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"Close your eyes and picture a 1970s Lincoln/Mercury dealer. There&amp;#039;s a large, blacktop lot covered with flapping vinyl flags in alternating red, white, and blue. Below, parked chrome-plated mirror to chrome-plated mirror, are dozens of massive, landau-roofed, pinstriped, big-block sedans and coupes roughly the size, weight, and shape of boxcars, their faux wire wheels, faux wood, faux convertible tops, and faux continental kits secreting a perverted, baroque, fake elegance. After politely ducking an aggressive, leisure-suited salesman with creative facial hair, you browse the aisles looking for something completely different, its impossibly low roofline and relatively diminutive size hiding among the vast, blocky shoulders of vehicular brontosauri\u2014until you round one last 90-pound chromium park bench of a bumper, revealing a bright yellow, Ford-engined De Tomaso Pantera, and it stops you dead in your brown leather ankle boots and flared Levis.  Sold through this unlikely network from 1971 to 1975, Ford had a stake in the Pantera&amp;#039;s success, motivated as it was by a 351 Cleveland mounted amidships in its shapely wedge\u2014itself another American connection, penned by Detroit-based Tom Tjaarda. Sold over an incredible twenty-year run ending in 1991, the Pantera remains the most produced, most iconic Italo-American V8 sports car ever built\u2014the king of a category popularized by 1960s manufacturers hoping to compete with Ferrari, Maserati, and Lamborghini but lacking the resources to design and build their own powerplants.  The Pantera debuted in Modena in March, 1970, and shortly afterward, the first examples reached the eager hands of new owners. So initially successful was the Pantera that early production steamed ahead at three complete cars per day\u2014insignificant on a mass scale, but for a tiny, relatively unknown boutique automaker, it was River Rouge territory.   My dad had one for a short period in the mid-eighties, an early small-bumper model, I&amp;#039;ve never known the exact year, and he doesn&amp;#039;t remember\u2014it was forest green on black and sounded like Satan gargling with chlorine bleach on the rocks. He occasionally picked me up from school in it, making me the coolest seven-year-old in all of Cassell Elementary for weeks afterwards\u2014including the time he stalled leaving the lot and had to have a handful of gaping 6th graders push-start us. I don&amp;#039;t remember much else about dad&amp;#039;s Pantera, except that it was fast, loud, and smelled like a lawnmower running full-throttle inside of a shed. He sold it after only a few months.  Today, Panteras are probably the least expensive and most reliable way into early Italian mid-engined sports car ownership, with even pristine, early cars trading hands for well under six figures. The later, less elegant, but frequently more powerful examples exchange for a shade more. I say &amp;quot;frequently&amp;quot; because although late cars were endowed with more muscle from the factory, remaining Panteras, even well-preserved ones, are almost never stock. Their bone-simple but devastatingly effective Ford V8s are easily and inexpensively tuned to produce power in the range of more modern V12-powered Italian exotics.   With Mercury gone, Lincoln in trouble, and De Tomaso teetering on the brink, I say it&amp;#039;s about time for the MKII Pantera. Imagine a Gallardo-sized, 911 C2-priced car with a tuned version of the Mustang&amp;#039;s all-alloy, 32-valve 302 mounted in the middle of a properly gorgeous, not overtly retro shape. It&amp;#039;d be a great way for Ford to bring some heat to the new C7 &amp;#039;Vette. Your move, FoMoCo. This post originally appeared at Petrolicious "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a4748/go-news-classic-cars-pantera-remains-king-of-italo-american-exotic-sports-cars/>