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If anyone has ANY information about the ITALIEN or any of it's history, please EMAIL ME THANK YOU!!! ...
(continued from page 3)... February 6, 2006...I've been pretty busy
over the past few weeks. Gathering more information about the ITALIEN, I sold 2
cars at the Barrett-Jackson Auction in Scottsdale AZ on January 18th,
and I began the purchase of a 1957 "F" (Supercharged) Thunderbird.
My sales at the auction went pretty good. I sold the 1963 Thunderbird Sport Roadster that I just finished restoring last summer for $52,900.00 (The Number 1 price in Old Cars Price Guide is $41,000.00) and I sold my 1964 Amphicar which I restored a couple years ago for a (High book on them was
$35,000.00)
I had spoken with the owner of the 57 F bird before the auction and told him I was going to wait until after the sale to decide on the purchase. With the price the Amphicar brought, I knew I would make the buy. I made a deposit and will finalize the purchase this week. Back to the ITALIEN. When I was in contact with Mr. Lee Iacoccas secretary, she gave me the name of a lady in the Ford Archives Research Department and thought she may be able to help me find more history about the ITALIEN. I contacted her on January 9th, and she referred me to another lady, Michelle. Michelle wasn't available so I left a message for her. The next day she returned my call and told me that they couldn't do research for people from outside sources anymore because they simply got too many requests and didn't have the time. She referred me to the henryfordmuseum.com and said to click their "research" button and fill out the form for what I was looking for. I did that and just got a response today. I'll add that later with some other documents. On Thursday, January 12th, I got an email from Michelle (Ford Archives Research) saying that J. Mays (Head of Design at Ford) office forwarded a letter I sent him seeking information about the ITALIEN to her asking her to find what she could and forward it to me. And now that it was an "internal" request she could do a full research which she would begin when returning to work after Martin Luther King day. I also sent a letter to Bill Ford. I've found over the years that you get more results starting at the top. While at the Barrett-Jackson Auction I spoke with the owner of a 1964 Thunderbolt that was being offered there too. You may know that the 100 Thunderbolts were built by Dearborn Steel Tubing, the same company that built the ITALIEN. The owner gave me the name of another person, Dennis, who used to be a design engineer at Ford and has some old documents from Ford and from DST. I contacted Dennis and he recalled seeing something about the ITALIEN in the records he has and offered to go through them and get back to me. The next day I got an email from Dennis describing some information he found and will make copies and send them to me. Earlier you may remember I mentioned speaking to Wayne Fietzer at DST, Wayne told me some other things he remembered about the ITALIEN that I haven't written yet because they didn't make sense to me. Well, Dennis told me some of the same inforamtion from the records he has that corroborates what Wayne told me. When I receive the information from Dennis and verify it, I will add it here in a new update. When I got home from the BJ Auction, I sent the final payment to Don for the ITALIEN. The transport was arranged when the payment was received and the ITALIEN was picked up by the transport on Saturday evening (Feb 4) about 7:00 PM. The truck driver called me after he left Don's place to tell me that he had the car and he wondered if I knew what I was getting, and if I had seen it. The car doesn't look very good, especially the interior, and the driver was concerned that I would be upset when it arrives. I assured him I knew exactly what I am getting and that I was out there to inspect it before I purchased it. When He gets here I'll tell him what the car is and show him one of the color pictures of it new. A couple of days ago I received some information from Michelle. She dug up an old newspaper clipping about the Ford AUTORAMA which mentioned the ITALIEN from January 10, 1963, along with a very nice glossy black & white photo of the ITALIEN at the 1964 Society of Automotive Engineers Exhibition at Cobo Hall, Detroit. It was in a display by Owens-Corning Fiberglas with the Detroit branch manager of OCF and a nice looking model, along with a press release about it since the roof and deck are made of Owens-Corning Fiberglas. I also rounded up a bunch more magazines with articles about the ITALIEN, they are shown below. I'll be adding more real soon, so stay tuned. |
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