David Piper restores the Talacrest P4

Very interesting thread !

From a non specialist point of view, 0858 was born as a P4 and evolved under Ferrari ownership to a 350 Can-Am, and that simply makes it genuine as a 350 Can-Am but no longer as a P4.
I mean, I'm 40 years old, and I can wear my son's clothes and live half the day with headphones on my ears and a smartphone in my hand, that won't turn me into a genuine teenager. That's evolution, I am not the one I used to be 25 years ago. You cannot go backwards.

And the 350 Can-Am is (before being put back to P4) not the car it used to be when it was delivered new as a P4. The real shame is that the 350 Can-am will no longer exist just because these cars were probably not as successful in this form as they used to be in the P4 form. That means the species has now gone to an end. But what if they had won the Can-Am championship ?

That said, there are many examples of evolution on other race cars and the question of putting it back to their original form is rightful.
If you have a Porsche 910 that has been converted to a spyder in period, you might want to take it back to the coupe form because the spyder is ugly and you can't race it in Le Mans Classic (my point of view here).
If you have a Works BMW 2800 CS group 2 that slowly evolved into a winning 3.5 CSL with Alpina for instance, you will probably not convert it back again to a 2800 CS. The 3.5 is way faster and is the result of the evolution it has benefitted from in period.
Last example, if you have a genuine works Porsche 935 that had been upgraded to a 935 K3 by the Kremer brothers, would you put it back to its original form ? There is no easy answer here. But if the K3 has won Le Mans in period, the answer might be easier.

 

Perhaps the most sensible from amongst the 1026 posts. There really is no easy answer, the dispute will never end since it turns on one's view of what Talacrest and David Piper should do. And in the end, it really doesn't matter at all, since Talacrest and David Piper will do what they will do and at some point in time a buyer will turn up, willing to pay a price that seller is willing to accept which will be "the market price" for this history-mangled Ferrari. For one thing on which we all can agree is that it is a Ferrari.

 

There isn't a great deal of info on 0900 or the other two that I have found but that doesn't mean it isn't out there. It is safe to say 0900 has parts from 0858 but how many is a ????. It would be an interesting exercise to try to establish what parts D P came back with from. S F and where they were used. tongascrew

 

It's sort of like what happened to some of those Daytona coupes that had their tops cut off. The Daytona experts can tell you if S F had anything to do with any of this. tongascrew

 

Well said. tongascrew

 

The strict pureist might say so but that would never go over in Tiffossi-land and rightly so. I prefer the original 250 GTO bodywork but at least each one no matter what the body is still a 250 GTO. 0858 was originally a beautiful and successful P4. It makes no difference who changed it into a not so beautiful and totally unsuccessful CanAm car.There is plenty of original P4 left so why not put it in the hands of the expert to return it to its original glory. tongascrw

 

Maybe. But reverting from a CanAm sounds a bit like airbrushing an ex from the family pictures.

 

I am intrigued by just how much actual P4 remains and just how much will be Piper and new parts.

 

0858 was an original P4 which was then converted/rebuilt/replicated/reproduced whatever into a CanAM. 0858 was never originally a CanAM car.tongascrew

 

As evidenced by the posts of some here, pretty much only a very persistent - almost virulent - romantic idea of a car that once was but is no longer. And a few bits of the door, I think...

 

I think you can say that all you have said here undoubtedly has a great deal of truth to it. I don't know who still at the factory or around can verify any of this except for David Piper. Lets hope some day he in some fashion tells all.tongascrew

 

You might be surprised [or not] at certain items that were parted out from Oz. 's all I'm saying.

 

Ok. Take a 330 GTE that is stripped and rebuilt as perfectly as is possible as a 250 GTO. An even better example is the recreation of 4115 GTO done for the owner who didn't want to use the original in Historics racing He ran the recreation car for three years before anyone knew the difference.So which is the original? What Ferrari did with 0858 is similar. They took a P4 and converted it to a CanAm car. It was said at the time that under the CanAm body was still almost all original P4. As far as I can tell the first engine in the CanAm was one of the original P4 engines only enlarged by 200ccs.A second engine also came with the CanAm but there is no record of any engine numbers. There were wider rear wheels and a modification to the chassis to support the rear of the Can AM body. It was a P4 dressed up as a CanAm car. It would have been better to convert a 512 which of course didn't yet exist. Lets let THE expert of P series Feraris, David Piper and the people at Talacrest do their thing. Then the real judging can start. tongascrew

 

Did Ferrari do any of the mods you posit?


