Today’s featured Ferrari started life as a 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta with a steel Berlinetta body that was supplied to E Molozzi.
By this time a Californian Tom Meade had hitched from Norway to Rome in pursuit of a dream to own an Italian exotic car with his savings from a four year stint in the US Navy.
Tom eventually got to the Maserati factory at Modena where he managed to procure an old Maserati 350S sans engine and fit it with a Corvette motor that was surplus to Lloyd “Lucky” Crasners requirements.
With input from Gentilini and Fantuzzi Tom’s first special was completed and sent to San Fransisco where Tom briefly settled until some friends landed the car in a Marin County tree top.
With the proceeds from the sale of the wreckage Tom returned to Italy in 1963 where he bought two less than perfect Maserati’s and made them roadworthy before acquiring chassis #3771GT.
It is not clear why #3771GT needed a rebody but it may have been due to flood damage from the 1966 disaster that struck Florence, it appears that a William Dixon was involved in commissioning Tom to rebody the car to his own specifications which included fitting a Ferrari 250 GTO/64 windscreen.
My understanding is that Neri & Bonaccini got the car mechanically back on it’s feet by 1968 two years after William Dixon from Seattle bought it.
The contraction of the Neri Mead and BOnaccini names that gives #3771GT it’s NeMBo sorbriquet which coincidentally is also the Italian name given to the Superman cartoon character and equally coincidentally means ‘coat’ in Swahili.
My thanks to Geoffrey Horton for sharing these photographs of #3771GT taken at Hillsborough Concours d’Elegance last year.
“Thanks for joining me on this “Tom Meade Special” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !
