Club Arnage

Car, Driver, Location, Year?

I wouldn't pretend to have any idea but spectator safety certainly wasn't high on the agenda was it!!

Its actually not as old as you would think ;)
Some of our French colleagues would know the venue.
KPY?, Gilles?
Fax

At a guess, it is a Ferrari 330 P3, driven by Mike Parkes, at Spa for the 1966 1000kms?  am i even close ;)  BTW they won.

Hi Spider,
Your pretty close with the car, but this a little stumper,
the name on the door (which you can't really read) is British, but the driver?
I liked this pic because it includes one of my favorite cars and favorite drivers.  Got some British connections going on here too.
Fax

mmmmmmmh, it has Piper on the front, but, David Pipers always run in green, so maybe it isn't one of his.

It's deffo a P4 - dunno who it is - it's not Goodwood is it?

No not Goodwood, how do you tell the difference between the P3/P4, wasn't it all internal ?

Okay, since there's no more takers.  David Piper 1967 Ferrari P4 (yep, a Piper Ferrari in red) driven by Ferrari F1 driver and 1978 Le Mans winner, Didier Pironi. The venue is the Monthlery circuit April 18, 1982. The event is the AGACI 300 for vintage & historic sports racers.  Pironi qualified on pole ahead of Dickie Attwood's Porsche 917 and pulled out a eight second lead after seven laps of the race before the car began to show smoke and the engine began to sound rough. The young Frenchman wisely decided to shut her down rather than risk a VERY expensive engine failure. Attwood won ahead of Mike & Richard Knight in Lola T70's and Ford GT-40. David Piper was driving his Ferrari 275 LM.
Fax

Ah, here is the rub, is it a P4, or is it the hybrid P3/P4.  Do you know if Ferrari ever looked at the car and actually agreed on the history of this vehicle, Fax ?

http://www.ferrariownersclub.co.uk/happenings/2005/january/p3_4_0846/text.asp


very interesting, lets have another one.

Piper still has his original 330 I think now repainted green, this is the car in Fax's picture I think.

The car refered too in the link is a car Piper is reputed to have made up from bits lying around his barns and then sold onto a guy in the States. Piper has made a few cars in this way, most have at least one original part in them and therefore can be sold with at least some history.

I doubt we will ever know if the Glickenhaus 330 is in fact a complete original or a bitsa. Piper and Ferrari must know but neither has fully confirmed or denied the claims.

Thanks for this, happens a lot with historic cars and aircraft.  What actually constitutes the original?  Especially if it has been in an accident and the bits are owned by several new owners and they all rebuild the car!

Morning Guys,
I'm pretty certain that that the P4 Didier drove was an original factory car.  The other one? We may never know for sure.
As you say, the subject of what constitutes an original in vintage & historic racing is always controversial.  The one I remember causing a big stink was the Lancia D50 that was built up a few years ago around a original engine and drivetrain.  The purists screamed foul, but it was a lovely sight since none of the original cars exit.
Fax

Its an interesting topic Fax, just looking through David Pipers history, seems we were born in the same town!  fame at last.

Some of the "replica" Ferrari's are all original and genuine bits but not actually constructed as a 500 or 250 GTO etc. 

Hi Spider,
Yes, Ferrari's in particular can be a chassis historian's nightmare because the old fella wasn't terribly nostalgic when it came to yesterday's cars, especially the F1 machines.  Once they'd served their purpose they were usually scrapped, the bits they thought they could use later saved, and the rest destroyed.  Hence the reaon no 156 Dino's survive (Chris Rea did a nice replica of one some years ago, but a friend of mine who is a devoted 156 expert loves to point out all the flaws in it ;D)
Or the cars would be torn down & rebuilt using the same chassis number but as a basically all new car.
Fax

Absolutely, I remember reading about the Ferrari 158, F1 car driven by John Surtees, second year of running and was lagging behind the other F1 cars, he spoke with the old man, Enzo, his reply was he would turn to the F1 chassis once the road racing season had been completed.

Its interesting that for most of his life as a constructor, sports car racing was a higher priority than single seaters.
He considered Le Mans his private stomping ground, which explains Henry Ford's decision to hit him where it would really hurt...Le Mans!
Fax

FS I have PMd you on this subject as Mr Termite has a few interesting things to add.

Okay, no secrets here! Fill the rest of us in... ;)
If you can thicken the plot I'm sure we're all game.
Fax

I just can't figure out how to paste Mr Termite's e-mail onto the site, so have asked FS to do it for me! (Computer prat - that's me as well as being a ECA).  In fact I am in the middle of a heated discussion on this subject at this very minute!


Cracked it myself! See below.

Having read the interesting discussion about the P4 Ferrari and its bona fides, passed to me by Termie Termite, I have a couple of things to add, which may help cheerfully thicken the fog and increase the uncertainty surrounding the illustrious David Piper and his cars of that period.

 

In 1997, at the Silverstone Ferrari gathering (we’d turned up in friend Paul’s Mondial), I asked the Piper mechanics about the P3 they had brought with them, and was told it was a P2/3. Not all Piper cars were green by then – the famous 250LM, seen racing by Termie Termite in her yoof, and by me at the 1967 Racing Car Show, was now red with a just a green stripe across the nose.

