About car puzzle #120: Thomassima III

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Are there no Ferrari fans among you lot? Last week’s puzzle car had strong ties to the Italian make and the car is very well known in prancing horse-circles, but right answers were scarce as rocking-horse manure. Frank Chickilly wrote: “It is an Intermecchania. Designed and built in Italy, by a former Ferrari engineer. It is powered by an American V8 engine, I think a GM.” Sorry Frank, that's something else! Dick Ploeg came up with a rebodied Ferrari, “most probably by Drogo”, which was just slightly warmer, but then Sapoutzis Costas came in, saying hello from Greece. He wrote: “It is Thomassima, a Ferrari with body design by American Tom Meade in the 1960s, based on a 250 GT. Only one prototype was built.” And that’s it. And there’s no excuse. The car made it to just about every motoring publication in the late 1960s; early 1970s, from magazine to television, while Hot Wheels turned it into a toy and the Ferrari museum even showed it in an exhibition earlier this year.

But this particular Thomassima may have been a lone star – it wasn’t all on its own. The late Tom Meade was just a little bit more prolific as a coachbuilder. As a matter of fact his earlier Thomassima II was the star of this year’s Concorso Italiano after having been lost, rediscovered and restored. And it was for sale earlier this week. The asking price of 9 million dollars may have been somewhat extravagant, but hey, the car did sell, proving there is a demand for automobile extravagancy.

(Words and archive pictures Jeroen Booij) 

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