375+ # 0384

Doug: You have described the car perfectly, except you need to add "horrible great VERY FAST gormless lump".

 

Since you two might have some experience with this or at least something similar, how do it/they behave/handle at higher, i.e. 100+ MPH speeds ? Do their chassis/suspension live up to the engine performance ?

 

Never meet your idols. I've thought the same thing.

 

Plus scary.

 

Hello Doug,

Glad to share my driving impressions of the 375MM I drove in 1998 for a Prancing Horse article. Not a 375 Plus but close enough in essence. It had just been bought by Chris Cox after being owned by Matsuda in Japan. I drove it on on the Monday after Monterey on the Las Laureles grade road; the mountain pass that liaises Laguna Seca with Quail Lodge. I don't like to see my articles posted online but this is just one of its nine pages, the driving impressions part.

In 33 years I have driven faster Maranellians; 333SP 1970 512M, 512BBLM, some that were *****cats 250 pontoon fendered Testa Rossa #0748, our of this world precision instruments 250GTO #5575GT, thrills you have to be careful with 250LM 6051 but two were absolute beasts: dinosaurs out to get you that drive in the dry as if it was wet: the Maserati 450S #4504 (thanks, like the GTO, to Dyke Ridgley) and the 375MM 0374MM.

The 375MM is essentially a wheelbarrow with 340hp; brakes, steering and suspension are very crude and basic.

But you know what? Nothing ever gave me such pleasure, I had no strength left in my arms afterwards yet I was grinning all evening and it probably stands as the most enjoyable car I ever drove. That Lampredi engine sounds very dramatic, I loved it....I have to say it was also the crudest historic race car I experienced...

There is a lesson in there...that is perhaps why I could not care less about excessively refined supercars and hypercars; give me something like a 375MM with a huge soul!

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Back when Sue and I owned a 410SA, I formed the Lampredi Owners Association. We were a loose group of crazies whose motto was "Lampredi engined Ferraris, when you open the throttle, you hope the road goes where the car goes!"

 

I never dreamed that I - woolly old DCN from that small island off the coast of Yerp - might ever be suspected of showing taste in 1950s cars that is too sophisticated...

Perhaps it stems from my thousands of miles driving rigid '50s sports-racing cars like Jaguar Ds, or live-axled but good-handling sports-racing cars like Jaguar Cs and Aston Martin DBs and DBRs, not to mention the truly wonderful Maserati 300S?

Yet I also have a distinct soft spot for the kind of gloves-off bar-room brawl driving experience that one can have in some poorly-designed or thrown together, badly set-up, unrepresentative heaps of junk from any post-WW2 racing era - and for that matter from 'tween war times too. It's all just different strokes impress different folks.

DCN
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Mr. Nye,

You're spot on.

It's an interesting sensation, to be both thrilled and terrified while simultaneously obsessing over on coming traffic and proper rev matching.

 

Thanks to all of you for sharing driving expressions/insights with mere mortals like me.
Perhaps someday ...

 

Well said!

Are you working at Motion Products?

I tested a very early car nearby with Wayne Obry near Neenah summer 1997 for Cavallino; #0263EU.

A fantastic restoration, the first ever 100 point score at Pebble, but the period steering was extremely vague.

Wayne and I then almost got caught in a tornado on the way to Elkhart Lake...he was a great person, gone too soon.

 

Marc:
Dustin RUNS MPI following Wayne's passing.

Marcel Massini

 

Thank you Marcel, I was not aware of that, I have not been to Wisconsin since 2002, wonderful people, love the Elkhart lake vintage racing summer event. Bought my Khamsin in April 2004 from a man in Mequon, suburb of Milwaukee.

Motion Products is truly a world class restoration shop.

 

News Flash

$12M settlement with OJ


Famous 250 GTO /Teardrop Talbot owner and Ocean Joe aka/ Joe Ford have settled the lawsuit that has tied up the Teardrop at Paul Russell’s shop for nearly 8 years. Ocean Joe was gleaming at the decision to settle days before the Court was to rule. Now he can sail into the sunset.

The Wisconsin Court, days after the $12M payment to Ocean, found in their written decision that that the Teardrop Talbot was never actually stolen. It was much the same finding that the DOJ discovered with the dropping of criminal charges only after spending over $3M trying to hang Gardner with the theft using their heavily funded Art Crime Campaign to gather international publicly.

The Talbot case fell apart for the DOJ last year when a photo of Gardner with race driver Olivier Beretta surfaced placing Gardner at the Geneva Auto show some 8’000 miles away precisely on the same evening in 2001 that the Teardrop was allegedly stolen.

The massive settlement came as the GTO owner was threatened with appearing at a trial and faced with another Ocean claim, this time against his 250 GTO which Ocean claims he bought the rights to as another collector car ‘’’distressed asset’’ .


https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/cars/a28519630/joe-ford-talbot-lago-7-million-dollar-car/
The infamous OJ/Ocean Joe is back on the case......of another stolen car. And others yet to come....[/QUOTE]

 

Apparently the car has been sold by Girardo & Co., recently.