The Human Touch!

great thread idea!

 

Car & Driver, Oct 1967 review of the 275/GTB-4 (from a different era) :

"....... The roof sits at a slight angle to the waistline, which in turn is cocked with respect to both the grill and the trunk lid. The rocker panels are at different heights from the ground. One side of the cockpit is higher than the other. The whole car - brand new, fresh out of the box - is about as straight as a '48 Plymouth that rolled over a cliff.......

The Greeks designed the Parthenon with nary a straight line in the whole temple, because they knew that the human eye doesn't see what is. ... So, when Italians, particularly the artists at Ferrari, design an automobile, you don't imagine that they'd make it symmetrical, do you? ......

But lay a little soul into those hand-crafted lines, and - forza! - life, excitement, personality! The car is beautiful, and who knows - or cares - that it's imperfect. .... "

 

Great thread subject to highlight the human touch of these cars, especially the hand-built nature of the older models.

On my Boxer, the last "production" model fully formed by hand over bucks: the height of the rear deck from the top line, to the bottom of the clamshell at the same point L/R on the inner tail lights, is just shy of 3/16" difference at centerline. Except for a very few touch-ups, the car is still in its original paint, so it's not a repair mistake.
One of the my favorite features is the presence of the hammer marks on the underside of the F and R clamshells, at theirs edges, where the aluminum was folded back to create the edge.
Some of the internal drip channels also have those subtle little waves of imperfection in the right light angles.

When I was at Norwood's, my first project was a 250LM in for a comprehensive restoration. The pitted front windscreen (may have had a crack, can't remember) was removed during teardown, and the opening was not altered at all during the restoration of the body/chassis. When all was done, a new, perfect windscreen was placed on the opening during reassembly, and didn't fit. The difference between the Left and Right sides was about 1/4". I left at about that time, so I didn't know how it was resolved, but it had to be done within a few days for the Dallas Gran Prix.

During a Daytona conversion to a Spider, Bob wanted to do it correctly, and ordered a new rear clip from Scaglietti (Damn, he had some conections!!!). When the crate arrived, and the tubular-cross-braced clip was out, a few of us were amazed at how heavy it was. The underside didn't have the rough undercoating yet, just paint, and you could see the hammer marks from forming the piece - the primered outside, not perfect by any means, showed none of was was evident on the underside.
Essentially, in addition to the steel framework, the steel bodywork wrapped around it, and about 15 lbs. of cross-bracing for shipping, the rest of the weight was a little primer, and a bunch of filler to get that lovely shape to look right. Given the weight, I suspect it was proper, melt-applied lead filler, with a skim-coat. Probably by a couple of guys smoking cigarettes while tapping hammers, pushing with body weight, and holding a lead rod to a flame, before tuning the contours with files.

Production meant something very different in the days before uniformly stamped panels.

 

Cool thread.


Not my picture; 18-digit VIN (the E shouldn't be there).
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I can get my hand between the left front tire and the fender but not on the right side of my Dino.

 

This month's "Motor Klassik" has an article about a 250 Testa Rossa. They write the story about how Enzo worked together with Scaglietti - he delivered the chassis to him, then they walked around and Enzo pointed out which one was intended to be a Spider and which a Coupe. He never wanted to see any drawings, and Scaglietti was happy because he didn't like doing design studies and different drawings all that stuff, he liked to just build a wooden jig and start hammering the metal.

 

In case you guys don't make it to the 308/328 area, here's a thread with a link to a story told from a Porsche restorer's POV about the things he discovered while repainting a client's 308. He had some very interesting and insightful observations to share.

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=233037

"...In this day and age, we are so used to production perfection that we have largely lost sight of how things used to be. Even though this doesn't seem that old a car, and Ferrari not that small a company, this car does indeed harken back to a bygone era. Even though Ferrari did build slightly over 12,000 of these cars from 1975-85, they were largely built the old way... by hand..."

 

I remember reading in Forza about an owner of a 456GT, but the nameplate in the car was 456GTA. He kept it that way for this thread's very reason: thats the way the artisans put the car together at Maranello.

The next issue someone wrote a letter to the editor thinking that was kind of odd. That it was a "simply a mistake" and should be fixed. (OK maybe it was written with stronger language, but you get the point...)

GT

 

People who have grown accustomed to German-perfection, Robot-built Mercedes esthetics normally wouldn't tolerate, let alone comprehend, the 'character flaws' of a hand-built machine......

 

I've had 3 308's and 3 328's and they all have plenty of signs of hand assembly. I think anyone who has ever washed and waxed one has noted waves here and there and the panels don't fit the same from one side to the other. Also interior odds and ends. I've also noticed that every example I ever drove felt a little different. It can be the pedal arrangement and response of other things. When I had a '94 348, the exterior was close to perfect in terms of fit but the interior certainly was flawed. I bought my 430 new and have found several finish flaws on it as well though the body panels are nearly perfectly fitted.

The thing I find most interesting about the 308's and 328's is that even though the interiors are obviously hand fitted with some things out of line, everything always appeared to be done with care and none of these cars ever had any rattles.

Dave

 

Evertime I take an interior piece out of the car it has a number on the back - 146. The front lid has this number. Inside the doors have this number. It is the build number. As this car was being put together people were making parts for this car. Not just making GT4 parts, making parts to fit number 146. Not robots, but artisans with scissors, hammers and dollies, brakes, thread and glue. These parts may or may not fit any other car.
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The joke goes something like ... the Fiat engineer visits the Mercedes factory. The German engineer shows the Italian how they put a cat in the prototype to test the seals. If the cat is still alive the next day then they know they have a leak. The Fiat engineer says "Yea, we do something like that at Fiat, If the cat is gone the next day we know we have a hole."

 

Something else I've noticed... not necessarily an imperfection, just an oddity.

On the back of the F50, the Cavallino is of a completely different type altogether. It's like the Cavallinos on much older cars. I've always wondered what the story was there. It looks like it was shaped by hand. Was it to commemorate the older cars? Anyone know?
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Very similar, if not the same, as that in the front grill of the Boxer. More of a cavallino-engraved plate.