ARIZONA PANTERA

​

"I had no idea what it was, but I was mesmerized,” recalls Jim Demick of the first time he laid eyes on a De Tomaso Pantera. The young car enthusiast in the making, who was 12 years old at the time in 1971, was on a car shopping trip at the local Lincoln-Mercury dealer with his parents. In a somewhat confusing decision, when the Pantera first came out, Ford decided to market and sell it through Lincoln-Mercury dealers in North America. (1971-1974). While his mother and father were focused on the family-oriented conveyances lined up inside the showroom, Demick was spellbound by an exotically proportioned sports car parked by the doors. It was low and wide, with a sharklike nose, an impossibly wedgy profile and aggressively fat tires wrapped around wide alloy wheels. “It was like nothing I had ever seen before and absolutely like nothing I saw on a daily basis on the streets of Albuquerque,” he recalls. “I was in awe, especially as I got to the back of the car and saw four massive tailpipes menacingly hung between the taillights.” “I knew right then and there that some way, somehow,” Demick recalls, “I would one day own a Pantera.”

Plenty has been written about the Pantera, whose stunning body was designed at Ghia by a team headed up by talented American designer Tom Tjaarda. De Tomaso was founded by Argentinian ex-pat and race car driver Alejandro de Tomaso, who aimed to take on the established sports car makers. The new-for-1971 Pantera was a striking styled sports car that was as attractive as anything coming out of Modena or Sant’Agata Bolognese at the time. The high-performance Ford Cleveland V8 engine and cutting-edge ZF five-speed were certainly on par as well, as was the monocoque chassis designed by Italian engineer Gian Paolo Dallara. Unfortunately, the Italian American hybrid was plagued with a variety of ailments when it was new, along with incoming emissions and safety regulations which didn’t help, either. Despite that, the Pantera ended up being produced until 1992. Over its production run, more than 7000 cars left the factory in Italy, with approximately 4,000 of them–coming to North America.  -  Zachary Mayne, Sep 3, 2023