Reply to "Engine Rebuild Required!"

Too many generalities. You need to specify where specifically you are located. You need to tell us how much work you intend to do yourself, i.e., are you going to remove the engine yourself or do you just want to drop off the car to someone and tell them to do everything?

You are the one who needs to decide how original the car is to remain. As far as I see it, it is either original, original restored, modified or modified restored.

The disagreement often is over what original means.

In the case of Mustangs and Shelby Mustangs, there are three categories. Survivor (needs 85% of it's original parts and paint), Concourse using only original assembly line parts, and Concourse using allowable substitutes (off of a list).

To prepare a nationally competitive car that has perhaps a resale value of $100,000 to perhaps $150,000, will probably cost you in the $250,000 to $300,000 ball park.

YOU are the one to decide how to go and the problem with the Pantera is there are no determining judging authorities like the Shelby's and Mustangs have.

The Corvettes certainly fall into this cost to be competitive category and certainly do have an authoritative judging system.

As of this point there is no authority that has National or International credentials that is going to be able to judge or rate your finished product and it has not become apparent yet if anyone is willing to pay someone the cost of putting a Pantera into a type 1 Concourse/restored category.

There HAS been movement with the Mangusta in that area though with cars reported to have been sold in the $300,000, to $400,000 range. That's most likely what a Pantera would need to bring in order to make the cost of the restoration recoverable.

Pat Michal headers are nice but kind of eliminate you from any of these categories.

So when you use the term "retore", can you be more specific? If you just want a basic rebuild on your existing engine, and you can deliver it, I can recommend a engine builder for you. Probably around $3000 on that?