[DeTomaso] 5,639 Panteras 71-74 ??

MikeLDrew at aol.com MikeLDrew at aol.com
Mon Nov 4 21:39:18 EST 2013


In a message dated 11/4/13 7 43 17, michaelsavga at gmail.com writes:


> 
> Found this online.
>  http://auto.howstuffworks.com/detomaso-sports-cars2.htm
>  Interesting, some of the same misinformation as usual.
>  Too bad they couldn't keep normal records. 
> 
>>>What do you mean?   Ford kept meticulous, completely anal records of 
every car they imported, and De Tomaso has a crude but comprehensive file on 
every car sold outside the Ford dealer network.   I don't know if they have 
all the Vallelunga records, but they probably do.   I've seen the Mangusta 
records with my own eyes (handwritten notes in a little steno book, one page 
for each car), as well as Pantera records (a manilla file folder for each 
non-US car).

While nobody has ever taken the time to actually count the Euro cars, 
there's no indication any VINs were skipped.   We know for a fact that #7380 was 
the last car imported by Ford (there is LOTS of documentation from Ford to 
attest that) and the first Pantera was either 1000 or 1001.   The 
highest-number Ford-chassis car in the registry is 7504 (although there may be a few 
more after that which we don't know about).   So, doing the math, that's at 
least 6504 'early' cars produced; from there it's easy to believe that 5639 of 
them came to the North American marketplace.

There are then one or two outliers (I personally saw 8471 with my own eyes, 
along with correspondence from De Tomaso confirming that it was a 
custom-order car with that VIN), then the sequence starts again at 9000 and continues 
through at least 9562.   So, more math indicates at least another 562 cars 
there.

> >I still think from first to last there were about 6,200 including all 
> later incarnations and that about half survive.  Can anybody add to this, 
> disprove it with definitive proof?
> 
>>>Way, WAY more than half the cars survive.   Heck, there are almost 4000 
Panteras in the registry, and we all know there are lots of cars either 
lurking hidden in garages, or owned by malcontents who refuse to share 
information about their cars.

I think the survival rate exceeds 80-85%...but that's just me guessing.

Mike

P.S.   The article dates from about 1984 or so....
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