Hi,
We’re talking about two different cars here, which seems a bit unclear so far.
As yet we don’t know whether it is the genuine GT40 P/1023 which is due at the weekend or the currently (I think) yellow Sbarro-built car which periodically still gets referred to as 1023, despite having nothing whatsoever to do with it, and despite having been long acknowledged by a number of its own, 2079. For now we can ignore the fact that when it was sold new by Sbarro it was claimed to be GT40 P/1039, the car which had burned at Monza. As should be well known by now, as far as I am concerned everything has a right to exist for what it is, but nothing has any right to exist for what it is not. So right from the get go, with Sbarro selling this car claiming it to be an original Ford GT40, it was therefore a fake Ford from day one, rather than a genuine Sbarro. Next we have the further minor glitch that not only was it not GT40 P/1039 which Sbarro had sold, but it was not even GT40 P/1039 which had been the car which had had the fire at Monza. That car had been GT40 P/1040, a car which Sbarro had actually owned, but had already long ago disposed of before he built this car and claimed it to his customer as being the burnt Monza car. And I digress here, but it has to be done, because Sbarro also claimed to David Piper when he sold him the chassis of GT40 P/1033, though not claiming any particular chassis number, that it was the car which had burnt at Monza. This, despite him at that time actually being the owner of the actual Monza car, GT40 P/1040. But we’re not finished yet. Many years after Sbarro sold David Piper 1033, I had occasion to call David up about something – incredibly – not GT40 related. Once that part of the call was over, David asked if I were still involved with GT40s, and when I said I was, he told me he was in the process of marketing a GT40 to a friend in America. I, naturally, asked what car it was, and David told me, “Franco Sbarro’s going to sell me the burnt out Monza car”. !?!?!? So I reminded him that that was what he had told me Sbarro had claimed the last GT40 he had sold him had been. So Christ knows what that damn car was, but even by Sbarro’s “standards” it was about 5 chassis removed from any chance of having been what Sbarro was claiming it as.
End of digression. Back to the details of this forum thread.
And so while we wait to find out if it is indeed 1023 which is heading for the Netherlands Historics or the Sbarro fake “1023”, let’s switch attention to Mr.Stummeyer’s red and gold car.
And as none of you will be surprised to learn, it has absolutely hee-haw to do with Alan Mann’s lightweight AM GT-1. You may find this hard to believe, but similarly to how Pierre Bos has laughably modified his Sbarro fake “1040” to try to incorporate some of the correct details which I have been pointing out for years that his car was totally devoid of (none of the modifications, by the way, having been done anything like correctly, so what was the damn point???), Georg Stummeyer’s “AM GT-1”, which he claims to have owned since 1981, is a Mark V which he in fact bought in 1993, not 1981, which has had modifications carried out to try to tart it up and fool people into actually believing it is a Ford GT40. It is not Alan Mann’s lightweight AM GT-1. It is a feebly-modified mark V.
How long have I known it was a mark V? About 3 hours!
I had long known Stummeyer to have been involved with two Mark Vs, but though I also knew absolutely that whatever the car he was claiming as AM GT-1 was nothing of the kind, I did not know until today, thanks to John’s photos, that underneath the façade of Stummeyer’s fatuous claims to AM GT-1 was still the Mark V he was racing beforehand! [I have to cover myself at this point and say that for all I know it could, though extremely unlikely, be a different Mark V, but Mark V it is.] I have found loads of photos on the Internet of the car, but very few have shown the chassis even to the slightest extent, and even those few photos have been posted at far too small a size to be able to see anything that helped. I even saw the car race at the Nurburgring OGP in 2009, and I never got the chance to see any details. I did get to see it race, and by God he races it well. It looked and sounded fantastic. But I knew it wasn’t AM GT-1. AM GT-1 has been owned by Rex Myers since 1982, and should very soon be emerging from restoration by Racing Icons, who were responsible for the outstanding restoration of Mark IIB GT40 P/1047, which put in an appearance at the Le Mans Classic on its way home to Japan. Wish I could have been there to see it!
Anyway, now, however, thanks to John’s photos, I know the truth, which hopefully the following few photos will illustrate well enough. I’m using John’s photo of the front of the chassis followed by a photo of the first Mark V, GT40 P/1090, then John’s photo of the left front suspension followed by a photo of one of the early Mark Vs. In each pair of photos I have circled (or “rectangled”) just the main Mark V elements visible.
It astonishes me that he can think that by adding roughly GT40-type front structure, and by adding exceedingly inaccurate pseudo-genuine-GT40 curved structure and side panels up in front of the screen, that he turn his car from a Mark V into a Mark I. I consider this kind of crap to be extremely insulting!
Between his ridiculous fiddling around on his fake AM GT-1, the similar farfing of Pierre Bos on his fake 1040, last year’s appearance at Nurburgring of a fake 1029, the fake 1041 (also, I think, a mark V), the fake 111 allegedly rebuilt as a coupe in white and blue…….etc., etc!
When is all this crap ever going to stop?
Answers on a postcard please……
Ronnie Spain