The RARE V8 Monster That Scared Ferrari - The De Tomaso Pantera

If you were a discerning buyer looking to buy a mid-engined sports car in the late '60s and early '7s, you didn't have much choice - you had the Lotus Europa for the smaller Bal sports car and then you went up in price. The Ferrari 246 Dino and even the Lamborghini mura topping that list were now all great cars in their own right, there was only one problem particularly for potential buyers State Sign and that was the availability of spare parts and qualified technicians to work on these cars if something were to break. In one of these, there would be a lot of downtime to repair it and parts would have to be sourced from England or even Italy, but one car attempted to change all that and below the mid-engined sports car market. opening with a car that was relatively affordable for what it was and that included a bulletproof American drivetrain that could generate large amounts of power with a variety of off-the-shelf parts, this car was going to be the new supercar from America and this is the story of the legendary Damaso Pedra the name panta is Italian for the word Panther which was a fitting name for a car that was as low and menacing as the panta would be and the man behind the panta craze Alejandro Deaso was a former Formula 1 racer turned car manufacturer.

Alejandro began his Formula 1 career in 1957 for a private team based in Italy and throughout that season he proved to be a very decent driver, but certainly not a driver of caliber. world champion and by 1959 Tomaso had quickly shifted his efforts to his new automobile company, Tomaso, which would be his outlet for building race cars, prototypes and even road cars, as time went on, the first of these road cars, which was the agile and eloquently styled Valonga, of which only 59 were produced at this first. The car gave Day Tomasu the confidence to build his second road car, the Mangusta, which was where the company drew many of its roots.

The Mangusta was a mid-engine V8 small-block Ford sports car that, interestingly enough, came out of a business deal that We went down south with Carol Shelby and we already did a whole video on this car, so we'll link to it at the end to watch it, but the Mangusta was a slightly more successful car than the valonga, selling around 400 cars in total, but the car itself. It wasn't the world by any means, but the Mangusta needed to walk so that the plant could drive this car really served as a proof of concept, that day Tomaso was able to design and produce capable sports cars Beyond just a small amount of production and thanks to Ford's participation.

As the previous Mangusta from a transmission perspective was doing well, they were willing to expand their commercial partnership with Day Toaso and the panta was going to be the card to do it, since in the United States they would be sold through Lincoln and Mercury dealers , the body of the panta would be designed by Tom Jarda at Gia Design House and from the first sketch they knew they had something special, the panta was the perfect combination of an aggressive wedge shape mixed with all the well sculpted Italian design elements and proportions that helped give it an incredible presence.

When put together from the folding headlights to the taillights reused from the Alpha Romeo Berlinetta, they made this car one of the most attractive cars of the time and this body was part of a new steel monocoque chassis for the panta that was supported by a four-wheel independent suspension setup that used coil-over shocks and an equal-length ARS all-round in true Spirit of day Tomaso racing pedigree. The panta suspension setup was designed with the performance-oriented driver in mind with factory disc brakes at all four corners and an attractive manual rack-and-pinion steering setup and continuing their partnership with Ford as they had with the Mangusta. , the panta would also use a mid-mounted 4V this time, although this time it was not the 302 Windsor engine, but a 351 cubic in Cleveland. 4 V8, which was a very noticeable improvement with around 330 horsepower on the original model, giving the Panta considerably more torque than the 302 or even the 289 in the previous Mangusta.

All of this performance came from a car that would weigh around 3150 lb dry, which meant the Panta was going to be serious competition basically anywhere in the world. 0 to 60 occurred in 5.5 seconds and the Panta also had a 5-speed transmission, which meant it could top the stock to around 160 mph and do the quarter mile in the high 13-second to 14-second range. lows and in 1970 the world got its first glimpse of the Panta at the New York Auto Show and, as expected, it was a huge hit at a Target launch MSRP of just under $10,000 US. The Panta was literally half the price of the comparable Lamborghini Mira, which is also quite curious, both had the same wheelbase.

The panta was a very attractive proposition both visually and from a value point of view and by 1971 the first pantas had successfully made their journey across the ocean. and they landed in Lincoln and Mercury dealerships in the United States and, in fact, sold quite well here with 1,000 cars sold in the first year plus an additional 300 sold abroad, but not everything was excellent in the apparently classic style of the manufacturers of Italian cars at that time, build quality. In some of these plants was 95% of the way for the first cars, these hand-built cars were not all perfect and for $10,000 American customers would expect them to be and Ford would not want to sell something through its dealer network. that they couldn't guarantee quality as they would be partially on the hook, as a result Ford acquired an 84% controlling stake in the Day Toaso company that year and helped overhaul production so the cars were more specced with things like clearances. on the panels. and overall we just have better attention to detail and this would kick off the 20+ year production run of the panta which would spawn countless variants of the iconic car and a host of mid-year updates aimed at keeping the platform alive as well Fasten your seatbelts.

