Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Truth Is the Daughter of Time: Unraveling Maserati’s Engine-Driven Identity Crisis

Transcript

Truth Is the Daughter of Time: Unraveling Maserati’s Engine-Driven Identity Crisis · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
• 0:04
  by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
• 0:07
  Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
• 0:11
  Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
• 0:16
  Truth is the Daughter of Time by Trevor Lister.
• 0:19
  Trevor entered the University of Canterbury on a public service
• 0:22
  scholarship, graduating with a double degree in physics
• 0:25
  and mechanical engineering.
• 0:26
  On graduation, he worked in the Ministry of Transport in the setting
• 0:30
  and administration of motor vehicle safety standards, primarily on
• 0:34
  natural gas and LPG vehicle standards.
• 0:36
  This led to a second bent to a national research and development
• 0:40
  organization where he was responsible for research on a wider range of
• 0:44
  alternative motor vehicle fuels.
• 0:46
  It led also to an international consultancy in that area, including
• 0:51
  a stint as the New Zealand delegate to the International
• 0:54
  Natural Gas Vehicles Association.
• 0:56
  Upon completion of that work, he returned to his foundation, automotive
• 0:59
  design skills, and his motorsports hobby, at which point he became an
• 1:03
  inspector and certifier on other people's projects, as well as designing,
• 1:07
  building, and racing his own cars.
• 1:09
  In semi retirement, he took up teaching and tutoring pre apprenticed
• 1:13
  students in mathematics, science, and automotive engineering.
• 1:16
  In full retirement, he assumed the role of editor of the newsletter of the
• 1:20
  Classic Motor Racing Club of New Zealand.
• 1:22
  That is when, searching for newsletter stories, he came
• 1:25
  across the work of Donald Capps.
• 1:28
  and their common interest in old Maseratis.
• 1:30
  The upshot of working together on the histories of these cars
• 1:33
  became the main point of the presentation in this symposium.
• 1:37
  It appears that Maserati in the 1950s identified their competition
• 1:40
  cars by their engine numbers, not their chassis numbers, and that this
• 1:45
  process allowed for individual cars to have carried more than one identity.
• 1:49
  This has implications for the provenance of these cars.
• 1:53
  All right, folks, next up is Trevor Lister, and Trevor's giving a talk at
• 1:59
  much of the research shared with Don Caps.
• 2:01
  Truth is the daughter of time.
• 2:04
  Good morning to all my old friends in the, in the glen.
• 2:07
  Been a while since I was last there, especially if Donald Caps is, uh, is
• 2:11
  in the audience, a big hello, Donald.
• 2:13
  Thank you very much for your support over the years.
• 2:16
  I will be talking today on what might sound on a little strange
• 2:22
  approach to vehicle identity, old Maserati specifically in the 1950s.
• 2:28
  I'll be looking at the, uh, different ways in which a vehicle can be
• 2:33
  identified and what that might mean for the provenance of the vehicle.
• 2:38
  A little story perhaps about an Englishman, an Italian, and an
• 2:42
  American who met in a bar and started discussing, uh, identity of the vehicles.
• 2:47
  The Englishman would say, all of chassis is the most important part of the
• 2:50
  vehicle and it's the chassis number that sets the identity for the vehicle and
• 2:55
  it's that identity from that point on until the day it gets put on scrappy.
• 2:59
  The Italian would say something different, and then so Ferrari did back in the 1960s.
• 3:03
  He said, I don't sell cars, he said, I sell engines.
• 3:07
  The car is only there, he says, I throw it in for free because
• 3:10
  something's got to hold the engine in.
• 3:12
  Quite a different approach entirely.
• 3:13
  The American was probably Bob because he was a, uh, the, the story I've got
• 3:18
  here is kind of coming from a Ford perspective, Henry in the 1930s would
• 3:23
  identify the vehicles coming down the production line were identified
• 3:27
  according to the engine number.
• 3:30
  Imagine yourself at a very busy plant, the engine is just being passed through it.
• 3:35
  So.
