The (one and only) '0846' Debate Thread

It's good to know that both the 330 Can AM body of 0844 and the 350 Can Am body of 0860 still exist.

"As far as Ferrari are concerned, 0844 is a 412 P"

That statement is very interesting. 0844 was originally a P3 Chassis Type 593, had a type 216 P3 engine and a P3 Type 593 Gearbox.

Once again Macca was right and both David and Replica Paul were wrong, Type 593 gearboxes are P3 NOT F1.

Ferrari then converted 0844 into a 412P and sold 412P 0844 to NART, where it was later converted to a 330 Can Am Barchetta.
Does Ferrari consider 0844 a 412P because that's the last configuration they converted it to, the 330 Can Am conversion having been done by NART after Ferrari sold it? I thought Ferrari was involved in that conversion even if they no longer owned the car???

 

I've asked , Jim. Will post reply

 

Pics, as promised from Road and Track November 1967 page 27
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

i never realized how tiny it was. Wow.

 

Like Jim said good to hear the CanAm bodies still exist. I've been to the Mas du Clos museum but as one's not allowed to take pictures I didn't remember seeing it there (the 312P '69 distracted me anyway). Thanks for the info.

Ciao, Peter

 

Possesion is 9/10ths of the law.

Ken

 

Just so we're completely clear on the Carnet (Page 22) THIS WAS IN 1977 TEN YEARS AFTER 0846'S LE MANS FIRE AND IT WAS CERVAN, A DAVID PIPER OWNED CO. THAT HAD FILLED IT OUT, NAMING CHASSIS 0846, WARRARNTED THAT TO BE TRUE, AND PRESENTED IT TO SWISS CUSTOMS AUTHORITIES IN ORDER TO IMPORT A P3/P4 INTO SWITZERLAND WITH CHASSIS NUMBER 0846. THIS WAS A DOCUMENT DATED 1977 NOT FROM THE TIME FERRARI OWNED 0846.

IF I'M WRONG ABOUT THIS MARCEL PLEASE LET US KNOW.

Best

 

The first photo is Nathan's Photo as he posted it.

The second photo is Nathan's Photo blown up 25% with 25% of contrast added.

The third photo is Nathan's Photo blown up 25% with 25% of contrast added
and a Blue Dot on the P3 engine motor mount of the P3 engine David at one time installed into 0003/0846 and a Red Dot at the point of triangulation of 0003/0846's P3 chassis motor mount which mates right up to the P3 engine because 0003/0846 is built to P3 plans NOT P4 plans. (See page 68 for direct comparison to P3 0844)
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

My first post on this thread.

Great work Jim! Even more than the car, I am impressed with the amount and quality of work that has gone into restoring this car. To me that is almost greater than the fact that the car is 0846.

This is a very big point. Why are Nathan and Arlie not getting this?

While this debate is getting nasty, at some point Ferrari will say it is 0846 and all this will be forgotten.

 

The year was 1977.
The name of the company in the carnet was CERVAN Corporation. I do NOT know if this is or was a company owned by Piper or not. I also do not know if anybody, Piper, Cervan Corporation, Franco Sbarro or anybody else presented that Carnet to Swiss customs or not. I do not know WHO imported the P3 or P4 chassis I saw to Switzerland, but a chassis was definitely there (at Franco Sbarro's warehouse in Grandson, Switzerland).
Marcel Massini

 

Did you ever see the episode of the Andy Griffith Show where Sheriff Andy goes out to see a farmer whose cow had been stolen. Deputy Barney Fife locates a crime scene investigator to examine the scene with great scientific expertise. They examined the sets of footprints in the mud and calculate the average height and weight of the cow thieves. And one point, Andy calmly asks, "Where are the footprints of the cow?" Turns out the single cow thief had put shoes on the feet of the cow and walked him out the barn door, thereby giving the appearance of three people walking away.
Now I know that you guys hate analogies like the above example, but everybody is examining the situation and drawing their absolute firm conclusions based on the evidence at hand, just like Barney Fife did about the cow theft.
Coming to absolutely positive conclusions based on one grainy photograph is scientifically absurd. One person knows exactly what occured regarding this car. His name is Piper. Unless he is willing to jump into the fray and offer some answers, some of which could, or could not be self incriminating depending upon your pro or anti 0846 stance. Why should he bother wiring up a computer just to engage in some debate regarding an ancient business transaction?
But as I said earlier, it will all probably get very nasty eventually. What's going to happen when Piper gets tired of hearing that other people are saying the he was WRONG about this or that or whatever? Old Piper might very well pull out a giant batch of photographs and do some of his own "documenting"!!!

