Pantera factory targas? Will they be the most valuable Panteras

You are dispelling the myths created by the US magazines in the early 70s!

My cooling system and brakes are original Euro spec and I have absolutely no complaints about either.

Triple digits on roads in the mountains and the brakes feel fantastic.

LS

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57tJm0tW3jg]De Tomaso Pantera Gr.3 Prototype and ex-driver "Spiffero" - YouTube[/ame]

Great Pantera with an interesting history...

LS

 

What an interesting thread. I've learned a lot reading what Lash and Mark have posted.

And there are certainly different points of view when it comes to evaluation. That's for sure. Diversity is always nice. But I’m a little confused. Are we talking about a stock portfolio here? Or an art collection? Or a rare coin? Are these pieces going to Sotheby’s or Christie’s?

Or are they going down the road?

If, in fact, one buys cars for any reason other than going down the road, then collectability criteria apply. Otherwise, not.

I’m with Ghostrider. My Panteras were bone stock and I appreciated their history. In fact I’m not sure which I appreciated more – the super-aggressive design or the super-aggressive character of it’s namesake. Alessandro DeTomaso was one of the few pirates to get the better of many a richer pirate, especially those in the Ford empire. Good for him!

But bone stock just never gave me a ‘bone’ when I ‘stock’ my foot to the floor. I always feared leaving the road, or leaving the car on an empty road as I hunted down a service truck.

But thanks to my hot rodding, blinging and bastardizing, I can now dive this beast as fast and as hard and as often as I can. It never breaks down. Costs nothing to maintain. And even an idiot like me can fix it himself.

I can pretty much compete with any modern supercar that costs 5 times as much and takes 2 years and $50,000 every time something breaks.

And since this is a car and not a portfolio to watch over, or a piece of art to display, I actually get in and drive it. My speedo has turned over at least once. I have travelled near and far for over 20 years. I think nothing of an 8 hour drive to have coffee with a friend – just to turn around and drive home. The best part of any ‘car show event’ is the drive there and back.

So to me, and most Pantera owners, the value of this car is that it is a work of art whose emotion and history we can enjoy from the inside out. Rather than just admire from a distance.

As for investment value, my portfolio has increased about 8 fold during the time that I’ve owned my Pantera. I’d much rather lose on the car and gain on the portfolio than the other way around. Just sayin.’
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I’m not a regular but I feel the need to respond to this thread. Disclosure – I’m a Pantera owner.

I actually bought a new 1974 Pantera L from Gerald Lincoln Mercury in Skokie, Illinois. I was 27 years old. I used it as my daily driver for over 3 years in the rain, snow and sun. Never once did it let me down. By that time, they were well sorted and slightly slower because of the EPA regulations. Most of the owners I knew in our local POCA chapter were also pretty young and it was important to us to have a really good sports car that we could afford to own. I think it’s informative to consider the cars we had to choose from in 1974:

Ferrari Dino - several thousand dollars more and pretty slow. I looked at a couple of used ones and one owner told me he wouldn’t downshift it because they were too expensive if you broke something.
Ferrari Daytona - tens of thousands more expensive and not that much faster.
Dino 308 GT4 - more expensive and, well that was about all it had going for it.
E type Jaguar - a little less expensive, not terribly fast, was old technology, had issues with reliability and rust.
Porsche 911 – nice, dependable, slower. The RS was about as fast as the 74 Pantera but was their decontented race version. Rust.
Maserati Bora – see comments about the Daytona. It also used the ZF transaxle.
Countach – brand new that year, big bucks.
Corvette – several thousand less expensive, very slow.
Triumphs, MGs, Fiats, 240Zs, Alfas – When is the last time you’ve ridden in a TR6? Enough said.
Pantera - $11,284, inexpensive to maintain, AC, very quick, beautiful, reliable. Good club. One of the first cars with a true monocoque, mid-engine, and independent suspension, and designed by Dallara.

It’s no wonder they had a lot of younger guys buying them. Unfortunately, the other cars would have been better investments, but that’s not why we bought them. Like most Pantera owners, I don’t care what the car sells for now. I liken them to resto-mod muscle cars, which, by the way, seem to be going up in price. Maybe the Pantera will too.

I drive a different Pantera now, one that I’ve owned since 1981. It’s stock on the outside, electrics have been upgraded, engine mildly massaged to 400+ hp, etc. I drive it everywhere. Last year, I drove it to Phoenix for our annual POCA Fun Rally and while there I tracked it for a day before driving it back home again. I’m going to do that again this year. Would you do that in any of the cars listed above?