• 3:36
  Pre run testing.
• 3:37
  It's just about to be placed in the vehicle.
• 3:40
  It has a gearbox attached to it.
• 3:42
  The gearbox gets stamped with the engine number.
• 3:44
  Then bodywork, uh, gets applied.
• 3:46
  And just before the bodywork gets done up nice and tight, the, uh,
• 3:50
  engine number is stamped on the frame.
• 3:52
  Nice and simple.
• 3:53
  The engine sets the identity of the car.
• 3:57
  A little further on that one and say that initially there is a wee twist if it's a,
• 4:02
  uh, Enzo talked about production cars as well as race cars, but at Maserati, if a
• 4:07
  engine and a race car was changed, then the identity of the vehicle was changed to
• 4:14
  match the, uh, Engine number, and as the engine number didn't just set the identity
• 4:20
  when it first rolled off the production line, it was quite capable of changing and
• 4:24
  giving a different vehicle identity as the vehicle was raced, either race to race.
• 4:29
  Chosen this car as an illustration of what happened at Maserati because
• 4:34
  it's a very rich car in terms of its background and its provenance.
• 4:38
  If you look at it on the slide, it looks like a pretty much like
• 4:41
  a standard 1950s Maserati Formula One car, but in fact it is not.
• 4:45
  It started off as a two litre Formula Two car and it had a identity
• 4:51
  number given by its engine of 2038.
• 4:55
  That was its first identity.
• 4:57
  The very early part of the 1954 Formula One, uh, racing season,
• 5:02
  the cars were in Argentina.
• 5:03
  Maserati had a lot of 250 F, uh, Formula One car, but unfortunately
• 5:10
  it could not supply, uh, every customer at the same race.
• 5:14
  So some of the Formula Two cars were adapted to Formula One specification
• 5:19
  by putting a bigger engine in and, uh, running them as Formula One cars.
• 5:23
  This is one of those cars.
• 5:25
  When it got its Formula 1 engine, replacing the old Formula 2
• 5:29
  one, its identity changed to match the new, larger engine.
• 5:33
  In that guise, this car was known as 2 5 1 0, and that
• 5:38
  wasn't the end of its identity.
• 5:41
  The following year, it was bodywork revised, which is why you see
• 5:44
  the The lovely, uh, 250F type bodywork on it in the photograph,
• 5:48
  it's engine was changed once more.
• 5:50
  It now got engine 2518 and it took on identity 2518.
• 5:55
  So if we trace this car right through, we see, uh, three identities all set by the
• 6:00
  engine that it was carrying at the time.
• 6:03
  And it doesn't stop there.
• 6:04
  The interims, there are four of them all together.
• 6:06
  They all had that same pattern that giving up their old Formula 2 number and
• 6:10
  adopting the, uh, Formula 1 engine number.
• 6:13
  Each and every one of them followed exactly the same pattern.
• 6:16
  So, um, Council were looking at the interims to say that,
• 6:19
  yes, that's, um, Harigot.
• 6:20
  The Maserati was obviously, uh, uh, identifying according to engine number.
• 6:25
  And if the engine went to another vehicle, it would carry its identity,
• 6:29
  take engine identity with it.
• 6:30
  So far, so good, except in England, they didn't do that.
• 6:34
  In England, there was a lot of interest in Formula One, of course,
• 6:37
  it's just getting to the point where England was ready to start dominating
• 6:41
  Formula One in a year or two's time.
• 6:43
  And the English commentators were very keen on pushing for the chassis number
• 6:49
  to be the one which identified the car.
• 6:52
  This might be sad in England, but it's not so.
• 6:55
  Everywhere else, unfortunately, the English men did most of
• 6:59
  the commentaries quite frankly.
• 7:01
  They did it according to the English pattern that chassis
• 7:04
  number determined the identity.
• 7:06
  English pattern is strict and rigid that says that's the identity.
• 7:10
  It's the chassis and that's all that matters.
• 7:12
  And that will always be forever.
• 7:13
  But that approach is no good whatsoever.
