1971 De Tomaso Pantera

It looks like a Ferrari, at half the price. That was the big selling point for Ford to import the Pantera and sell it through Lincoln-Mercury. That's a big Ford V-8 in the back. Lee Iacocca, then an executive at Ford and later CEO of Chrysler, apparently really wanted to sell Italian cars. That's how we got the Pantera and years later another notorious failed product, the "Chrysler TC by Maserati."

Unfortunately for the Pantera , Road & Track called it, ""a high-priced kit car" complaining about the assembly quality, air-conditioning, brakes, engine cooling and electrical systems. The ZF five-speed transaxle was reportedly noisier than the engine. Race shop owner Bill Stroppe was paid $2,000 per car to fix the worst faults. Still, the base price gave the Pantera an edge, IF it could be fixed."

One of the most poorly-built and rust-prone vehicles ever made, the assembly of the Pantera sounds like something out of 3 Stooges short. From Autoblog: "A lack of logistical synchronization meant that bare metal bodies were being stamped and left to sit outside the factory before final production, then rolled back in and painted over acquired surface rust."

For anyone to have bought this car at a time when a Pontiac GTO cost one-third as much seems crazy, but for some people looking cool is worth any price.

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