sea. When the Nardo finally arrived at port it was in the dead of winter.

“From Stavanger, I resumed my hitchhiking towards Oslo. All was quiet. I stayed on the highway for hours, and it was completely desolate. A car passed once every four or five hours. The ice must have been at least two feet deep. Eventually, I was picked up by a farmer driving an old rickety pickup truck. Speaking no English, he kindly shared his cheese with me. It was clear later that the people in this region had never seen a foreigner before, as if I was from outer space. As he dropped me off in the middle of nowhere, north of Stavanger, south of Oslo, I was wearing a flimsy California cotton jacket, with a short-sleeved shirt underneath. But I never felt cold. I was so excited to be in Europe."
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from:
http://chadglass.blogspot.com/2012/04/tom-meade-update-april-2012-part-5.html

excerpt:
On the Thomassima IV

Tom Meade comments on the pending Thomassima IV project: “The independent rear suspension of the Thomassima IV is of the F1 ‘pushrod’ type, formed of carbon fiber, with a rear transaxle. The gearbox with clutch, ring and pinion, will weigh 280 lbs. And actually the entire front and rear suspension is pressure molded carbon fiber. This will allow for the lightest unsprung weight possible.

“Everybody around me is sworn to secrecy to prevent information leakage. I am employing techniques and publicly unknown materials in working with Cal Tech’s metallurgy department. A large percentage of the materials used in the Thomassima IV are new. The bearings, some of the structural geometry, axles, are made of titanium or ‘300M,’ a material that is as strong as titanium but can be machined thinner and compete with the lightweight characteristics of titanium.

“For example, the YF-22 Raptor fighter plane has landing gear made of 300M. Los Angeles is the perfect location to work on the new car as it is a center for aerospace corporations. For example, certain parts of the car employ the same materials found in the Space Shuttle. For secrecy and intellectual property reasons, I can’t disclose at this time which parts on the car have these experimental materials."

 

Note: the last post was misnumbered and was actually Part 6, not part 5. I have 2 updates labeled for "April" so I must have confused myself. This next one is part 7:

from:
http://chadglass.blogspot.com/2012/05/tom-meade-update-may-2012-part-7.html

“The way I make things is such that I create the idea and then develop engineering drawings created on a CAD/CAM system for rapid prototyping. This obviously saves time and money and minimizes the amount of physical copies that are made with errors. Mistakes are excruciatingly expensive, often being 4 or 5 figure dollar mistakes.

“Some people will ask me ‘why don’t you make more cars per year,’ and they don’t seem to understand how ‘mission impossible’ it is to even build a car in the first place, without a factory. In this kind of project you’re not accessing pre-created parts. One-offs are prototypes. That is what a prototype is.

“To try to keep costs down I do as much as I can myself, by hand. A body designer, a chassis engineer, all require different materials for every part of the car. But doing as much as possible myself also maintains a level of purity. Mass-produced cars are bastardized and lack harmony. But a beautiful design must have symphonic purity. All parts and areas must merge with one another. My cars must exude the sensibility of a super-tuned Stradivarius violin. Look at the old Ferraris, the old Bugattis –they were masterpieces of art and engineering. There were no modern factories in those days; they were just workshops, a lost practice today. As the saying goes ‘too many cooks spoil the broth.”
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from:
http://chadglass.blogspot.com/2012/07/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html

excerpt:
BSA Motorcycle Story of Tom Meade

The year 1960: As he recounts, once in Stavanger, Norway, Tom Meade hitchhiked to Oslo, then to Stockholm, Sweden. There he stayed for a time at a house with an old girlfriend (who was Swedish) in Odenplan. After this time he continued on to the UK, then to Barcelona, Spain. He lived there on “Las Ramblas,” a popular series of streets in central Barcelona.

From there he took a ship and found his way to Majorca. Once there he took up residence on the rooftop of a hotel with a man he befriended en route. After talking with the doorman, Tom and his new friend got a deal: For .50 cents a day the owner granted permission for the duo to live on the roof. The situation was not ideal but for the paltry fee it was.
Adorning the new home base with tented hammocks, hoisted up between plumbing stacks, they fashioned a makeshift kitchen, preparing food on a hibachi grille. Of the time there, Tom recollects: “We lived like kings for .25 cents a day each.”