• 7:16
  In a set of circumstances where the engine number will change
• 7:21
  and the identity will change.
• 7:23
  And the vehicle may carry three or four different identities in its
• 7:27
  lifetime, or the same engine may turn up on three or four cars or more.
• 7:32
  Which means that when we look at the old commentaries and the identity,
• 7:36
  we now have another question to ask in terms of provenance.
• 7:40
  And that question is not, is this the car you think you've got?
• 7:43
  The question now becomes, does this car have The background that you said it
• 7:48
  was really the car that Fangio used on a particular race on a particular day.
• 7:53
  Because if it had multiple identities, we're now going to
• 7:56
  have to say which identity on that day was the one that was used.
• 8:01
  And that's the implications for provenance.
• 8:03
  This car is a, uh, Maserati 250F with a, uh, very interesting,
• 8:08
  uh, background of provenance.
• 8:10
  It is actually the, uh, third car of three to carry engine and identity 2504.
• 8:18
  The first car to do so was, uh, one of the interim Formula
• 8:21
  One cars that we saw before.
• 8:23
  When the customer car was ready, the full Formula One car was ready, the
• 8:28
  interim was sent back to the factory, and the brand new 250S was given to
• 8:33
  Prince Beauregard, and he had a great time racing it in the 50s, except he
• 8:37
  only raced it one and a half races.
• 8:39
  He was over at the British Grand Prix and made a deal with the BRM team to,
• 8:44
  uh, have a second driver drive his car.
• 8:47
  That's.
• 8:47
  Pete Burrow could not do so because of his illness.
• 8:50
  Halfway through the race, he come in, the drivers changed positions, uh, the
• 8:54
  B area driver took the, uh, car out, and within two or three laps, had managed
• 9:00
  to roll it, put it over on its lid, and damaged the, uh, the car quite a lot.
• 9:06
  The unfortunate part was that Burra now had a, uh, a race meeting the following
• 9:10
  weekend, which would have a lot of starting money, but he had no car to race.
• 9:15
  So the deal was made with the BRM team that they would swap the engines
• 9:19
  and the identities into the cars.
• 9:21
  The damaged one would be retained by BRM and Burra would go away with the old BRM
• 9:26
  team car, and that's what he would race.
• 9:28
  So it turned out, nobody said anything about it for a long, long time.
• 9:31
  Car itself was photographed outside.
• 9:33
  Museum in New Zealand came into New Zealand as CAR 2 5 0 9, which was the
• 9:39
  BRM team car, but it wasn't 2 5 0 9 at all Underneath it, it was 2 5 0 4.
• 9:45
  We checked this out a few years back.
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  Um, by putting a tape measure over it, there was a difference in builds between
• 9:50
  the 2, 2, 5, 8, 4 was a very early.
• 9:53
  And it had a slightly shorter wheelbase and we measured it up and sure
• 9:58
  enough, the car masquerading is 2509 in New Zealand for many, many years.
• 10:03
  It's actually 2504, third of the cars to carry that number.
• 10:07
  Uh, and also one fourth one later on also carried the, the engine number
• 10:13
  2504 and was also known as 2504.
• 10:15
  So that's four vehicles, four engines, one identity, 2504.
• 10:19
  This rearrangement of identity numbers every time an engine was changed
• 10:24
  has been around for a long time.
• 10:25
  The old English commentaries actually noticed that the changes had taken place.
• 10:30
  They would note, for instance, the car 2512, at least they're pretty sure it
• 10:34
  was 2512, turning up the race says 2514 or something, uh, that, uh, would note.
• 10:41
  That there was a change in identity, but gave no clue whatsoever, or any
• 10:47
  thought to why that may have been so.
• 10:50
  To answer that question, we go to Donald's database.
• 10:54
  It's a very, very large database.
• 10:56
  Very well laid out.
• 10:57
  I've got to thank Donald for giving me access to that database a long time ago.
