1971 DeTomaso Pantera By CasualCole

After 50 hours, I finally am able to put this one to rest. Time for a little background, The DeTomaso Pantera is a mid engine RWD monocoque coupe that originated from Alejandro De Tomaso's company in Italy in 1970 (mine is the 1971 model). Shortly after the Pantera's creation, De Tomaso started a partnership with Ford, which placed the Pantera in the hold of american markets. Despite this style of Sports car being a specific niche for buyers, there was a lot about this car that made it stick out at the dealership. The car was cheap, around half the price of most competing Ferraris, despite possessing similar performance. The car was considered one of the first common-to-market (the Ford GT wasn't common to the market) mid engines to be manufactured to the united states, even though the body was imported from Italy, the internals were all pure american manufacturing. One of those american internals in specific was called the 5. 8 L 351 Cleveland V8, which made around 330 hp, making a 5. 5 second 0-60, all while sounding amazing. The Pantera was basically a Shelby GT at the heart. This all seemed all good and dandy, but what was the catch? Well... there were a lot of bugs with this thing right off the dealership, It was cramping, had overheating issues, and was quite impractical in terms of MPG and storage space. The interior also had a lot of poorly designed placement choices with certain interior gadgets. Although you really couldn't do much about the space or the height of the car, fixing these bugs off the market was relatively easy! due the monocoque design, disassembly and modifying the Pantera was like taking apart legos. After fixing those bugs, you had quite the capable car. Unfortunately, the course for the Pantera's time at america was quite short, disengaging from Ford in 1975. Although the Pantera stopped producing in America, the line of Pantera continued to 1992, with parts still being manufactured for it to this day! Alright, so a brief summary of my mod