(Map below: Majorca, Spain: an island off the coast of Barcelona, Spain, part of the Balearic Islands)

But as soon as it all happened it came to a close. Tom’s boat friend eventually left, and the changing situation heralded the final stages for the Italian destination. As the modus operandi from the very beginning was a passage to Italy, Tom’s focus and wanderlust beckoned and he was drawn back to the sea.

Going down to the bay he searched for the right opportunity, for a way off the island. Approaching a captain/boat owner, Tom found his ship: He was given a place onboard and would leave for Genoa, Italy, on the condition that he fulfill duties as cook and deckhand on the 60-foot sailing vessel. The next day they disembarked from Majorca, setting sail for the magical hinterlands of Maserati and Ferrari.

If it were not enough to expatriate from America, braving land, sea, and cold, to fulfill a dream of an Italian lifestyle as a car designer, the fantasy journey was only just beginning. From Long Beach, to New Orleans, to Norway, to Sweden, to Spain –Italy, the Promised Land, had yet to even be set foot upon. And once there, Tom’s itinerant mode of shipping and hitchhiking was about to come to an end....
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Perhaps you will enjoy these pix of Tom with the car that he rebodied for Bill Dixon; 3771GT or something like that, I think.
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Very much like a GTO 64.

 

Thanks, Ed. I shall put those in a folder. I may ask Tom about that car.

 

Yes, good eye. Looks evocative of that design.

 

Speaking of the Dixon car, remember that the top is removable. The design was strictly Tom's. with input from the customer Bill Dixon.
I continue to talk with Tom on a regular basis, and join him once in a while for dinner. He has many great stories about the old days, and it's always a hoot to chat with him. Personally, I wish some professional writer would hook up with him, as I don't know too many people with a more interesting life. Incidentally, I wrote somewhere that I thought that some of Tom's rebodies were on wrecks. He told me in a recent conversation that I was mistaken. In fact, he said that a wreck would create all kinds of problems, and that he always started with a car with a good chassis and good mechanicals as the cost of straightening a chassis or rebuilding an engine would have created distractions that he didn't need. Makes sense.
Of course Tom's current project is "top secret" so there's nothing to report except to say that it will be very advanced, using the latest methodology.

 

from:
http://chadglass.blogspot.com/2012/07/tom-meade-update-july-2012-part-8.html#.UAeTKo5xV95

excerpt:
Colors and Symbols and the New "Thomassima IIII"

“Lots of new cars are running Thomassima-type reds. Contrary to what it may look like, it is not a ‘candy red’ or modern multi-stage process. The paint used on prior Thomassimas was made for the Thomassima. And that company who made the proprietary color is now defunct. I took a full day to develop that red color at the paint factory.

“The colors of my cars are created by God and Nature. I don’t like plastic paint. There are plastic compounds in paints today. So you get what you use. When you use plastic in paints, the cars will look like plastic. But mine must look like glass. This is also why I use glass components wherever possible.

“The tail lenses are organic in shape, like kidney beans and/or the thorax of an insect, with a valley running north/south on the lens’ surface. There are then 4 east/west sections of differing colors that indicate the main light, brakes, backup, and turn signal. This all becomes one unit of glass, which is fired then re-fired to fuse the different colored lenses together. The tail lenses will then be ‘frenched’ (countersunk) into the rear of the body.

“I had major American manufactures telling me that it was impossible to do that, to fuse the glass in the form I wanted, but I did it in my own workshop.”

To jump ahead a bit, I will add that, after our time at the café, we later went back to Tom’s workshop where he showed me several pieces of the car. Among the various things I did see the prototype casts and ‘stages of states’ of the tail lenses. I can say that one single lens itself is an entire thing of its own, a study in glass sculptural form. It could have been a rare decanter of some kind, from some unknown time, or maybe even an American “Lalique.”