And another angle to this debate. Why is PIPER the one who is always declared WRONG? How come the diagrams aren't wrong? Or the specifications aren't wrong? Or the testimony from somebody somewhere along the timeline after the LeMans fire is wrong? Or the ABSOLUTELY UNFOUNDED AND UNPROVEN THEORY that somebody retrieved the 0846 chassis from the Modena junkyard is wrong? Why is it that at every turn of the debate, every angle that adds TOWARD the PRO 0846 conclusion is correct, yet Piper, the man who built, raced, and sold the cars for so many years is WRONG??? We are to believe that some totally UNKNOWN, UNVERIFIED, UNPROVEN mystery man retrieved the chassis from the Modena junkyard and this is assumed to be a TRUE FACT, yet Piper himself is WRONG???

 

I pulled the following from one of LWaynes posting concerning the long lost James Dean Porsche spyder:

See the above statement: "McHenery was listed in the printed program as being entered in the weekend's events in his own 550 Spyder, he was actually driving the special when it hit a tree"
The "documentation" OFFICIALLY listed one man as driving a certain car, but in reality, he was driving something totally different.
Another example of why we can't be so SURE of our alleged "documentation".

 

Arlie, you speak and read English? Piper said the frame was made from P4 blueprints. It isn't. That's not an opinion; it's a fact. Now you say the Ferrari P 4 blueprints aren't of a P4???? How can you imply such a rediculous thing yet accuse the people who have the most likely theories of stretching the imagination? Again you just waste bandwith in this thread.

Ken

 

Lets break it down yet again.

1. Piper sells a car to Jim G. He says it is built on a chassis that Piper commissioned in the early 1970's. Said Chasis is built to official P4 blueprints, given to Piper by Enzo Ferrari himself.

2. The frame in Jim G's car does not match Other P4 frames.
3. It does match other P3 frames in many details.


Forget all the other issues and side shows and lets try to figure out how these two contradicting statements can exist.

Arlie lets hear some of YOUR theories about this discrepancy.

Piper was wrong is one possible resolution. What else?

Erich
mud wrestling with a pig again.

 

OK, let's go back to the touted "documentation".

From page 14 of JG's document

"Alberto Pedretti who was the mechanic that Enzo Ferrari sent to the US to work with Luigi Chinetti" went along with Jim to England to examine Piper's cars.

From page 15 of JG's document
"Alberto looked at all of David's cars and the original 1967 P4 chassis blueprints which David showed US. That evening Alberto told me that much of it looked original and as long as I realized what I was buying for a price it would made a fine car to drive on Sundays as I like to do."

So let's review some of the above. If Pedretti went along to examine the cars in great detail, then why wasn't this P3/P4 chassis REVELATION discovered upon the examination? JG has made much in the past about some ex-driver of 0846 taking one glance at the car and saying "Yeah, that's 0846 that I drove" back in 1966 or whenever, yet somehow an expert like Pedretti FAILED TO NOTICE THESE CHASSIS MODIFICATIONS AND REVELATIONS EVEN AFTER AN EXTENSIVE EXAMINATION.

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. One expert's extended examination reveals nothing strange, yet one ex-drivers glance acknowledges EVERYTHING?????

Yet once again, a glaring double standard of logic.

 

Your patience is commendable, but unfortunatly lost on Arlie & Co.

 

'looked at' doesn't consitute 'extensive examination' in my book. Is it really that suprising that the subtle yet clear diffrences between a P3 and a P4 chassis were discovered after the car was completely stripped down to its bare bone?