• 11:02
  Turns up, uh, on his emails, one day, and says, Do you mind if I muck around
• 11:06
  with your database, and, uh, to Don's credit, he said, Yeah, go right ahead.
• 11:10
  What Donald had done is captured the engine numbers for each
• 11:14
  vehicle, each car, and each race.
• 11:16
  And when his database was put alongside the older commentaries, There was a one
• 11:22
  to one correspondence between what the older commentaries had just noted as This
• 11:27
  car raced as 251 4, for instance, Donald's database showed that on this race.
• 11:33
  Yes, it did run as 251 4 and that it also carried engine 251 4 for that race.
• 11:40
  So we were able basically to take all of the old puzzles of identity for the 250 S
• 11:45
  and as a side issue, every other Maserati as well, that was traced in the 50s.
• 11:50
  And, uh, solves a lot of old puzzles and problems which had found their
• 11:57
  way into the audio commentary.
• 11:59
  So we are now quite happy to say that Maserati identified its race
• 12:03
  cars, according to the engine that was in them at the time.
• 12:07
  Ask him to have a look at this document you'll see on Don's side notes on
• 12:11
  the, uh, right hand side of the page.
• 12:14
  Maybe now and again he will note with engine.
• 12:17
  With engine 2514, for instance, he's following card 2512, which is a, uh, very
• 12:23
  interesting little thing in its own right.
• 12:25
  To go with, if you wish to continue this with us, we'd be very, very happy to have
• 12:30
  you do so, because the more attention we put to it, the more accurate we
• 12:35
  get with our data and our conclusions.
• 12:38
  There is a set of papers to go with this presentation, and they are
• 12:43
  available from Bob, if you wish, or Bob will give you that email for
• 12:47
  me, and you can get them direct.
• 12:49
  You have to look at the whole thing and, but it's only 17 pages
• 12:52
  long and we've got to get there.
• 12:53
  Dom, nice to see you.
• 12:54
  How are you going?
• 12:55
  I'm the one who put this together.
• 12:57
  So let me try to explain it to you.
• 12:59
  I am a trained professional historian.
• 13:01
  So when I started seeing anomalies in data that I'm digging out of various sources
• 13:08
  from the archives and so forth, and Trev was pretty clever to pick up with this
• 13:12
  with me because everybody else thought I was crazy and a complete nutcase.
• 13:16
  Let me explain it this way.
• 13:18
  There is how the rest of us do things.
• 13:20
  Then there's the way the Italian automakers do things.
• 13:25
  Maserati, and I think Travis pretty well hit this.
• 13:28
  They looked at the motor as how they tracked these cars and that
• 13:34
  rolled through the racing shop.
• 13:36
  When he came in, they pulled the engine.
• 13:38
  They did all the little maintenance on the chassis.
• 13:40
  And when it was time to roll it out.
• 13:43
  They put whatever engine was ready in that car.
• 13:47
  Now, originally, the chassis and the motor all pretty well matched, but engines blow
• 13:53
  up, you build a new engine, but you don't always build a new chassis, or you build
• 13:57
  a new chassis, put an old engine in it.
• 13:59
  That sort of thing.
• 14:00
  Dino, Gino, and Luigi, all working in the racing shop, tracked it by the engines.
• 14:07
  It's kind of like those of you who can do a calculator, versus those of
• 14:11
  us who are completely baffled by them because we do scientific notation.
• 14:16
  It's that different.
• 14:17
  They were not like the English, as Trevor pointed out, back when
• 14:21
  it all starts, it's all matches.
• 14:23
  As I started digging and digging and digging and
• 14:26
  digging, was here for like 2512.
• 14:28
  Okay, the English would call it car 2512.
• 14:32
  Well, when it got engine 2514 in it to the racing shop and to Alfasini
• 14:39
  Alfieri Maserati, the entrant, it became a different car, 2514.
• 14:44
  As long as it stayed in Italy, not a problem.
• 14:47
  But what happens?
• 14:48
  when it crosses a border.
• 14:50
  Paperwork.
