De Tomaso Pantera II Monttella
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Presentation Year: | 1974 |
Class: | sports car |
Body design: | Coupe |
Engine: | Petrol engine: |
The De Tomaso Pantera II (also: De Tomaso Montella) is a running prototype of a prototype of the Italian sports car manufacturer De Tomaso in 1974.
History
The mid-engine coupe built by Ghia was conceived as a concept for the successor of De Tomaso Pantera. However, a series production did not materialize. The sudden disengagement of Ford in 1974 had a whole series of negative effects on the production of the Pantera : the loss of the Vignale factories and the consultancy of Ghia (both owned by Ford), the sudden increase in the list price (due to the reduction to a few dozen of the assembled examples) and the loss of the sales network in the United States Ford had already decided to pull the plug on the joint venture , so it closed the Vignale plant and got rid of the bodywork production lines, leaving De Tomaso to produce the cars on its own in the Modena plant with its own equipment, and sought a new partner in North America to start production of the Pantera II , meanwhile renamed Ghia Monttella and transported to Ford headquarters in Detroit. The project did not arouse interest and, years later, the prototype of the car was sold to a collector together with other Ghia prototypes, only to be restored to its original condition in 2008 The Modena- based company Automobili De Tomaso made after first designing racing cars for Formula 1, since the mid-1960s, road sports cars. On the produced in 55 copies Vallelunga 1963 followed three years later with the Mangusta De Tomaso’s first sports car, which was equipped with a large US eight-cylinder engine. From him originated in four years 400 vehicles. In 1969, in search of a larger market, the company entered into a relationship with the Ford Corporation. In connection with a larger business, which also involves the acquisition of Alejandro de Tomaso Ford was ready to sell a revised, everyday version of the Mangusta in large quantities in the US market. De Tomaso then developed the Mangusta for Pantera, who had an independent body and an improved suspension, conceptually but largely similar to its predecessor. Ford drove the Italian-built Pantera 1971 in the United States through the network of Lincoln - Mercury dealers. The project was initially a success. By 1974, Ford was able to sell more than 5000 Panteras.
In 1973, De Tomaso began planning for a successor to the Pantera. De Tomaso commissioned Ghia to design a new body. The execution took over Ghia's then chief designer Tom Tjaarda, His design was formally independent, but followed the layout of the Pantera, whose body shell remained essentially unchanged. Ghia built by hand using a Pantera technique by hand, a ready-to-drive prototype of the model, which was shown publicly in spring 1974 in bronze paint under the names Pantera II or Pantera 7x at several exhibitions. In the following months, Ford and De Tomaso ended their connection. Above all, these were caused by considerable quality defects of the Pantera, because of which many customers claimed warranty claims at Ford and the decline in sales due to the oil crisis. Ford ended the sale of the Pantera in late summer 1974. Since De Tomaso had manufactured numerous bodies of the sports car in stock, the Pantera could not be replaced for the time being.
Only in 1975, the now two-tone painted, but otherwise unchanged prototype was again shown publicly, but the car was now called De Tomaso Montella. In 1975, the Montella was brought to the US and received approval in the state of Michigan. De Tomaso had the hope that another group would be interested in marketing the car. This did not happen. In 1981, a private buyer bought the vehicle and put it into everyday life for a few years. The vehicle still exists; it is occasionally shown at exhibitions. De Tomaso produced the Pantera in its 1971 form until 1990; a stylistically slightly modified version remained until 1994 in the program.
De Tomaso took over the main design features of the Pantera for the Pantera II. Drive and chassis were completely the same; Like the standard model, the Pantera II had a 5.8-liter eight-cylinder V-engine from Ford. The body shell, the glazing and the interior were also taken over. The front end and the car flanks, however, were smooth-surfaced; the striking angles of the first Pantera accounted for. A striking design feature were the free-standing, non-glazed struts that connected the roof part with the rear end. Tom Tjaarda quoted here, the rear-end design of the by Giorgetto Giugiaro -designed Maserati Merak. The front safety bumpers were integrated into the body, the rear was mounted.