We have a good club, it’s got AC, parts are not expensive and are readily available, it’s reliable, fun on the track, about as fast as a mid 1990s Ferrari. If I want there are lots of aftermarket parts to make it go faster, look different, but I’m pretty happy with the way it is. These seem like good reasons to buy one but, hey, I own one.
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"Unfortunately, the other cars would have been better investments, but that’s not why we bought them. Like most Pantera owners, I don’t care what the car sells for now. I liken them to resto-mod muscle cars, which, by the way, seem to be going up in price. Maybe the Pantera will too."

Panteras like yours have already doubled in value in the last five years. Your car is likely worth more than half of your "other cars" list. There seems to be further 20% increase in just the last 6 months based on recent sales and auction results.

If that is your white Lusso in the magazine scan, it is beautiful!

LS

 

You're dead wrong in what you say above. The Amerisport Panteras were fully assembled by De Tomaso, in Italy, EXCEPT for the engine, gearbox and exhaust system. They were then shipped to the USA as complete, painted, trimmed, wired, rolling cars. Kirk Evans of Amerisport then installed Australia-sourced 351C Ford engines, and NOS ZF transaxles he purchased directly from Ford. He fabricated his own exhaust headers which incorporated a pair of tiny catalytic converters, and attached modified stock exhaust pipes/mufflers. He also created a sealed airbox around the carburetor to contain fuel fumes. All of this was necessary to satisfy DOT and EPA regulators; the cars were not 'gray-market' imports, but rather an attempt to completely legitimately sell legal cars that were 100% in conformity with the laws and regulations of the time.

He was able to avoid crash-testing a car by convincing the DOT that the car was substantially the same as the 1973 Pantera L, and they gave him a pass on that.

If you look at the Amerisport video that you are referring to, you will see scenes of the complete cars being unloaded at his facility--not bare bodies.

Oh, its true that he also added a few of his own cosmetic items--he replaced the rear side windows with his own fiberglass scoops, for instance. But those are trivial details.

The assertion that he was importing 'bare' bodies couldn't be more wrong. A bare body is a body in white, i.e. a big piece of steel, unpainted, untrimmed, unassembled etc. He was importing complete cars.

It's true they do wear two VINs. By the time the Amerisport program was launched, USA laws (as well as laws in some other Euro nations) required more digits than the older Pantera VIN had. Too, in order to achieve what he was trying to accomplish, Amerisport had to technically be the manufacturer of record, so those cars (there were only 29 of them, by the way) were registered in the USA with the Amerisport VIN. However, they also came with a conventional De Tomaso VIN, and that is how they are colloquially known today.

If you look at a later Pantera Si in Europe, you will see that they, too, carry longer VINs, to accommodate changes in vehicle registration laws. While the GT5-S had an eleven-character VIN, such as this French car:

THPNIT09558

by the time the Pantera Si was released, the international VIN format had grown to seventeen characters, as seen on the last Pantera produced, which I viewed at De Tomaso's facility just a few months ago:

ZDT874000TA009641

The last Amerisport Pantera is De Tomaso chassis #9492; the De Tomaso VIN on the car is:

THPNFL09492

while the Amerisport VIN is:

1A9PN8749KD111041

While the later Panteras such as the GT5-S are arguably much nicer than their Ford-era bretheren, boasting beautiful leather interiors etc., overall the actual build quality is measurably lower than the Ford-era cars. There were some substantial shortcuts taken in terms of chassis design, and the rear suspension mounting area is particularly poor. (The original Panteras were built out of welded steel stampings, while the later cars were fabricated by hand, using jigs, and the chassis design was greatly simplified to facilitate hand-production)

Back in 2001, I drove across Spain, France and Italy in the very first GT5-S prototype; on the way back to Spain, the right rear suspension simply fell out of the (not-rusted at the time) car, leaving it stranded in France until it could be repaired.

After that happened, I flew to Ohio and visited Kirk Evans at Amerisport to investigate the matter. He happened to be working on another friend's GT5-S, and also had a wrecked '71 Pantera chassis lying about. We cut into both chassis and were rather surprised at how well-engineered the early car was, and how crude and insubstantial the later car was. Upon learning what was happening inside the chassis rails, he set up on a major reinforcement effort for that particular car.

More recently, he had a GT5-S come in because the door flew open as the driver was going down the road. It turns out the door striker was simply screwed into the sheetmetal of the B-pillar; there was no structure behind it, and over time, it fatigued and broke the B-pillar there. A perfect striker-shaped piece of the sheetmetal panel simply broke away, allowing the door to swing open freely. On the Ford-era cars, there is a substantial chassis piece under the sheetmetal, to which the striker is affixed.