• 14:51
  So to make the paperwork match whatever the parts in the engine, it's easier
• 14:57
  to fix because it's all just paperwork, or you put a little tiny metal strip
• 15:02
  over the actual number of the chassis, or the engine as the case may be.
• 15:07
  Everyone else says that's 2512, but to the factory it's 2514.
• 15:13
  All their paperwork says 2514.
• 15:16
  All the automotive historians and people from tracking, you know, doing the chassis
• 15:20
  colt, checking all the blocks on that.
• 15:22
  It's a different car.
• 15:24
  So that's basically what Trev and I came to the conclusion.
• 15:27
  It's like, There's a problem here, and everyone thinks Trev and I were
• 15:32
  out of sync because they didn't think, in this case, the Maserati.
• 15:35
  But when Trev went back and started looking at the history of previous
• 15:40
  cars, we found the same thing.
• 15:42
  It wasn't just the 250Fs, it was other cars prior to that.
• 15:46
  So what we're basically saying is identity, as Trev, I think, made very
• 15:50
  clear, is not always what you think it is.
• 15:53
  So that's one of the little things you have to watch when you're a historian.
• 15:56
  Particularly if you're an automobile racing historian, it's
• 15:59
  sometimes what you're given isn't necessarily what the case is,
• 16:04
  it's according to who you talk to.
• 16:06
  An automobile normally, as Trev correctly pointed out in the first slide, it
• 16:11
  has an identity as whatever the VIN number or the chassis number was.
• 16:17
  But for the Italians, they thought a little differently.
• 16:20
  The motard was what they created.
• 16:22
  Did I do okay there, Trev?
• 16:24
  You're doing fine.
• 16:25
  Now that you're all confused, don't laugh, we have fought this battle, Treveni,
• 16:30
  for what now, a better part of a decade?
• 16:32
  Something like that?
• 16:33
  Yeah, that'd be, uh, that would be close to it, and, uh, also, Don,
• 16:36
  uh, as you say, people saying to me that it cannot possibly be true.
• 16:41
  Which is just a huge knee delight if you want me to prove something.
• 16:45
  I have a good friend who just got a Lifetime Achievement Award in England for
• 16:49
  his writings, this guy named Doug Nye.
• 16:51
  And Doug, you and I go back a long way.
• 16:54
  We've actually had Doug here at the Research Center.
• 16:57
  It's 20 years ago now, but he is reluctant to accept this because he's
• 17:02
  a palmy and that's how they do things.
• 17:05
  It's everything's the chassis.
• 17:06
  But when I talk to people in Italy, they go, Sir Terzi, makes sense.
• 17:11
  A motori, motori.
• 17:13
  No, no, not an aereo.
• 17:14
  It's a motori.
• 17:15
  So it's a little different.
• 17:17
  And it's just like anything else.
• 17:18
  When you switch over to certain types of history and nationalities,
• 17:23
  you have to be very careful.
• 17:25
  We may all agree that on the auction block, it's 25 12.
• 17:29
  But really?
• 17:30
  If it's got the engine 2514 in it, that's what the mechanics called it.
• 17:35
  So that's really all Trev and I are saying.
• 17:38
  Give us a chance to do this.
• 17:39
  It's not how everybody operates, but then again, I'm helpless.
• 17:43
  I do scientific notation.
• 17:45
  You give me a regular little calculator and I'm completely helpless
• 17:48
  because that's how the mind works.
• 17:50
  It is how they work.
• 17:51
  And I didn't print off a copy, how the things, what about two centimeters
• 17:56
  thick now, three centimeters, four centimeters thick, the log book.
• 17:59
  So there's a lot of effort that goes into this.
• 18:02
  And we hope you get an understanding that identity, particularly in
• 18:06
  racing, is malleable, very malleable.
• 18:08
  You could see Richard Petty in Car 43, but Car 43, one season is not Car 43
• 18:14
  the next season, et cetera, et cetera.
• 18:16
  But it's always want to you.
• 18:18
  Car 43.
• 18:20
  So that's part of what got this going is it is changeable.
