Wonderful, love a yellow Bora! Best of luck with that and thanks in advance for the shared progress photos. Can you tell us what you know of 504's early history?
Thanks, Marc! I don’t have much on the cars early history. I bought it in 2014 in driver condition. Car was all original but had been painted red in 1983. I decided to do a nut and bolt restoration and bring it back to its original color. I did however keep the interior original but for the dash material.
Absolutely love the Bora but the issues a couple of people have had with the V8’s coupled with the rising prices put me off. Now a Merak SS is another story, mostly because of the price point. Let’s be honest and We probably aren’t going to be tracking them so if you want the look and the sound then why not? But I like a V6.
Welcome to the Forum. Delighted that you admire Meraks & prefer V6s. Now...let's visit your assertion that you 'have been put off' Boras BECAUSE OF ISSUES PEOPLE HAVE HAD WITH THE Bora's V8--- FIND ME 1 (ONE) actual documented long-term Bora owner who has had serious problems with the Bora's engine and/or transmission---and we are now approx 45 years out from when they left Maserati! The Bora's drivetrain is SIMPLY BULLET-PROOF by any standard, let alone that of classic Italian exotics! Yes---like all exotics of its era, the Bora has some overheating issues in very warm climates---a problem we have all confronted and solved. Finally, I am sorry you have been put off by the rising prices of the Bora---a development which was very very very overdue and absolutely necessary for the proper preservation and restoration of this extraordinary automobile! Regards.
LOVE the pics beautiful cars guys. I had an early green Bora gave me migraines. Like every week or two a puddle of green fluid was somewhere different under the car. But to fix it, you had to take out seats, carpet, cut the rockers & floor open to search for the rusted hydraulic pipe. The pipes ran through channels in the floors that were a total nightmare to find the pipe leaking & a major nightmare to change out the damn pipes. Two weeks later another one, then another one. Damn. My friend who turned me on to the Bora had a different problem with his. His went to the shop for overheating. They pressurized the cooling system & water came out of NUMBER 1 CARBURETOR! Whoa. That cost him 8 grand. One day at my Pantera friends house a guy came by with an yella' XKE auto/12cyl. We went to a vacant road to line 'em up. The XKE was a TOTAL slug. That Pantera pulled a hole shot & never looked back Damn that car was fast. He destroyed my Bora three times in street racing that day. I said that's it. His car never breaks & he pounds the car daily, I'm gettin' one. I can't even DRIVE the Bora if the brakes go out I DIE! Both of us sold our Boras. What a headache mine was, his too! The Pantera I bought was my every day driver for 28 years. Talk about major balls to the wall, THAT car had it in spades. I beat Boxers, I beat Daytonas, the Countach didn't even have the juice to run with the 12 cylinder Ferraris, I left them all in the dust. Back in the day, nothing could run with me, & my car never broke, never left me stranded, simple engine, parts everywhere, american parts. Remember DeTomaso ALSO owned Maserati at one point. None of this would have occurred if [either of us] had a good Bora, sadly we didn't. This was in the '80's these cars weren't that old! I know there's some good ones out there, but I guess the Bora just wasn't in the cards for me. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Hello, Thank you for your unusual post. Reading it I found myself wondering which Pantera garage had paid you to post what almost looks like reverse advertising... Sure enough I see you sell Panteras, case closed. You can't compare apples and oranges. https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/what-percentage-of-panteras-are-still-stock.497682/page-3#post-146589285 At the end of your post in this thread here you revealed that you had been driving a Bora in very POOR condition that should have been restored...so yes as you answered yourself had you had a good, sorted Bora in proper running order you would have had a wonderful time. Try a bad Pantera that needs restoration and see if it is any better than your Bora was: NO. Having driven all the first generation mid engined Modenese cars I can confirm the Bora is by far the most competent, comfortable best handling and useable one, not for idiotic"Street dragster races" which these cars were never built for but for proper drives on European twisty roads which some locations in the US also have but in Europe we have ten times less police so you can really enjoy these cars much more especially back then. On those roads muscle cars with the dragster culture are useless, laughably so, to each his own terrain. Also the Pantera is over rated by people who have NOT driven the other cars. Just as a Miura is unbearable for more than two hours, a Countach wholly impractical a BB512 has a center of gravity that is far too high, a Pantera has fat too heavy pedals and steering which is why Jay Leno when I suggested he try a Khamsin was amazed how "it did not beat up the driver." Likewise the Bora. By the way who killed the Bora Group 4 project by protesting it during the homologation process because he was scared of its on track pace beating all comers including Panteras in testing? Alessandro de Tomaso. Ironically he had no crystal ball to tell him that he would own Maserati less than three years later. I wish you to try a good Bora and you will be amazed. Happy holidays.
