De Tomaso Pantera Classic Cars for Sale

The De Tomaso Pantera began its production in 1971, and from the outset proved to be a real muscle car with an acceleration from 0 to 60 mph in less than six seconds. This powerful two-seater sports car takes its name from the Italian car manufacturer, De Tomaso, and has the model name, Pantera, meaning panther.

The History of the De Tomaso Pantera

The man behind the name was Alejandro de Tomaso, an Argentine racing driver, who had been making sports cars since the 1960s. He was to bring pleasure to many supercar lovers by presenting the Pantera at the 1970 New York Motor Show. He had created a successful combination of Italian styling connected to American power in the form of a massive 351 cu in (5.8 L) Ford V8 producing some 330 bhp. The later model from 1990 was powered by a smaller 302 cu in (4.9 L) Ford V8. This winning combination propelled the fastest Panteras up to a top speed of 160 mph. The downside of this keen De Tomaso performance would of course be the average fuel consumption of about 10 mpg.  The De Tomaso Pantera L (luxury or lusso in Italian) was introduced in 1972 and known in America for its large black government regulation impact bumpers. 1973 saw the appearance of the GTS, identified by new pop riveted fiberglass wheelarch flares. In 1980 the GT5 model began production, which lead to the introduction of the wide-look bodied Pantera GT5-S in 1984 with body blended wheel arches. It is thought that just one hundred and eighty-three GT5-S cars were built. The Pantera was superseded by the De Tomaso Guara in 1993.  General production of the Pantera ran until 1992, with some special editions taking production up to 1993. Not much more than seven thousand De Tomaso Panteras were built in total.

Special Editions of the De Tomaso Pantera

The Pantera received some extensive restyling in 1990 to form the more modern looking SI model. Just forty-one of the Pantera SI models (known as Pantera 90 in the UK) were built during the period 1991 to 1993. During this period a small number of dramatically beefed up 450 bhp De Tomaso Panteras were created, and given the model name 200 to indicate their 200 mph top speed.