Were one to be handed a rear lens, for example, it would probably not be identifiable as a part from a car. It looks like an aquatic animal, with myriad raised dimples on the inner curved surfaces. The various pieces out of context resemble organic and/or robotic objects, mysterious components from an alien craft.

Tom clarifies that he values my opinion as I am a visual artist and asks for critiques of the various pieces. I offer what I can and he considers some of it. I only wish I could have seen some of the engineering drawings –anything- but I was not allowed access to those.

At this point in the interview I stop for a break to eat as it has been a couple hours at least (I suppose), and I begin having a telltale hypoglycemic moment, my composure starting to fade with my hands beginning to shake. For that I order a chicken and eggplant sandwich that reinvigorates me to continue on with the remainder of the note-taking:
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from:
Chad Glass: Tom Meade Update: February 2012 -Part 9

“My car will be reminiscent of a ’57 Ferrari TR, 275 LM, and a 250 GTO–the body to be built in Modena. I’m hoping it will be the most exciting cars to come out of Italy.

“My mission, my goal, my dream is, and has always been, to create the most beautiful car ever given to the world. It will debut at a to-be-announced time, at Lowe’s Casino at the F1 in May in Monte Carlo (as seen in the James Bond film ‘Casino Royale’). The Thomassima’s body will be tasteful, elegant, subtle, and traditional.

“The engine is a Ferrari, twin supercharged, dry sumped, 4-cam, multi-valved, V12. The fuel tanks are hand-made riveted aluminum with leather straps and rubber safety fuel bladders. It will be a 3-pedal manual standard 6 or 7-speed.

“The rim barrels are spun (not cast) from 6061T6 aluminum. The center knock off ‘star’ is aluminum. The 3-pedal assemblies are CNC machined out of solid 6061T6 aluminum billet. The shift gate is to be plated in black chrome.

“The steering wheel is ergonomically molded, sculpted, and assembled from different components including ebony, ivory, carbon fiber, glass, and titanium. The main structure ring is ergonomically molded purple carbon fiber hand made in the workshop. On the wheel are hollowed out and hand-carved Sri Lankan ebony attachments/inserts. Upon these pieces are mastodon ivory, colored purple. Titanium hex screws secure the ivory to the ebony. The center steering wheel mounting studs are 7000 series aluminum. The dash cluster is fiber optically illuminated.”

Parting Shots (for now)

“I do not feel inferior to any of the big names in the automotive world. But am I a guy who loves cars. I’ll be doing this in heaven or in hell. And I’m asking and hoping for the readers to join me in this adventure. It’s up to you make up your own mind if the Thomassima is beautiful or ugly. I am only saying ‘please take a peek at my car.’

“The first Thomassima IIII will not be for sale but will be maintained and displayed around the world by one of the biggest auction houses in the world. We’ve already agreed to this with the owner over dinner at Lake Como in the Swiss Alps. This is on the border of Switzerland and Italy. I’ll let you know when we’re going to Monte Carlo.”
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It's alive??

 

Actually it's dead at this point. I just got word today that Tom has died. Apparently it was over a month ago but I hand't spoken with Tom in a few months. I found out this morning from a mutual friend. I am saddened over this news as it caught me off guard. I will miss the old guy I feel the loss now. I had unfinished articles in process. I may write about this more extensively later...

 

Sorry to hear this. I still have the copies of Road & Track from when I was a kid with his cool creations.

Once I heard about his monthly get togethers, I always meant to make a trip over to LA to meet the man, but never made it. He was part of this wonderful story called Ferrari!

 

RIP Tom.
The Ferrari world owes you a very big debt.

 

Tom was both Talented and Interesting.

I'll miss him.

RIP

 

Perhaps, it would be appropriate for somebody who knew Tom here to post the sad news in the vintage section.

 

Ok good idea. Thanks.

 

R.I.P.

I had a wonderful time listening to his stories at Elysee.

 

Yes and thank you, Jerry, for introducing me to that gathering else I never would have met him.

 

The same here, number of years back. Tom was a true free spirit, and full of envy for that. There are not that many who can claim a life like his doing only what interested him.

Thank you and RIP, Tom.

Jimmy

 

Yes he did it how he wanted it.