Car shop owner honors Italian car designer

Jeff Cobb, who repairs and loves fast Italian cars, knows how to return a favor.

Tom Tjaarda, who has designed cars for Ferrari, Fiat and Ford, accepted Cobb’s invitation to attend his car show in Baton Rouge last year, adding to its international cachet.

But Tjaarda found himself stranded here after an ash-spewing volcano grounded European air traffic for a week. Cobb and Tjaarda, who lives in Torino, Italy, have kept in touch since.

Then last spring, Cobb realized there was no planned nod to a landmark Tjaarda design at the king of exotic auto shows, Pebble Beach’s Concours d’Elegance, where Tjaarda has been a judge many times.

This year is the 40th anniversary of the Tjaarda’s De Tomaso Pantera, a sexy, low-slung rocket. At $10,000, it represented Italy’s first effort to produce a sports car the average American could afford.

Cobb, who owns a Pantera in mid-refurbishment, started sending emails to collectors, automotive journalists and admirers who shared his appreciation of Tjaarda and the Pantera. Cobb quickly had enough support and donations to fly Tjaarda over and host a swanky party for him and more than forty of his friends at a rented villa.

One of the guests that night was Robert Cumberford, a pre-eminent writer on automotive design. Contacted at his home in southwest France, Cumberford said there was no slight.

“Tom Tjaarda is a very important Italian designer,” Cumberford said. And although the Pantera wasn’t even an especially successful car off the production line—“[Scottish race car driver] Jackie Stewart nearly killed himself in one because the windows fogged up”—the Pantera remains popular among collectors who enjoy restoring and modifying them.

“The gearboxes alone are worth their weight in gold,” Cumberford said.

Moreover, the Pantera was only one of some 50 cars Tjaarda is credited with designing, including the precursor to the European Ford Fiesta, which was a huge success there.

“I like problem-solving, and I saw [not recognizing Tjaarda] as a problem,” Cobb says.

After a hiatus in 2011, Cobb will host Live Oak d’Concours April 13-15 in Baton Rouge.