Don't get me wrong--I love the later Panteras as much as the early cars. But one does need to look after them a bit more, and owners are wise to address known weak areas before they become an issue. Their rustproofing was rather appalling as well, even worse than the Ford-era cars which were known for rusting, so it's not a bad idea to take steps to alleviate any potential rust issues before they occur. (My Spanish friend found this out the hard way, after ten more years of driving it in all weather and not taking any special care, when he finally took his car in for some paint work and discovered his floors were attached to practically nothing--a fair amount of unplanned restoration work was the result. It had rusted quite a bit around the floors and rocker panels, as well as the B-pillars, during his 15-odd years of ownership and he was simply unaware of the slow deterioration taking place).

Also, with respect to the 12 original Pavesi Targa Panteras (the prototype was built on a used 1974 GTS chassis while the remaining 11 were GT5-S, and there were then four further Pantera Si Targas, also made by Pavesi), those were massively strengthened during the conversion process. An enormous amount of steel was installed in the rockers, behind the dash, and in the firewall in an attempt to overcome the loss of rigidity associated with making the roof removable. In this, they were remarkably successful. I spent a day driving the prototype Targa Pantera through the mountains of Cortina d'Ampezzo in northern Italy (coincidentally, on the same trip I mentioned above) and was shocked at how tight and 'together' the car felt. Although I can't say for sure, it wouldn't surprise me if it was actually more rigid than a conventional Pantera? Of course, that particular car had the advantage of being built on a Ford-era chassis....

BTW, I'm the 'De Tomaso expert' that Wally referred to in his initial post that started this interesting thread....

Cheers!

 

Mike, what a first post!

Exceptional insight as always...

You do understand that each successive one will have to maintain this high level of information?



The New Yorker-Spaniard you are referring to in the GT5-S does use his car in an unusual manner for an Italian exotic. Similar exposure to a Countach, BB or 308 would result in the same rust issues and need for repairs.

Anyone familiar with older Italian exotics would not notice anything unusual as far as Detomaso body build quality is concerned.

LS

 

Great information on the Amerisport car!

However, what you post later is alarming!

This is the first I've heard of the inferior quality issues on the later GT5-S cars!

"crude and insubstantial"? "shortcuts taken in terms of chassis design"

GT5-S doors flying open due to the striker plate simply screwed into the sheetmetal with no structure behind it?

Suspension components falling off?

As these cars age, what other "design shortcuts" will we discover on the GT5-S?

 

Send me an e-mail to MikeLDrew @ aol dot com and I'll send you detailed photos contrasting the '71 versus '86 chassis rails, and describe an extremely simple and effective (and virtually cost-free) fix for it.

I forgot to mention in my earlier post, that the later cars boast substantially stronger suspension components and profoundly better brakes. As long as you can keep the suspension components actually attached to something, you're in great shape!

Cheers!

Mike

 

Yes from 2006.

Jeff
6559

If that is your white Lusso in the magazine scan?

 

Here's a Detomaso Pantera in rough shape. However, it should be...it's outside under a cover.

Ford : Other rolling chassis in Ford | eBay Motors

Obviously, we do not know what condition it was put away in, but the point is about the overall attitude on suitable care for these cars.

This, historically, has been quite regular for Detomaso "storage".

The "rust" concerns should be of no surprise when this is the type of care bestowed.

There are older Ferrari and Lamborghini that get stored like this, but not nearly as regularly as we see with Detomaso cars.

As this happens less and less, the perceived rust issues will be a distant memory.

LS

 

One thing about the Pantera, it truly is the practical exotic car on the planet, I have owned 2, a 73L for 12 yrs and 20,000 plus miles, and a 1984 GT-5. Of all the cars I have owned, including a real Shelby Cobra(7 yrs and over 25,000 miles), 5 Jaguars, 5 Boss 302's, 9 Shelbly GT-350, and 500's (many thousands of miles on them), several Camaros, Z cars, etc, the Pantera is the most fun of all to drive. When I get in it, the tensions of the day go away, the stresses are gone, I LOVE driving the P cars! Something reassuring about driving the Pantera, knowing there is nothing on the car, that if it breaks, will break the bank account also. And yes, I truly admire the F cars, have a small fortune tied up in real Ferrari dealership signs, literature, factory magnesium wheels, valve covers, and other bits!

 

Detomaso Pantera GT5-S, white/white with 33k miles just sold for $75k locally in the DC area.

This car, while sound mechanically, needed some bodywork, a paintjob and was missing the original wheels.

More data for valuation trends.

LS

 

Price for Pantera Targa please ?