'58 Imperial factory photo on ebay

["Clint and Laurie Carter" <laurielu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David, with that story You surely must either work for the US government,
sit on the City Council, or are related to my ex-wife.
Clint Carter
'59 Crown
aka Laurie's Pink Lady

ps
 Is there a chat session tonight?
----- Original Message -----
From: <David.Whitney@xxxxxxxx>
To: <mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 12:28 PM
Subject: IML: '58 Imperial factory photo on ebay


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> This is the ultra-rare "Furberia" Imperial.  Ghia coachworks received an
> order from a troupe of Hungarian circus midgets in Buda-Pest after they
> learned they had pooled to purchase a winning ticket in the Italian
lottery
> in September 1956.  Fed up with sharing a train with smelly critters, some
> of which had more than two legs, but unwilling to give up the lifestyle
> they loved, they decided they would spend the rest of their working lives
> traveling in the highest style from town to town with the circus.
>
> Ghia coachworks spent hundreds of man-hours fabricating and assembling the
> parts necessary to reduce the 129-inch convertible chassis and 2-door
coupe
> body to Liliputian proportions and removing all evidence of luxury.  The
> 392-cubic-inch V-8 engine was removed and replaced by a 500-cc two-stroke
> motorcycle engine because high-octane gasoline required by the hemi's 10:1
> compression ratio was not available anywhere behind the Iron Curtain.  The
> new "Imperialists" had specified replacement Fiat badges in their order so
> as to avoid restrictions against importing Capitalist ostentation to their
> homeland.  But before the magnificent car could be delivered, the troupe
> was arrested on charges of being sympathetic to the Nagy government and
> never heard from again.
>
> KGB agents, one of whom is pictured in the ebay photo, produced
> sufficiently official looking documentation to convince Ghia to release
the
> coach, which was long rumored to have been stored in an underground
missile
> silo near Boris Yeltsin's Black Sea dacha.
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> Many people don't know, but this was the car that cemented the
> Chrysler/Ghia deal.  After Virgil Exner saw what the Italian craftsmen had
> done, he reportedly said, "If they can do this, they can do anything!"
>
> Hee hee hee,
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> David
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