• 18:24
  It is malleable.
• 18:25
  Anyway, now that we confused you all, anything you want
• 18:27
  to throw in there, Trevor.
• 18:29
  Thanks Don.
• 18:30
  As Don has said, the thing that we are working on tend to be much,
• 18:33
  much larger than just the 250S.
• 18:36
  The little internal recalibration that the engine will set the
• 18:39
  chassis numbers, the identity number for a particular race applies.
• 18:43
  Right across the board, picked it up in all sorts of places.
• 18:46
  Every time we have a puzzle, we've managed to, uh, solve it by
• 18:52
  tracing and chasing the engine.
• 18:53
  Whether that be a sports car, Formula One car, or even a 1930s or a very early
• 18:59
  1928s comes down to the same thing.
• 19:02
  Engine equals identity, or at least for that day.
• 19:05
  Thanks, Don.
• 19:05
  That's our story.
• 19:06
  And we are definitely sticking to it.
• 19:09
  Okay.
• 19:10
  Any, any questions for us?
• 19:11
  Yeah, we got a couple.
• 19:13
  Last word.
• 19:14
  Don, I feel like the reason that Doug Nye doesn't want to commit to accepting
• 19:19
  this research has nothing to do with his nationality and everything to do with
• 19:23
  the fact that Doug Nye is retained by auction companies to confirm the identity
• 19:30
  and history of valuable old racing cars.
• 19:33
  And when yourself and Trevor.
• 19:36
  presented this research a couple of years ago at a conference that we were both at.
• 19:41
  I happened to have lunch with a very well known classic car and racing car broker.
• 19:48
  And I said to him, dude, what do you think of this?
• 19:51
  And he said, well, it's all a load of bollocks because to try and unpick
• 19:57
  the identity of all of these cars, it would destroy his credibility with.
• 20:03
  People who he's had business relationships with for years and years and years.
• 20:07
  So I'm not saying that it's fine, that that's the attitude.
• 20:12
  But what I am saying is that there's a awful lot of money and an awful lot of
• 20:17
  water that's gone under the bridge with a lot of these cars, and it would be
• 20:21
  very risky for his professional position for somebody like Doug Nye to say, you
• 20:25
  know what, all these Maserati 250Fs that we've identified as being, this is the
• 20:30
  Sterling Moss car, this is the Berra car.
• 20:32
  We were suddenly to throw all of that up in the air and leave everybody
• 20:36
  feeling as faintly confused and dissatisfied as we're feeling at the
• 20:40
  moment about the identity of these cars.
• 20:42
  There's almost no upside.
• 20:43
  I feel it's a little bit like when colleagues of mine
• 20:47
  at the university proposed.
• 20:49
  Systems to better identify whether or not a particular car was authentic or not.
• 20:55
  Pushback that we had from within the old car community was, You know what?
• 20:59
  We don't want to know if it's inauthentic.
• 21:01
  I want to believe that Stirling Moss owned my car and raced my car.
• 21:05
  It's in nobody's interest to do all of the research.
• 21:08
  Simply to cast doubt on the identity of this particular car.
• 21:13
  It was not an easy concept at first to accept because we're all been
• 21:19
  drummed and this is how it is.
• 21:21
  It was only those little pesky things called facts.
• 21:26
  And this was the key.
• 21:27
  If you dig and you dig, and that's what we do.
• 21:31
  By dumb luck, I made acquaintance of a Hopkirk up in, uh, in
• 21:36
  British Columbia, Vancouver.
• 21:38
  Who had an interest in the 250Fs and was a maniac, basically.
• 21:44
  And he had all this chassis network that he created because some cars, you could
• 21:49
  count the louvers and some you could do the dents and all this sort of thing.
• 21:54
  It was particular to that chassis.
• 21:56
  However, he also had gotten, by accident, The numbers of the engines in those cars,
• 22:04
  and when I started noticing something that Barry just didn't quite get, he
• 22:09
  thought I was nuts like everybody else.