 

In 2006, at the LM Classic, I asked the 330 P3 mechanic in the Plateau 5 paddock about his car, and was told it was a P3 with P4 mods by the factory.

 

The Ferrari factory was good at retro-fitting new bits to their own and to other owners’ cars. Most of the 25 1970 512S coupes had new bodies and bits fitted in the close season, so that by 1971 Daytona, 512M was the “new” Ferrari. I don’t think there were any works entries that year, with privateers doing Maranello’s work for them – or not.

 

Website wspr-racing.com provides a wonderful amount of detail about Ferraris and most other cars – by chassis number. This lists only 4 chassis as having been 330P3, one of which, 0846, it says then won Daytona ’67 as a P4. 0844, on the other hand, became a 412P, a model whose similarity to 330P4 is astonishing – anyone know the true differences? Several 330P3 & 4 chassis are listed as having been owned by D Piper at some time, but he also owned a 330P2, which would seem prima facie to be the car I saw at Silverstone in ’97. Not so, says the wspr listing – they quote Piper as having picked up 365P #0824 in the early 90s and rebuilt it to later spec, and this was the car at Silverstone, says the site. I am fairly certain that 330P3 was the first appearance of the Drogo body, so a P or P2 would need a whole lot of bodywork to resemble the later model in P3 or P4 guise.

 

I am the first to recognise that websites like wspr-racing have no reason to stick to the facts – their input is personal and in this case, English is not the site-owner’s first language. It’s just that all this supports much of what has been said on this forum already. Make your own mind up!

 

Mister Termite

Some good stuff there...Thanks :)
A good friend of mine lived near the NART Shop in Conn.
here in the States and was a frequent visitor, and says much the same thing regarding Ferrari chassis.  Tracing their history is a nightmare because cars would be torn to bits, rebuilt as a completely new model using a old chassis numbers, etc, etc.
Said he used to walk around behind the shop and there would be stacks of bodywork laying around from 312's, 512's, etc.  Just sitting out in the elements, with no one to keep them from being walked off with.
Fax

It's not just Ferraris.
There's a chap I know who specialises in restoring Cobras, and once when I was rooting around his workshop spotted what look like two rusty old drainpipes. He reckoned this was the chassis to the first ever Cobra that raced, and had a few photos of it lying around.
I was back in there about a year later and he was putting the finishing touches to an incredible rebuild, the car looked absolutely flawless, except even the flaws were built in deliberately. He'd had the build, and presumably the car, authenticated by some of the original team members and was hoping to get an entry into the Goodwood Revival, and from there to a nice wealthy buyer. All from two corroded old pipes and a little bit of spaceframe.
It's made me look twice at some of the drainage arrangements on my house.
H

I've always heard the worst of all are Alfa racing cars.  Tracing chassis histories from Autodelta are supposed to be nearly impossible, have a better chance of tracing your family history back to the ice age.
Fax

Max Mosely has set up a working party on historics and how to prove their originality, could be a good thing.
There was a road test article  on the sierra cossy that was the last 2 wheeled car to win a world championship rally. They were saying what a historic car it was even though it had been re shelled.
Probably had a new engine as well! I'm sure the number plate was original.

I guess the question is, should we care that much?  At St Saturnin, I asked a guy if his GT40 was original.  It was but he proceeded to lecture me on the fact that even a number of replicas (with no parts in common with the originals) were still built with a great deal of care and attention to detail.  I guess a thing of beauty is always a thing of beauty, be it an original, a copy, or a bitsa.  If restrictions are brought in to limit the number of cars which truly qualify as historics, that will just reduce the numbers of these wonderful beasts which people race and bring to historic car meetings.  Will we be any better off as a result?

The way I understand the new historic regs is that they are relaxing them bit to allow cars built later to compete.

The reason being that fewer owners are now prepared to risk there pride and joys, the risk a quite high as Adrian Newry found last weekend!. It seems that alot of owners of geniune cars also own copys and would rather race these.

There is also the problem that with a recent copy there is the chance to incorprate some modern thinking and materals into the car when its built. This could the render the original to slow.

All in all its a very tricky subject and one that is unlikey ever to find a complete soloution.

Getting back to David Piper and his 330P, here is a picture from 81 showing his car, red at the time (and only about 14 years old, a 956 from 83 is now almost twice the comparative age but still seems modern if you get my drift).

http://rupert8766.fotopic.net/p10581932.html
http://rupert8766.fotopic.net/p10581933.html

I have seen this on another site, so therefore cannot be sure its true but..........

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4649333573#description

Seeing what vq has aquired on ebay, here is what maybe we should all have been bidding on instead.

The above was offered in June, The seller failed to spot that what he was selling was not a 1958 Devin, but a genuine Ferrari 340 America chassis, numbered 0202.

This possibility was spotted by only one person and a Ferrari chassis lost for 40 odd years has now resurfaced.

Today a complete 340 America Spider Vignale could be worth $ 2.0 M

Now all the new owner has to find is an engine, gearbox, wheels, body, and almost everything else, bar the chassis which you can see from the photos is not a large item and may have been modified to take various US V8's

Still at least it has a chassis number!