According to Kirk Evans, he imported a total of five Panteras for Shelby (all just body shells) and put engines into two of them. For the early cars, the paperwork shows them as having been imported by Shelby directly, but Kirk says this was a product of confusion at the time as they were just learning as they went along.
When I asked him about this back in 2008, Kirk told me he had been working with Shelby and Roush circa late 1987 to “do a 50 states car” with a 425 hp supercharged Roush engine based on the Windsor block. He said the 50 states car, "had nothing to do with the development of the Viper. Carlini just wanted Shelby back, they wanted him for his name and were agreeing to whatever he wanted."
Kirk had an agreement in principle with Roush about them building the engine to be compliant with EPA regulations in every state including California, and he said he still has the paperwork on that. The concept was that the engines would be shipped to Italy and the cars assembled there, then imported and sold in the US by Shelby and Kirk. Kirk said "De Tomaso had given Shelby the West Coast".
They had investors lined up who had committed a couple of million dollars to the project but then the October 19, 1987 “Black Monday" stock market crash happened and killed the whole thing. In another conversation, Kirk further explained to me that, "The one thing that did more damage than anything else was when engineer Bertocchi died. He was the brain. He ran the Pantera project – De Tomaso did not want anything to do with it."
So that is the back story insofar as I understand it, and I hope Kirk will weigh in here to correct anything I have misunderstood. Now on to the registry; my records show two narrow body and five wide body Panteras in the 9000 series:
#9262 GTS This is the famous Paul Donderwinkle race car with a 340 wedge (see POCA Profiles 2016 #1 & the May 1986 edition of Hot Rod Magazine starting on page 79). Paul lives in Waharoa, New Zealand. Gale Banks Engineering and Carroll Shelby built three twin-turbo 340 prototype blocks for Chrysler. Two of the three cars they were installed in were dismantled or destroyed. The motor in Paul's car, the lone survivor, has Mopar aluminum heads and an intercooled Gale Banks twin turbo setup. Just as a fun aside, the rumour is that 9262 was supposedly owned by Jim Henson at some point.
#9281 GTS red with beige interior [auctioned off by Shelby’s estate by Bonhams in June 2018]
#9425 GT5-S red with beige interior. Sold by Shelby to Dr. Stan Drab in Wheatton, Illinois, then it went to Belgium, and then back to the USA [last known to be in New York, NY]
#9426 GT5-S Black on black. Sold by Shelby to Dr. Stan Drab in Wheatton, Illinois. [currently owned by Mike A, Kansas City, Missouri]
#9428 GT5-S red with black interior. Sold by Shelby to Dr. Stan Drab in Wheatton, Illinois.
#9430 GT5-S white with black interior [Pat Mical’s car in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts]
#9461 GT5-S white on white with a Mopar engine. Sold by Shelby estate to Galpin Auto Sports, USA - see the Discovery Channel "Driven" program which features the car [auctioned off by Shelby’s estate by Bonhams in June 2018]
- Peter H
