Thank you for ditching the red color. During your restoration did you happen to notice that the shape of the curve on the tops of the doors was different on each of them. I guess the wooden bucks were somewhat, actually quite a lot, different. Hand made cars ...
I ended up buying that Bora and it was delivered this morning. I helped the previous owner verify with Fabio's assistance that it indeed has its original engine. Blue Ischia with white interior is its original color combination and the car was deliver new in Torino. Previous owner purchased the car in 1977 in Texas with only 2,000 kilometers. It now has 28,300 kilometers. How a Euro Bora was legally brought into the USA, without any modifications, in the early 1970's is a mystery to me. Perhaps the owner was a diplomat? This car has spent many years in storage and it has that distinctive moldy interior smell. Lots of deferred maintenance that will need immediate attention. Basically, this car has not been driven in a long time and was make to start and move short distances. I am still in the middle of a Vignale spyder restoration, plus doing work on some of my other cars, therefore this one will only get minimal attention for now. Ivan Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I knew someone would snap it up, very glad it’s you! so I heard ‘the trick’ to having an importing euro market car with no alterations was to bring 2-3 of the same car in and convert only one, but send photos for all of them with the only alternate being the vin pic. Seeing as this car was in Mexico and eventually headed to California opens a huge number of other possible under-the-table scenarios though
Nicely done Ivan! it does look very nice in Blu Ischia. Will we be keeping the pinstripe?? Look forward to seeing your progress. Best regards. Matk
The pinstripes are the stick on type, not painted. I already removed the one from the rear left side as an experiment .... very easy. Ivan
Hi Ivan. I think you snapped up a great opportunity.. I'm sure after you apply your finishing touches and attend to a proper recommissioning it will be a great car. I'd love to get my hands on another Bora but the opportunities don't regularly come up here in Australia.
Mr. Ruiz, I congratulate you on the purchase of the Maserati Bora. In my opinion, this is a very interesting Maserati Bora and I was very surprised that some interested parties were put off from bidding by unimportant details such as the pin stripes. -early model with square pop-up headlights -interesting color combination -apparently provable history -very friendly / sympathetic and super interesting previous owner I'm just a little confused by the blue color. I thought Blue Ischia would be a little lighter. In the photo from your garage, it looks almost like Blue Sera. As you have the original paint chips for the Maserati Bora, it would be very interesting to see them next to the car. Perhaps you will have a moment in the future to hold them up to the vehicle and take a photo. I would be delighted. Will you request the Maserati data sheets? I owned a very similar vehicle 4years ago. Maserati Bora #066 This vehicle had the same color combination. The first delivery was to the USA but it was an original Italian version. It had a one very special feature that I have never seen on any other Bora. If you stand in front of the vehicle, the pop-up headlights were square on the lower inner side and round on the lower outer side. I am looking forward to your reports on this Bora in the distant future. I would also be very pleased if you could invite the previous owner of the Bora to perhaps report on his Boomerang in the Maserati Boomerang thread. This was an absolute novelty for me that there is a second Maserati Boomerang. Kind regards from Germany Zdenek
The Vignale spyder I am restoring is Blue Sera and that color is definitely darker than the color on this Bora. The exterior color matches that in places where there is original paint. Sometimes color shades do not represent themselves correctly on a computer or phone screen. Interesting that Bora #066 was delivered to the USA as a Euro car without having to be modified. I wonder if Maserati received some special dispensation that allowed a small number of cars to be exported to the USA while they met USA requirements. At that time USA requirements were changing year by year and it was difficult for car manufacturers to keep up with all the changes. I believe USA versions of the Bora did not start until 1973, but I could be wrong. This Bora does not have seat belts. Was it common for early Euro Boras not to have seat belts? Yesterday I received the data sheets from Maserati. Ivan Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Dear Mr. Ruiz, my Bora #066 had seat belts. Unfortunately I can't tell from the photo whether they are original or were installed later. I bought the car completely disassembled and sold it in the same condition. I only have one photo of the vehicle where you can see part of the seat belt. In Marc Sonnery's wonderful book there is a photo (see attached) of one of the first Maserati Boras produced and in one photo it looks as if it already has a seat belt. Today I spoke to a friend on the phone who has been working on these vehicles for 40 years. We both suspect that it was an optional extra that you could choose back then. Perhaps your first owner did not choose this optional extra. The