As an owner of both a Bora and a Pantera I can tell you they are as different as two cars can be. The Pantera is fast but it does it in a rather unsophisticated way. It is loud, not too comfortable with a weird driving position; but for short drives it is a blast. The Pantera reminds of driving a go kart, with its very precise steering. You get to feel every pebble on the road, which gets old after a short while. If I want to have a long drive, or arrive in style, a go kart would not be my car of choice. Don't get me wrong, I really like my Pantera but you comparing it to what was obviously a junky Bora is far from fair. Drive a good Bora and discover what you missed. Ivan Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login A junky Bora like any Junky car will give you troubles. My Bora has been totally restored replacing all hard and flexible hydraulic lines and remanufacturing all the switches and accumulators and surprise, surprise there are no leaks to be found.. Incidentally its parked on a stacker with a F355 on the ground floor.
De Tomaso Pantera 1972 Le Mans nuovo record "After Herbie Muller and Mike Parkes had posted the fifth quickest time outright and the fastest lap set by a Group 4 car at the Le Mans trials in March 1972" Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Im a big fan of both the bora and pantera however there wasnt any need to for anybody to kill the Bora Gr 4 project since is woefully short of the FIA requirements of 1000 units built in 12 months period. however pantera was legal but penalized with persistent lobbying from posrche to increase the pantera initial min weight from 1100kg to 1250kg which was a massive handicap. its sad that the cars never were fully developed properly since both platform showed immense potential to challenge the incumbents imo. the bora in gr4 guise was a downright magnificent menacing beauty! it would have been spectacular to see them run in anger. best regards
Hello and thank you for your post. The frustration of the Maserati factory at the time is that exceptions had been made for other cars from other manufacturers ( a certain one from Maranello in particular) which were also NOT produced in sufficient numbers BUT were STILL allowed to race...but no the CSI was utterly inflexible with Maserati, depriving the public of the pleasure of seeing these two Bora Gr4's run in anger. Also I never stated that the Bora Group 4's (chassis 3000 actually, 3001 was not used for testing at all in period since it stayed at the factory as Thepenier cancelled the order when the homologation was denied) ran on the full Le Mans 24 hour circuit: they would have had to be formally entered in the 24 hours for that test strictly for confirmed entries or reserve cars and therefore previously homologated. They tested at Modena, Monza and the Le Mans Bugatti circuit, the small permanent circuit which share the same pits and first few corners as the 24h circuit made of open roads closed for the event duration. #3000 during those tests was driven mostly by the late Francois Migault who confirmed to me, as did technician Cleto Grandi that they were quicker and had all the others worried (while the Daytonas had issues with their brakes!) Guy Malleret in charge of Maserati for Citroen was a very straight laced man, he had already been uncomfortable with Thepenier's request for two Bora Gr4's and finally only accepted the idea as a privateer effort. Then when homologation was denied he refused any sort of Italian arrangement or fiddle as the Brits say. Driving #3001 very briefly in July 1995 at the Jean Pierre Beltoise safety school circuit in Trappes near Paris and driving #3000 properly in June 2009 at Circuit Paul Ricard (photo for my book and article) remains a huge career highlight and really made me even more wistful for what might have been... Image Unavailable, Please Login
During Ferrari’s ownership of Maserati, period racing Maseratis were permitted to run in the Ferrari Historic Challenge Series. That included the Thepenier Boras, there was a bit of controversy around them in that they were faster than the period Comp Daytonas, but not as fast as the BB LMs. Being faster than the Daytonas didn’t sit well in maranello.
