Inner Fender Panels

For those of you that have read "Inside Ferrari" by Michael Dregni, you may remember the story (sidebar on Page 66) about the Carrozzeria Touring workers going out and stealing Cinzano, Pirelli, etc. signs right after WWII because aluminum was is very short supply in Italy at that time. For those of you that haven't read that book, I highly recommend it. It has some fascinating insights into the workings in the factory and various supplies over the years.

In any case, there are several parts to my car that have never been on it since I purchased it in boxes. One set of these are the inner front fender panels. In the process of looking at these to see what needed to be done, I ended up cleaning off years of oil, dirt, grime, under body coating, etc. When I was doing this, some interesting things started appearing. As you can see, the part is made from a sign.

Here is it all cleaned up.

Anybody recognize the advertising?

The other panel on the right side was made up of two different signs.

The one piece looks like a yellow highway sign while the other part of the panel is from a sign similar to the one above. The red lettering is 'T U R' and the white is 'U A'.

The left side panels turned out to be original, although they really aren't much better made than the replacements. The only reason I know that they are original is that the '592' stamped in them matches the Pininfarina body number for my car.

Since the car didn't have any signs of major damage to the right side, I assume that the panels got left off during some repair and disappeared. Then some enterprising body shop used what was easily(?) available for the raw material. This was probably done while the car was still in Europe just based on the riveting and workmanship on the replacement panels.

Making the replacement panels will be interesting. For the continuing story, please click here.