(Did you catch my response on the other thread?)

 

I would be careful.I don't think the people at McClaren would appreciate your referring to their CanAm cars as "hackjobs" tongascrew

 

Hi Mario, (merstheman)

Thanks for the extended reply, post no 1021, in part stating:

"Ferrari supplied the spares because they probably had no use for them."

To be honest, I was searching for fact, as my post clearly indicates, not guess work, as your word `probably` infers, as without fact, we are all in the dark, and can only offer our own, sometimes passionate, opinions.

You refer to the word `tipo`as if the Can Am had different components in completeness to the P4, but the way I read the posts, whilst this relates to a reasonable amount, it is not all.

If you can prove, by way of fact, that all the components were of a new `tipo`, 603C I believe, then I am mystified as to why they didn`t construct a new tubular chassis, after all, what`s the most difficult, cutting and welding some hollow tube, or casting / machining new hubs and the like? - That is, unless Ferrari considered that the next owner/s may want to revert back to the P4 configuration.

I also find it very hard to believe that if the spare parts were for the P4 configuration, that Ferrari should go to the trouble and expense of crating up and sending with the Can Am, especially if Ferrari no longer considered the P4 to be in existance, as the parts would be useless, and the whole exercise would be a complete waste of time and money.

I may be one of the few that actually considers the Can Am to be equally attractive in looks to the P4, in an aggresive sort of way, and have little interest in the `for or against` argument, but would like to see a little more fact presented, for us to base our opinions upon.

Regards

Jong

ps. You refer to statements that Ferrari have made, on more than one occasion, claiming that P4 0858 no longer exists. Is this documented somewhere for us all to see, as this would then be factual? (sorry if I have missed this somewhere!)

 

put these back on the car....
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I'm not.

 

I'm no expert. I'd like to clarify this first. However;

With regards to Ferrari's intentions, you will find very little statement of fact that is based on documented evidence. Rather, a lot of what is known about Ferrari's treatment of their obsolete race cars is based on precedence and accounts by those who dealt closely with them along the years (including Piper). These prior actions of Ferrari's include "improving" and re-engineering obsolete cars for either improved performance, homologation purposes, or many times both. There are countless examples of this happening, and these actions are at the heart of the P car program. That would explain why they did not build a new tubular chassis. It cost them money that they did not necessarily have (both in a possessive sense, and in a necessary sense) to spend. Once again, we know from eyewitness accounts that the Ferrari racing programs in Enzo's time, and even after FIAT's early involvement, were not wont to spend unnecessary sums of money. This was a key issue in the fight against Ford, for instance.

We also have a good idea about Ferrari's opinions of the cars they made which were no longer competitive. They would sell them to privateers on a "work it out yourself" basis. The fact they sold the original drawings of the P4 to David Piper is what I believe to be extremely ironic proof of that fact. If they gave a damn about preserving obsolete cars and their legacies, they wouldn't have sold drawings to a driver who - although very good - was never even a top tier Ferrari factory driver in period. So I must say my statement was based on the knowledge I have of Ferrari's detachment to the racing cars they built, but that were no longer competitive.

On a side-note, and in response to George's post responding to VIZSLA, Ferrari's Can Am program did not end with the 350's failure, yet continued with the 612 Can Am, as well as the 712 Can Am which was aptly based off of a 512M which had been developed by that time. "Hackjobs", if we are to take the purist view, but really they are all original Ferrari race cars - as 350 Can Am 0858 was but no longer is.