• 22:11
  Was, wait a minute, you're calling it 2512, but the factory's calling it
• 22:17
  2514, and everybody else is calling it because the chassis is 2512.
• 22:22
  But the Italians are calling it that, so I'm, what's wrong?
• 22:25
  But you're correct, the commercial interest.
• 22:27
  And changing all this for, it, it would only be basically Maserati,
• 22:31
  Bondurant, Bondini, bunch of the Enies, if you will, that did this.
• 22:36
  Remember, Ferrari started off that way.
• 22:38
  And then because he had so many English customers, said it was much easier.
• 22:43
  Because if you ever look at the Ferrari list, there is the Toleri,
• 22:47
  the, uh, Tolero, the, uh, chassis.
• 22:49
  But if the engine's different, it's noted.
• 22:52
  It's always noted, and a lot of times you'll find it in the paperwork,
• 22:55
  the Indran in the Ferrari paperwork.
• 22:57
  This is a fascinating topic.
• 22:59
  That I never dreamed I'd ever be dealing with, but identity became an issue
• 23:05
  simply because it was so confusing.
• 23:07
  I just want to say that I think it's a little unfair to, uh, paint, uh,
• 23:11
  strictly Italian automakers for this kind of confusion, Doug and I, and I
• 23:16
  had a, a long and interesting session together on the identity of Lotus 19s.
• 23:21
  As most of us may know, a certain English manufacturer of a car's
• 23:26
  name, Lotus, last name was Chapman.
• 23:28
  Had a tendency to want to change things around and there were all sorts
• 23:32
  of good and sometimes bad reasons.
• 23:35
  Sometimes they needed to get it across the border.
• 23:37
  And the one that was on the paperwork had a fun chassis number.
• 23:40
  And the one they had in the truck was another one.
• 23:43
  So they changed it.
• 23:44
  In the case of Lotus 19s, it is truly murky.
• 23:48
  I got involved with a car that claimed to be the first that Moss drove to two
• 23:53
  very successful races first at Riverside.
• 23:55
  And then at Monterey.
• 23:57
  There are three people in the world who claim absolutely that they own that car.
• 24:02
  The joke is that the car was actually comprehensively destroyed in an
• 24:06
  accident in New Zealand, and the remains of the car came back in a suitcase
• 24:11
  that went into the baggage container of the jet that he came back on.
• 24:16
  So it's a fascinating topic and one that's.
• 24:19
  Full of all sorts of problems.
• 24:21
  I've been yelled at any number of different times about that sort of thing.
• 24:24
  So good for you guys for doing it.
• 24:26
  It's fascinating and the end.
• 24:28
  And also, of course, as we are hearing, it also relates a lot to not only value, but
• 24:33
  really what the history is and something that sometimes it's just going to be
• 24:37
  too murky to dig out, but there it is.
• 24:40
  It's always boils down to one phrase, pity the poor historian.
• 24:45
  We can only do what we do.
• 24:46
  We do the facts.
• 24:48
  Again, Trev did a tremendous amount of work, and again, Trev and I go back a
• 24:52
  long ways on this, and we appreciate you giving us the patience to put up with it.
• 24:56
  Thank you so much for doing this, and I was curious if the logbook extends to any
• 25:00
  of the French marks, specifically Delahaye is something I've been looking into, and
• 25:04
  I'm encountering some of the same issues.
• 25:06
  There are others who have gone and replicated this, because one of
• 25:09
  the things we do as a historian, it's different than, like, Doug,
• 25:13
  Doug keeps a lot of information.
• 25:15
  He holds it, which is what authors do, which historians
• 25:19
  do, until it gets published.
• 25:21
  I've thrown this information out there some time ago.
• 25:24
  I sat on a lot of information from Barry and another good friend of mine, David
• 25:28
  McKenzie, who did a lot of work, who helped unknowingly find the anomalies,
• 25:33
  because that's what we look for.
• 25:35
  We look for anomalies and helped me find some of these anomalies,
• 25:38
  even though he was not sure what I was looking for at first.
