I stopped by the Paddock to inspect the work on two 330GT 2+2s I’m getting body and paint work done. The first one, SN 9153, is getting ready for final paint. It’s been block sanded, and we’re a couple steps away from applying color.

I went down to inspect the body work one last time to inspect the body line and gaps. This was the last chance we would have to make changes that are easier to make than after color is applied. Even though I’ve looked at this car several times before in the last several months, it’s always good to take one more look.

We decided to fix a minor gap in the way the front hood fit, but again, now was the time for these adjustments before the final color was applied!

On the other side of the shop was SN 8499, another SII 330 that will eventually be painted. Mark Barton of the Panel Shop Inc., moved this car over to the Paddock to finish the final bodywork. The biggest project was to fabricate a front bumper section for this car from scratch! To review, this car came to me for a color change, but after removing the paint, we discovered a ton of body filler and some pretty substandard repairs. It was decided to fix the damage correctly, but one of them was this front bumper center section.

We believe the previous shop was able to source some new bumper pieces and repaired what they could not replace.

The problem was when Mark repaired the damage to the nose of the car and the repaired front bumper showed how wavy it actually was!

It was even worse from behind, as the support brackets were poorly tacked welded in place, and crudely fabricated.

The time it would take to repair these problems, and make this center section right was not going to be cost effective. Mark asked me to look for a new center section, but I found anything used was probably going to take a similar amount of work, and prohibitively expensive.

Mark finally decided to go ahead and make a new bumper from scratch and eliminate all my searching and headaches. He was hoping to save himself some time and effort by my finding him a replacement, but in the world of Vintage Ferraris, fabrication is often the better solution.

Besides striking out on finding a used bumper, I was quoted $5K for a bumper that would have taken a few months to arrive after fabricating in Italy, still needing fitting and plating, so having Mark make this center section in the end was the better solution.