[DeTomaso] The Pantera Wedding

[Jeff Detrich]

Same kind of story for my girls, too. They wanted to be able to drive it to
high school and, selfishly, I wanted them to know how to work a trans in
case one of their dates was drinking or something like that. Never could
get them to work up the courage to do a burnout tho! Good work Garth!

%^))

Jeff
6559


On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Garth Rodericks
<garth_rodericks at yahoo.com>wrote:

>  << His first concern was that his son had never driven a manual
> transmission car much less the Pantera. >>
>
>  << He had never driven the car on the street, only in the parking lot
> when he learned to drive a stick. >>>
>
> And THIS is why I let my kids drive my cars.  My 17 year old daughter
> wanted to learn to do a burnout earlier this year, so we took the 66
> Mustang out to a large deserted parking lot with no lamp posts or planter
> boxes one evening where I taught her the correct technique to do a burnout
> (never side-step the clutch).  I demonstrated a couple of times and then
> put her behind the wheel. She stalled it the first couple of tries, but
> then got it!  I let her do 5-6 nice burnouts, then had her do some donuts
> to see how the car felt when it slid.  She drove home with an ear to ear
> perma-grin!
>
> The day I got the Pantera back on the road  few weeks ago, after it's 5
> year engine rebuild, she wanted to go for a ride and was 'joking' that she
> wanted to drive it.  So, I took her for a ride and  found a nice industrial
> park area with little or no traffic, wide streets, and not too far from
> home, and let her drive. I insisted she do a couple of quick take-off's and
> stops, as well as stab the gas while we're rolling along in 2nd gear, to
> get a good sense of how the car feels and responds and how different it is
> from our other cars.  Another perma-grin!  And texts to her brother and
> sister who are away at college that she got to drive the Pantera first!
>
> It's our responsibility to share these great cars and our automotive
> passion with the next generation. Otherwise, who will we pass the torch to?
>
> Cheers!
> Garth
> #4033
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Tom Shinrock tmshinro at aol.com
> Thu Sep 19 13:02:34 MST 2013
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> I've got a similar story. First an aside.....When my two sons were
> learning to drive I taught them to drive a manual transmission with the
> Pantera.   I figured that the torque would make it easier because it would
> be hard to kill the engine if the clutch was released a little too quickly.
>   We went out to a large parking lot where I worked on a Sunday and within
> 30 minutes they had it down.  Now on to the story. Back in 2002 my oldest
> asked if he could take the Pantera on this senior prom date.   I was
> initially reluctant.  I told him that he would be adding to the stress
> level driving the car and it would put a damper on his prom experience.
> He had never driven the car on the street, only in the parking lot when he
> learned to drive a stick.  He reassured me that he could handle it and it
> wouldn't ruin his date, so I said yes. I drove the car to the high school
> for the grand march and after it was over he and his date took the car and
> drove it to our
>  house where they were meeting up with some other seniors for pictures
> before they drove to a restaurant for dinner prior to the dance.   You
> should have seen his face when he drove away in the car from the high
> school.   He made it back home just fine and all the mandatory pictures
> were taken.  When they were getting ready to leave for the restaurant,
> which was all the way on the other side of town, I told him to take the
> highway that goes around the city so he wouldn't have to drive in stop and
> go traffic.   All the kids pile into their cars and my son leads the way in
> the Pantera.  I watched the Pantera disappear in the distance and thought
> about how neat my son was feeling. I actually was attending a
> father-daughter campout about 30 miles away that weekend and came into town
> for the picture session and to see him off.   After he left I got in the
> car and headed back to the campground.   I was about half way to the
> campground when my son calls me and
>  said the Pantera broke.  He said he came to the second stop sign and the
> car wouldn't move when he let out the clutch.   He said it was parked on
> the side of the highway.   I told him to catch a ride with one of the other
> cars so he could make his dinner reservation and I would turn around look
> at the car.   He was understandably upset.   I told him to not let it ruin
> his evening and have a good time. He had only driven less than 5 miles from
> the house.  I found the car on the left shoulder of the divided highway.  I
> went to start it and it fired right up.  I put the car in gear and let out
> the clutch and nothing.  It was as if there was no clutch.   Luckily it was
> very close to home.   I went home and got his mom and I took our van back
> with a tow strap.   The car was very close to a cross over so it was a
> simple matter of hooking up the tow strap and pulling it across the highway
> and back home.   Since the highway was divided four lane I didn't have
>  to worry about holding up traffic and we only had to go on the highway
> for about a mile before we turned off to go on the back county road to our
> house.   Not a bad tow at all. After I got the car home I noticed that the
> transaxle inspection hole cover was missing.  I went back to the
> intersection to see if I could find it and I was looking for the telltale
> black stripes on the road from a burnout that blew the clutch.  I didn't
> see any stripes and I couldn't find the cover either.   I went back to the
> campground and finished up the weekend with me daughter. When I got back
> home on Sunday evening I started the interrogation with me son.   I asked
> him if he had tried to get scratch by popping the clutch.  He said no..that
> the clutch just quick working after he pulled away from the stop sign.   I
> had my doubts about his story but had no evidence to disprove it.   I had
> the car shipped to Cory Gehling (about 200 miles) to have him fix it.   I
> explained
>  what I thought had happened and that this was the orginal clutch that
> came with the car when I bought it 15 years prior.  Up to that point I had
> no clutch problems. When he looked into it he said that I had a rear main
> leak and the clutch fragments were soaked with oil.   He thought that the
> clutch had been getting oil on it from the leak and it finally decided to
> let go when my son was driving the car.   He suggested that my son's
> driving probably didn't have direct cause on the failure so just chalked it
