quote:Originally posted by DeLoreans and DeTomasos:
... I was really looking forward to a new Pantera and actually sort of halted my search for a car as a consequence ...
Harry
The price of Panteras has risen a bit in the last few years. I don't know if this had anything to do with Rossignolo's purchase of the company. In a similar way, I can't predict if prices will fall a bit now that the marque's future seems to be coming to an end. But even if prices do fall, it won't be a drastic decline. The iconic Pantera will soldier on as it always has, weathering financial storms, always in enough demand to keep the prices about where they always have been.
The parts situation is in better shape than it has been in over 20 years, thanks to the efforts of Santiago DeTomaso, Steve Wilkinson and others. Outside of the unibody, most of the parts needed to build a Pantera from scratch are reasonably easy to come by. The future of classic Pantera ownership seems trouble free at this time.
There are other Italian car marques from the sixties and seventies that have suffered the closure of a factory, or the manufacturer going out of business ... but the Pantera is the only car with the iconic reputation that it has. That's what sets the Pantera apart, and what keeps fueling this hobby.
Just like the founder of the company, just like each and every owner I know, the Pantera marches to its own drum. Whatever Rossignolo does, whatever the Chinese investors do, whatever Road and Track writes about it, just doesn't matter. It has been proven over and over for 40 years the Pantera is bad-ass enough to rise above all the hoopla.
-G