first owner of my Maserati Khamsin AM120-250 from 1977 choose the optional extra "Seat belts with retractors". It is listed as an optional extra in the Maserati data sheets. "Cinturze di sicurezza con arrotolatore" = 60,000 lira Kind regards Zdenek Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I agree they were most likely optional and this car was not fitted with belts. The first photo is from #440 (also a Euro car) shows where the top of the 3 point seat belt attaches. On #156 there is no hole in that area and it is most likely the original leather. I did find a threaded hole on the sills and I suspect I will find a similar hole on the other side of each seat. Installing lap belts should not be a problem but installing a three point seat belt would require drilling, something I am not willing to do on this car. Ivan Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Hello all, There is a story behind that March 1971 Geneva show Bora world premiere launch photo with (from right to left) Guy Malleret administrator of Maserati 1968-1975, Giorgetto Giugiaro of Ital Design, the cars' designer and Giulio Alfieri head engineer of Maserati, the three fathers of the Khamsin. It was Malleret, nobody else, who decided that Maserati should prove it had new impetus after the Citroen acquisition, new financial means after the increasingly low budget Orsi years, by making a read mid engined car. Pierre Bercot President of Citroen, who had chosen Malleret to run Modena, gave his blessing. When I was doing research for the book and preparing Giugiaro's interview I asked Ital Design for archive photos with his request to help me. What they sent me was worse than useless; 1980's, 1990's photos of him at shows in Monterey next to big bumper US Boras, these photos were actually blurred and of ridiculously large resolution. I explained I needed photos from when the car was new and suggested they please please please look "In the back of drawers and in the attic" and...this photo emerged from a long forgotten file! It is a true gem in terms of historical significance and had never been published, which is why it is actually on the back cover of the book: sometimes you find gems in archives and that one was really rewarding!
Tom Coady and his sons many years ago had thought the very early Bora’s, as in those that were likely to be media tested/reviewed, had special hopped up engines. I’ve never had it confirmed but I heard Ted Rutlands say something similar about Ferrari’s of the same era.
I think that you might be referring to the Ferrari autos leant for testing to the various magazines by the dealership owned by Bill Harrah, the casino owner, in Lake Tahoe. I doubt that any of the Maseratis being tested the United States were tampered with but who knows what might have occurred in Europe, being closer to the factory. I just don't think there was sufficient organization in the States top pull that off at that time. Maserati was pretty disorganized compared to Ferrari in the 60's and 70's.
they all did it. There are stories of giving journalists their choice of cars to drive, they bait them with certain colors that would have hotter engines in them. They knew the journalists always went for those colors. Lamborghini was famous for it.
Maybe Lambo, I know from interviews I did of the old-timers that when the took Miuras to the registration office in Modena they used the SAME exhaust everytime, one that was legal;-)
Maybe what they did is to make sure everything worked on the cars and that engine was tuned to it's best but not modified, the brakes were sorted and that the shift linkage and transmission worked flawlessly. I modified the linkage on my Bora because it wasn't very good stock. Silicon boots for the linkage knuckle, silicon hose for the sliding rod under the exhaust manifold with seals on the ends and shim washers under the mounting studs for those needle bearings so that they were perfectly aligned to that shaft that slides and rotates to operate the ZF transaxel. Once you did that shifting was a dream compared to before. But the factory didn't do any of that. So maybe they did for the press cars ... finish the proper manufacturing instead of forcing the dealers and customer do that! These are things they often failed to do with dealer delivered to customer cars. I heard of one Bora sold by British Motorcars in SF (Qvale) that had severe cooling issues only to find out that one of the radiator fans was wired backwards. To me that sounds like disgruntled factory employees, just like when I visited the Lamborghini Factory when the LM002 was debuting and someone had put sand in the crankcase of two of the V12s.
or Luigi had an extra glass of wine at lunch. It could also depend on the year it was built, around the time of the Citroen bankruptcy? When DeTomaso took over and started firing people?
Let's be frank about Italian cars during this struggling era ... QA was MIA. Ferrari has had the same quality issues as well. They just seem to get a pass from the automotive media even fro the same exact issues and even when using Ferrari parts! Fake news!
On my IG feed I just read an article about the very first 76 fiberglass 308s that hit the UK. The quality was so bad the head mechanic (foreman named Bishop in the UK I believe, had a tyrannical reputation) had disassembled half the car to straighten everything out before the journalists were allowed to review.
