Meade persisted and a price equivalent to $420 was agreed, but he wanted the car that night before anyone discovered the mistake the next morning. Maserati typically took last season’s race cars and dropped them into a swampy field behind the shops. We don’t sell beat up old race cars to our clientele.” The cover could not disguise its elegant form.
Meade noticed an old race car under a tarp, perched on a pair of sawhorses. Aurelio Bertocchi, (future company president and son of chief test driver, Guerrino) happened to be working late and offered a brief tour. He arrived at the Maserati gate at 7:30 p.m., finding the place closed and mostly deserted. Roman serendipity: Working nights on a Dino De Laurentiis film called Best of Enemies while searching for the “the warehouse treasure” in daylight - urban myth, so on to Modena and the epicenter of fabulous cars.
Six months to Italy by way of parties in Mallorca, a sailboat to Genoa and a free motorcycle to Rome. Seasick for 35 days in the galley of a Norwegian grain ship, SS Nardo, he jumped ship in Norway and headed south with his traveling thumb. The nearest Europe-bound freighters left from New Orleans, so he packed his gym bag, stuffed the $50 he had saved into his pocket, and hitchhiked to New Orleans. Work for passage on a freighter better than cheap, passage plus pay. I had found out that what I really wanted to do in life was to go back, build these bodies for these cars, buy these race cars, prepare them for the street and send them all over the world,” - Tom Meade “There is a warehouse in Rome full of these old race cars and they are all for sale - cheap.”Īn epiphany - and a future - in the blink of an eye. You can have it for $4,000.”Īfter the name, the rest had been lost to Meade’s ears. It’s only a two-liter four, but it has double overhead cams and two big Weber carbs, it’s light and fast. The surprised Newport Beach, California, owner answered from the back of his garage, “It’s a Ferrari 500 TRC. Without hesitation, he walked straight in to see what this shape belonged to. He had noticed it before on his walk home from work, but this time a figure was moving in the shadows at the back of the garage. It was the most beautiful car Meade had ever seen. It was an Italian posteriore elegant, sensuous, and spellbinding. In 1960, fresh from his “world tour” with the Navy, Tom Meade thought he had seen everything.
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