Which Ford President bought this Pantera show car for a song?

Some cars' stories bug me..especially if I almost had a chance to buy the car...take thi one f'instance

De Tomaso 7X Montella
CHASSIS
#THPNNG06114

This is a story of dream car that ended up someone's

reality. It was built in '73 on a Pantera, a car being sold by

Lincoln Mercury.Even though the Pantera was selling below

expectations, Ford had gone ahead and authorized a

revamping of the design by Tom Tjaarda; the American

who chose to spend almost his entire design life in Italy.

The new show car version got tubular flying buttresses meeting

the roof but got rid of the blind rear 3/4 sail panels.

It also had a blunter front bumper, the better to cope

with the 5-mph bumper laws. It no longer had a cover over the engine compartment

so if you peer over the side , you can see the engine.



The car was called, at different times, the Pantera II, the 7x and Montella..

One website claimed that new American road regulations

would prevent the Pantera from being further marketed in the United States,

but this writer has never seen that as the reason it was

cancelled.My theory is that it was political.

DeTomaso hated Ford telling him how to build his cars

and believed he could continue making them without

Ford importing them. Which he did after Ford

stopped importing them after the 1974 models.

The car was shown at the Detroit, Chicago and

Los Angeles motor shows.

I know that prototype cars are usually not sold. after all, they were only show cars so

maybe they don't have all the safety equipment.

I think, whenever I hear of this car, I could have bought

it because it was owned by my dentist, who

somehow got a chance to buy it. Maybe the

Ford official who had bought it was my Doctor's patient.

By that time it had a two-tone paint job and was less

attractive than the original gold.

Fortunately an Italian collector, Corrado Lepresto. heard of it going up for sale. On his website, Lopresto says it was the President of Ford who had bought it (Anyone know which President?)

. Lopresto heard about it

coming up at the Monterey RM auction a few years ago,

bought it for $90,000, and took it back to Italy where

his friend Tom Tjaarda gave him advice on how it had

been finished when new.

The price seems low for a prototype but RM did not have

a good sign to explain it was a prototype and while I was

looking at it, nobody recognized it as the show car.

So now it is as it was originally and I have a few

unanswered questions like how was it that Ford sold it,

how did my dentist come across it and what was the

price when he bought it? (So I can kick myself for

not finding out about it)

All I can say is that the salvation of this prototype reinforces my belief that some of the great

barn finds are to be found in Detroit where auto

company employees on occasion manage to buy the

cars that officially are supposed to be Not for Sale....

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