Given this knowledge - and I admit once again that it is not as extensive as the knowledge gathered by many here, both for and against this argument - I would say that Ferrari's crating up and sending off of the spares was included in the deal for the car (even if not documented). Furthermore, if these spares were in P4 configuration, I would guess - though I do not believe anyone can tell you for sure - that they sold them "as is" with instructions on how to modify them to 350 spec, if the owner wished to do so.

The real waste of time and money for Ferrari would not be the crating and shipping of these parts, rather it would be carrying out the modifications to these parts for a car they no longer believe to be competitive enough to race under the factory team's banner. My guess is they left it it to the new owner to do that, if they wish.

It is my opinion, based on everything I've read and heard about the factory racing team, that Ferrari did not care about the preservation of obsolete racing cars until the recent past when these cars began trading for high sums of money, and Ferrari found a lucrative business opportunity in their position as original constructor and idealizer of these automobiles. I definitely do not believe they were worried about providing spare parts in case the car's new owner decided to take a nostalgic trip and retro-engineer an already uncompetitive car into its previous form - which in period would have been even more uncompetitive, not to mention inadequate (as far as I understand) for the racing series the new owner meant to race it in.

Whilst you are right about not all components being new to the car, as far as homologation in present day terms is concerned, all of P4 0858's major components (chassis, engine, transmission, body - in this order of importance) were modified to an extent that Ferrari gave the resulting car a different name and "Tipo". Sadly - for the purposes of this debate - they were too lazy/indifferent to re-stamp the chassis. But they might as well have done so. A large part of the debate here is whether the claim that this car is an original P4 holds any water. It has already failed the Ferrari Classiche test. Ferrari have stated more than once (these statements are documented in this thread) that the car could be, at most, "of historic interest", according to them. Others here, including Jim who owns 0854 and 0846, are saying that 0858 would not be eligible for the best concours events as a P4. These things affect a car's value. The fact that this car has not sold for quite some time at its current asking price is another strong indicator of its market value.

Regarding the history of 0858's specific parts, I would recommend reading Napolis's many posts on this thread, and if you've got a lot of free time on your hands, I would also suggest reading the threads on 0846 and 0854, where Jim documents his extensive findings on the idiosyncrasies of the Ferrari P cars, P4s in particular. As far as I know Jim is the only person participating in this thread who gets to get up in the morning, walk into his garage and look at 2 examples of these cars. Most evidence of what I've mentioned will be found there. Due to his experience as an owner and restorer, and more importantly, due to his transparency on the work carried out, I am inclined to believe what he has to say about these cars.

Sorry for the even longer reply. Hope I've answered your questions.

 

While nothing may be resolved by this thread there is a lot to be learned.
Thanks.

 

It was rebuilt, not replicated nor reproduced by Ferrari into the 350. It's P4 lineage ended right then and there in 1967. To some of us it will NEVER again be a P4.

 

I suspect that Vodafone McLaren Mercedes couldn't care less how one refers to Bruce McLaren's Can Am cars. Speaking of McLaren, the tifosi should know that there's a Major Motion Picture on the way (in September), called "Rush," about James Hunt's 1976 F1 season driving for McLaren. There's a Ferrari connection, in that the story arc will include Hunt's rivalry that year with Niki Lauda. Link: Rush (2013) - IMDb . I hope it's good. Ron Howard directs, and that's a hopeful omen.

 

I think you would be wrong. Ron Dennis has enormous respect for Bruce's achievements and anybody that thinks the McLaren CanAm cars were hackjobs are simply idiots. Bruce was 10 times the engineer that anybody on this site is.
Pete

 

Pete and 180 Out/Bill,

George (tongascrew) simply misread what merstheman said:

<By the way, you could also call any of the 350 Can Am's "hackjobs".>

This comment was explicitly limited to ***350 Can Am's***
THEREFORE, the only thing referred to as hackjobs was 0858 and 0860.

Everyone on Fchat and especially Vintage loves McLarens, Bruce McLaren, The Flying Conchords, and all other things Kiwi and/or from New Zealand.

Now can we please get back to arguing about Ferrari 330 P4/350 Can Am chassis number 0858?
After all, that's what this thread is here for.

Cheers,
Dave

 

Thanks Dave.

This thread is very emotional
Pete