I see no double standard, only photographic proof that Jim's car is built upon a P3 chassis, modified to P4 standards. Therefore, David's claim he sold a P4 chassis, modified to accept a P3 engine, doesn't add up to the fact. Either David is wrong or he is lying. I suspect the first. Perhaps a case of sloppy administration, I don't know.

 

So YOU would fly all the way to England, taking a knowledgable expert along with you, and then expect that expert to NOT do an "extensive examination"?
Why was he there then, just to be a cheerleader?
There are more extensive PPIs done on cars that are FAR less rare. So why take an expert with you all the way to England and not discover what is now being touted from ONE grainy photograph?

If the so called PROOF is easily discernable from ONE old grainy photograph taken from 20 feet away, why wasn't that same PROOF discovered when they were standing right beside the car? All one had to do was simply LIFT THE ENGINE COVER just like in Nathan's photograph, which is now being touted as PROOF positive of the entire theory.

 

Does anyone have any frame pics or a comparison of 003 to the other 2 replicas Piper made?

How does anyone know Piper made the other replicas to P4 plans exactly as well?

 

Arlie,

It was stated that Mr. Piper stated (this opening alone would make the rest of my comments invalid in court) that he modified the chassis to accept a P3 engine. I assume that Mr. Piper told this to Jim also. However, Jim claims that when the car was taken apart for restoration, it did not look like a modified P4 chassis it looked like a modified P3 chassis. Note, Jim has another P3 chassis with good provenance, so he should know what he is looking at and talking about. Note, I am still not clear about the differences between a P3 and P4, besides the pictures of localized section of frame. It would be nice to have drawings, but I'm probobly asking too much. Maybe someday I'll be able to swing by Mr. Glickenhaus's shop and see for myself, 1:1 models work almost as well as drawings


I still say that the only way that both Mr. Piper's (through third party sources) and Mr. Glickenhaus's stories match is if Mr. Piper ordered the modifications to one of his three chassis prior to original delivery. This way the descrepencies were expected by Mr. Piper and the chassis could have a history prior to him. If Mr. Piper claims that he recieved three new identical chassis then the stories cannont be made to match and someone does not have their facts straight. Can someone answer when Mr. Piper requested the chassis alterations to 003?

Art S.

 

Come to think of it, it probably wouldn't matter what pictures Piper had of any of his projects. I guess that since everybody is assuming that he didn't know what he had when he sold JG the car, then we can also assume that he probably photographed the wrong car and therefore the newly discovered photograph evidence is meaningless. Wouldn't that be a logical assumption to make? I mean if you say that Piper was "wrong" about the details of the chassis, wouldn't he also be "wrong" about which car he "thought" was in any particular photograph. And thusly, the photographic evidence would be meaningless.

 

Arlie,

The reason that no proof was found during the investigation is that noone was looking for proof. It was just seen as a good reproduction/continuation of a P4 with chassis modifications to accept a P3 engine. Later they realized that the modifications did not make sense as a modified P4 but did as a P3 chassis modified to accept a P4 engine.

Art S.

- feeding the trolls is fun. fed trolls are happy trolls! That said, Arlie is actually making more reasonable comments and asking better questions - or I'm better able to filter his comments and questions...

EDIT: nevermind, Arlie posted again without reading anything...

 

When Jim bought the car, neither he nor anyone who went with probibly didn't even know all of the specific differences between a P3, the single P3/4 and a P4.

Also, almost 40 years had passed since the car was built. Do you remember the exact details of things you built 40 years ago? I don't..

After the car was taken apart and anomolies were found, Jim did the same kind of research work any automotive historian would do to find the whys, whens, and wherefores of these anomolies.

The photos seem to back up the theories he has presented, and the conclusions he and others have drawn.

 

Art see post 600. There are many differences between P3 and P4 chassis and MANY OF THEM HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH FITTING AN ENGINE INTO THE CHASSIS. As I said earlier:

"Why would David also modify every detail of a chassis "Built to P4 Plans/Blueprints" including things that have no bearing on mounting a P3 engine into it?"

 

Read the 0846 Papers. The answer to that question and photo's of the other chassis David had built which, unlike 0003/0846, are built to P4 plans are clearly shown.