The 1970s DeTomaso Pantera is a car that everybody knows of, they can explain what it looks like, they’ll even tell you it has a Ford V8 and that it has Italian and American roots, yet not that many have actually taken the wheel of one.
Those who haven’t probably expect the same thing The Smoking Tire’s Matt Farah: the car will be brittle, with a flimsy interior, shoddy quality and a back massager for an engine…
However, he discovers it’s not really like that, and the Pantera, if restored properly (and probably lightly upgraded in places), can be a thoroughly enjoyable driver’s car – a classic which should not sit in a garage and merely be looked at, but actually driven. The car you see in the video below has been expertly redone, and it shows – just look at how clean and new-looking the interior is.
The second car to be featured in the video is a Pantera from the same period, though this one was not salvageable – it would have required too much work and it was ultimately easier to just make new (and more modern-looking) body panels for it, and also ask running shoe-makers Nike to do the interior for them.
The Ringbrothers took on the task of creating the modern Pantera, and the yellow car is the result. It’s been heavily modified, and the only part of the car which is completely original is part of the roof… and the bit of sheetmetal just before the rear wheelarches; the engine is no longer a Ford, but a GM crate unit.
By Andrei Nedelea
VIDEO