• 25:42
  There are a number of people come around to this.
• 25:44
  I think they basically still very quiet about it, exactly what John pointed out.
• 25:49
  Because then you start looking at Alfa Romeo, you start looking at
• 25:53
  these other companies as well, C.
• 25:55
  I.
• 25:55
  A.
• 25:55
  T.
• 25:55
  So forth, a lot of them initially did identity one way, but because of their
• 26:03
  customer base, they're not stupid.
• 26:05
  They understand how the system works.
• 26:07
  And they found that out real quick.
• 26:10
  That don't confuse people.
• 26:12
  All Trev and I do is confuse people.
• 26:14
  Because we look at the facts.
• 26:16
  And we don't worry about the other stuff.
• 26:18
  Thank goodness, because I would make a horrible car dealer.
• 26:21
  Tell you what it is, sort of thing.
• 26:22
  I just have a warning that none of this applies to American race
• 26:26
  cars up at least through 1980.
• 26:28
  Numbers per mil of cars have been lost.
• 26:31
  Frank Curtis and Watson.
• 26:33
  Numbered cars.
• 26:34
  And I have the bill sheets for most of the Offenheiser engines, but they changed
• 26:38
  engines without making any note at all.
• 26:41
  An engine blew up, they put another one in and so what?
• 26:44
  Actually at one year in the fifties, there were more Offenheiser engines
• 26:47
  entered at Indy than had been built by Meyer and Drake at Offenheiser because
• 26:51
  people took blown up engines and bought some parts and put them together.
• 26:55
  So you can't run the numbers.
• 26:56
  You have to look at number of louvers and wells on the chassis to identify them.
• 27:01
  And I should give some credit to Gordon because that was one of the
• 27:04
  anomalies that I began coming back to.
• 27:07
  I said, this can't be unique.
• 27:09
  And you look at a lot of American racing cars, dirt track cars, etc.
• 27:13
  They didn't have an identity except number 52, number 88.
• 27:18
  That was basically it.
• 27:19
  And you're right.
• 27:20
  When you had pointed out, said, you know, I'm not insane because Gordon has found
• 27:24
  the same thing on the, off the engines.
• 27:27
  And we said, we found that some of these engines, when they
• 27:30
  were broken, they got thrown.
• 27:32
  Chassis were, you know, like modern.
• 27:33
  There's a couple of McLarens.
• 27:35
  What?
• 27:35
  There must be like 15 of one chassis number because it wasn't, it's ridiculous.
• 27:41
  Identity is an open topic.
• 27:43
  Have at it as far as I'm concerned.
• 27:45
  Thank you very much.
• 27:46
  We appreciate it all.
• 27:47
  Thank you.
• 27:48
  Thank you, Don and Trevor.
• 27:49
  We could stay here till midnight, probably.
• 27:52
  Trevor sent me pages and pages of documentation, which he said
• 27:56
  pass along to whoever asks for it.
• 27:59
  So I have a PDF that's, I don't know, what, 30, 40 pages long, if you want it.
• 28:04
  And then you email me that you want it.
• 28:05
  It's easy, easy as that.
• 28:07
  Okay, Trevor.
• 28:08
  Thank you much.
• 28:09
  Thank everybody in your team.
• 28:11
  Uh, right down to getting the invite to, uh, present to you guys.
• 28:15
  Okay.
• 28:15
  Appreciate it.
• 28:16
  Did it.
• 28:16
  And then thank you very much.
• 28:18
  Just to finish on there, Bob.
• 28:20
  I have a friend who looked at what I'd done and he said.
• 28:22
  What are you worried about?
• 28:23
  He said that crawl over the John, Paul, George and Ringo would make no
• 28:27
  difference as long as you could track them, which I think it's Donald's point.
• 28:31
  There's two different ways of tracking.
• 28:32
  We'll bring them together.
• 28:33
  So thank you.
• 28:34
  Thank you all very much.
• 28:35
  And, um, see you next time round.
• 28:37
  Thanks, Trevor.
• 28:38
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