Both in France. #3000 is with Jean Guikas the classic car dealer/racer near Marseille, not for sale, he has the real engine, blown, in his workshop and a replacement engine to same spec in the car, which was the status when I drove it in 2009. he had briefly sold it to a Swiss German, Dominic E. some years ago but the man was overwhelmed by the car and sold it back to him in trade for a 275GTB. 3000 is the car that saw 95% of activity i.e factory testing with evolving body before the cancellation of the racing program, street usage in France painted red by a heir who was an investor in Thepenier and later vintage racing with Guikas. There could have been some races possible such as the Tour de France (later renamed Tour Auto) as there was a class which would have fitted the car but Francois Migault was the innocent victim of a road crash in a street Bora in western France (in which the driver in the other car was held accountable for the death of his own wife in it) and had his leg broken and some Thepenier sponsorship money disappeared about the same time... #3001 is in France in a major very secretive collection that includes the one off yellow 512S show car whose whole roof opens, a Jackie Stewart WC winning Tyrrel (with Matra engine I think) and quite a few other major cars but it has not come out from its lair near Paris since...I drove it briefly in July 1995, a real shame. That car was not paid for by Thepenier as by the time it was ready the CSI had denied homologation so Thepenier reneged on the order. it was sold to someone in the middle east who drove it on the beach! Then bought by a US collector in the north eastern USA (Rubin IIRC?) who did not do much with it. Then Jean Guikas bought it, had it restored at Paul Ricard circuit in the south of France by the racing school (run then by Brit Mike Knight with huge vintage racing experience. Then the current owner made a deal with Guikas to do the Tour Auto together in the late 90's in it and bought it. Both are battleship grey. I have tried to convince patrick Peter of Peter Auto to let one do Le Mans Classic as has Jean Guikas, but Peter explains that he has so many who want to take part that if he starts allowing cars not homologated in period there will be howls of discontent from those bumped from the event with cars that were duly homologated in period... They must not be confused with two extremely well engineered (but not factory) tributes made decades later: one red made by Johan Helenius in Sweden and one very dark grey matte, almost black made by the workshop of Bernard Guenant in France.
That is what Guikas told me...but apart of one article twenty years ago Matra is not the focus of my interest...
hello marc yes many of the Italian boutique manufactures ran into a trifecta of issues regarding, emissions, safety and labor. Combine with economic austerity of the times, resources diverted for gr4 program wasn't the highest priority i reckon. The mid engine, merak based maserati v6 powered Ligier JS2 won the 74 tour de france and finished a REMARKABLE 2nd overall in Le Mans in 75 with a cosworth DFV. Point being, like the Bora, it too was woefully short to run gr4 even though the FIA had lowered it from 1000 units to 500 road cars produced. It had to run in a higher class to battle with the likes of the bespoke race cars, ie Mirage, porsche 908's and the proto 911RSR turbo (no homologation yet) etc. So yes the two Bora cars could have done the same but would have been classified higher like the RSR 2.1 porsche turbo in 74 or the 2.8 RSR at targa florio that had technical anomalies in 73. CSI or FIA can be swayed with enough charm and cases of free champagne. Scrutineers were more human back then? Porsche was able to persuade them to homologate the 3.0 RS to 3.0 RSR group 4 when there was only 50 cars made!!. They claimed the 3.0 RS was based of the 2.7RS so it was granted under the "evolution" clause. This pure BS as a M491 porsche owner, its common knowledge that chassis, engine block, displacement, suspension were all different. CIS had smarten up in 76 for the porsche 934 turbo Its sad that the boras never turned a wheel in anger. I can see no reason why it wouldn't be as faster than the daytona or as fast as the pantera. But reliability may be suspect to insure wins (remember the spectacular blindingly fast facetti-Carma 308 biturbo?). Urraco bob rallye was also built to period gr4 standards and did run a non sanctioned local race and won. Surprisingly it was homologated in July 1 1975. I wished i would have asked bob more in detail about that but it skipped my mind. Ive always enjoy your accounts of driving these two unicorns. I'm envious of your cherished memories of these two magnificent boras and glad you are sharing them with us. cheers! I havent been following classic vintage racing of late but the pantera's are tally up wins at an alarming rate ive been told...
Be careful with sites like this. They are aggregators of ads from real listing sites, and do not reflect what is available in the market. They cause me no end of headaches as a dealer; I'll get calls for cars that were sold years ago, that someone found on one of these aggregator sites. They are setup so that you click ad links and they get revenue, or to pull a sucker in with an "inquiry" that starts a potential fraudulent purchase, usually involving a deposit sent on a car that is "out of the country". This particular Bora with <1K miles was sold two years ago by Motorcar Gallery.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login I am really into the shape of the Bora. I am convinced it is Giugiaro’s best work and has only gotten better with age. I have been to the shop multiple times just to stare at. I’ve considered leaving it as is and putting it in my living room, but I’m mostly looking forward to driving it as it should be driven.