> up to one of those things (although I still was suspicious).   I had him
> replace the seal and put in a new clutch and everything was good after
> that. Seeing my son's expression as he drove away in the Pantera was worth
> the pain and expense after the years past.  It was a once in a lifetime
> experience for him....and his date was duly impressed! Tom
> 5186 p.s.   My second son was a year behind his brother and when his prom
> came around he asked me if he could drive the Pantera.   I told him that he
> didn't need the kind of stress his brother went through the prior year and
> he would probably be better of if he didn't.   I offered him the use of my
> Porsche 944T if he could show me that he could drive it.  Remember that he
> learned to drive a manual with the Pantera and all its grunt two years
> prior and hadn't driven a stick since.  The 944T has nowhere near the
> torque off of idle and the clutch is trickier than the Pantera.   We went
> out to test drive the Porsche and he repeatedly killed the car when he took
> off from a stop.   After about 30 minutes it wasn't getting much better so
> I told him to do himself a favor and just take his mom's car and have good
> time. -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Engles <cengles at cox.net>
> To: detomaso <detomaso at poca.com>
> Sent: Wed, Sep 18, 2013 8:41 pm
> Subject: [DeTomaso] The Pantera Wedding Dear Forum, The Pantera Wedding
> Story A man had a Pantera.  A nice mild mannered and well regarded man had a
> Pantera.   His son was engaged to be married.  The fiancé had the idea for
> the departure from the church to be in her future father-in-law’s Italian
> sports car driven by her soon to be husband.  She was enchanted with the
> idea.  The son approached the father with the Big Plan.  Dad voiced some
> lukewarm support, but was nonetheless very concerned. His first concern
> was that his son had never driven a manual transmission
> car much less the Pantera.  He had never been interested.  He didn’t care
> much about cars.  His second concern was the little voice about his
> Pantera’s well known ability to obey Murphy’s Law. He brought his problem
> to me and I counseled him.  I agreed that the Big
> Plan was a Bad Plan.  We discussed other options that did not involve
> manual
> transmissions and that did include other automatic transmission sports
> cars.
> He remembered that he still had his mother’s classic Jaguar sedan in
> storage
> that could work well. I also pointed out that fitting a newly married
> bride in her elaborate
> wedding dress in the passenger seat of a Pantera might be difficult enough
> to dissuade the bride.  That strategy was well taken. In preparation for
> the event, it was found that the Pantera needed a new
> battery.  After it was installed it was found that the hood wouldn’t close
> and latch.  No obvious cause was found, but removal of the latch spring
> permitted closure and latching.   A small victory over Murphy. Optimism
> increased.  The son practiced driving a manual in the Honda, but
> never in the Pantera.   As the day drew closer, a test fitting of the
> bride-to-be in the Pantera, showed that she didn’t think that there would
> be
> a problem even with her wedding dress.  Rats. On the day before the
> wedding, there had still been no Pantera practice for
> the groom.  Finally, there was an intense session and a satisfactory, but
> not skillful performance was accomplished.  He only needed to drive it
> three
> blocks on residential streets and didn’t even need to shift out of first.
> The Pantera was cleaned up.  What could go wrong? Dad decided to get the
> Jaguar anyway.  He went to the storage facility.
> Problem number one: four flat tires.    Problem number two: the keys
> couldn’t be found at home nor anywhere hidden in the car.    Anxiety was
> building. On the day of the wedding, the Pantera was strategically parked
> near its
> “stage entrance” with the windows cracked open in the summer heat.  Dad had
> two sets of keys to prevent another Jaguar disaster.    One hundred and
> sixty seven people attended the wedding.  The ceremony moved
> along to the dramatic departure of the happy couple.  People moved outside
> the church.  Dad went out to start the Pantera and position it in front of
> the door for the bride and groom to drive away. Dad in his tuxedo walked
> over to his Pantera and put the key in the door to
> open it.   It wouldn’t open.  He checked that it is the right key.  Further
> quick frustrating tries didn’t work.  Nonchalantly, he quickly went to the
> passenger door.  The same problem: unbelievably, the door key isn’t working
> to open the doors.  The couple has appeared at the church door.  Everyone
> is
> looking at Dad as the rice and confetti and streamers are being consumed.
> In short order the unexpected pause in the departure becomes more obvious
> as
> the flying potpourri does run out.  One of the bride’s family members tries
> to help the increasingly upset Pantera owner.  He proceeds to try to use
> the
> ignition key in the door lock producing some harsh words as Dad reclaimed
> his keys.  Finally, a brain storm happened.  Someone ran inside the church
> and retrieved a coat hanger.  Dad proceeded to open the Pantera through the
> slightly open windows.  With the Pantera finally open, it started
> immediately and the bride and groom took off a bit later than planned.
>  They
> also left behind a lot of mixed feelings in Dad about the whole affair.
> The next phase of the celebration was to be downtown.  The Pantera’s home
> garage was on the way to the reception.   Dad picked up the Pantera three
> blocks away, which had wisely been left unlocked.  It started up and he
> headed home as night was very quickly falling.  A short distance into the
> trip, Murphy struck again.   Dad was calmly driving along when he had the
> incredibly helpless feeling of watching his headlights spontaneously sink
> into the hood as darkness engulfed the front of the Pantera.   No
> headlights.  No taillights according to the chase vehicle behind him and no
> flashers.   In a moment or two, they unexpectedly spontaneously came back
> up
> ..followed a few minutes later by another failure of the lighting system.
> This happened about ten times over the eight mile trip home. Finally, with
> Murphy’s Pantera safely stored back at home, Dad went on to
> the reception and reflected on the departure debacle.   It seems that his
> first gut reaction was right about not wanting to use the Pantera in the
> wedding and he sure as hell wished that he been able to find the damn keys
> to the Jaguar. This is a true story.  Respectfully yours,  Chuck Engles
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