As there is a lot to go through here for 1972, the day Tomaso Panta received slight modifications from the 1971 launch version, which included the introduction of a new larger camshaft, actually from the Ford 428 cobrajet, The 1972 model year also had a lower compression ratio to help. with emissions regulations and also got a set of more breathable exhaust manifolds, these cars still kept the small bumpers, then during the second half of 1972 to 1974 we saw the introduction of the new panta L, where the L stood for lusso , now they were Portuguese. fitted with US crash test compliant bumpers, which soured the panta's beautiful lines, but to be honest, this car fared much better than others of the era, as these new bumpers, While they weren't great, they weren't horrible or losing power either.

However, at only 265 horsepower for the US market cars and the interior received a revamped dash design that actually looked much better, especially when looking at that awesome gated shifter on the panta, although the panta luos lost quality of life updates and improvements that greatly improved the overall experience beyond speed, which was enough for the panta lusso to win the Import Car of the Year contest on rodent tracks and, in Europe, at the same time, Tomaso released the Panta GTS which was a higher performance variant of the Panta without the group three racing based emissions restrictions, these cars received a high compression ratio of 351 and some additional breathing modifications generating 345 horsepower .

The GTS was also brought to the United States in extremely limited quantities without all the cool Go Fast parts. although in reality it was just an exterior trim package and this all continued until 1975 when, fatefully, Ford officially pulled the plug on the panta in the United States after selling a total of 5,500 cars through its dealer network and the panta actually for a sports car. The niche sold quite well, but by this time the 351 Cleveland was no longer available in the US and with sales slowing and a high-performance gasoline crisis underway, Ford abandoned ship to sell stateside. of Panta, but foreign sales would still continue and end.

As a result, he created some of the coolest pantas of all time in the middle of the day for The Changing Times. Tomaso now had to source the 351 Ford Cleveland engines from Ford Australia as the engine was still being produced there and that is what they did and essentially continued to produce the panta and sell it overseas and even in the US with some gray market importers until 1980 largely unchanged, but 1980 was when the decade-old sports car got a second chance at life. That's when the dayam maso panta GT5 came out and they would follow. Lamborghini Kunos' playbook for a facelift by making the car much more visually extravagant.

These new GT5 pants received a full body kit that included giant wheel arches, a new lower veil and a huge rear wing. Huge 345 rear tires were now installed and power was now bumped up to over 350 horsepower due to the lack of overseas emissions regulations; Then after the GT GT5 there was the GT5, which is essentially the same as the GT5, just with more discreet bodywork, but it's only slightly visible that the GT5 still featured a giant, wider wing. The fenders now had better molded body parts compared to the old GT5 style. These cars were built throughout the 1980s and just over 400 GT5 and GT5 cars were built even with the chassis upgrade that occurred in 1980.

There was no hiding that the plant was starting to show its age and the Most people thought this was going to be the end of the road for the car, but to everyone's surprise, 1990 saw one last Swanson for the Tomaso Panta day, the Panta 90 SI. and this car wasn't just another version of the GTS that was updated again. No, this new 90 SII panta was completely redesigned by the one and only Marcelo Gandini, the man who designed the mura, the kunos and the Diablo. The redesigned pentara 90 SI was impressive. jardini somehow managed to capture the essence of the original car and revamped it in a very similar way to the Porsche 9911, where the same timeless shape was kept but somehow looked so new at the same time this new panta pull design was inspired by the Ferrari F40 and several other sports cars of the time and underneath the original panta chassis was also replaced by a new tubular frame chassis that housed a newly revised suspension setup with even better brakes from a chassis and design point of view, The panta 90 SI was brought into a whole new era. but there was a problem: the 351 Cleveland engine itself was no longer in production anywhere in the world, so the day Masa would have to go ahead and take out what was essentially a 302 Foxbody Mustang with an EFI setup and put it in the new plant that he maintained.

The Ford soul of the car is alive, but at a cost of almost 100 less horsepower than the previous 351, as these new 302s could only make about 255 horsepower without opening them up and changing the heads and cams. Also sold was the panta 90 SI from 1990 to 1993 with a total of 41 cars produced during those years until it was phased out by the new dayam maso Gua which was to be the successor to the panta which never quite took off and then tragically In 93, the production of more than 20 years of the pants ended. It was over and all that was left was a group of car enthusiasts from around the world who were still in love with the magnificent Italian American hybrid.

Today, the Panta is revered as one of the quintessential classics and even a fantastic restomod candidate for someone looking for a hot rod together. its own Italian bodied beast at a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to make a comparable Ferrari and personally, based on the history, the look, the feel and that glorious American V8, I would take a Panta over a Ferrari any day, But let me know if you feel the same way in the comments below and thank you all for watching another episode of our

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