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Pantera #4829 - Chassis has Group 4 lightening holes

Dear Friends, a few years ago I bought my first Pantera. It was in a realy bad condition and complete disassembled. The former owner sold a lot of parts of it and I bought it without a transmission and without brakes axcles etc. Nobody from the Pantera specialists want to buy the car, because they said it is not original ! It have a strange chassis and strange metal parts on it. So they do not buy it! But I bought it, because I liked it and loved the design.

As I started the restoration I bought a fuel tank and some other parts. But the fuel tank was strange: It should have one on the right side, but the standart one is on the left side. Also I bought new metal Hall flares , but they do not fit, so I started to try to find out what happend to my car. The Vin is 4829 but they could be any other vin also, because the metal is rewelded and you can not exactly read the vin numbers on the chassis.

So I tried to find some italien people, who can help me in this case. Raphaele , a former De Tomaso worker, had all the documents and told me, that my car was was built in spring 1972 and sold to autoitalyimport in 1973 as a white car with 10 inch campies on the back. OK - but no information , why I have this filler neck hole on the right side and some other points wich appear verry strange. I have metal flares on the car but they are verry flat . My sidewals are different to other panteras , because I cut one flare and try to mount the hall metall gr4 flares and they do not fit in any position!

So I asked arround and get an e-mail from a former english De Tomaso reseller and he told me , that there were 2 or 3 cars , wich were built like my car. It was the Pantera+ intern at De Tomaso Factory and even my car could be the prototype for the Gr4 Cars! So I take a screw driver and scratch on my cars chassis and figure out that my cars first color was RED ! there is no filler or something on the car. Only RED PAINT as the first color on the car! But the Invoce for italy import state: white and black inside !

I have a Serie 1 dashboard , and leather seats , the big brake master cylinder , 4V heads and the webers from 1971 in my pantera puzzle. Also the chassis is diffrent. There are some more metal parts welded to the chassis to make it stronger and there are a lot of holes and some rewelded areas.

So we contact De Tomaso himself and an other old De Tomaso worker and they told me on the phone, that my car is the prototype from the gr4 cars and later it was rebuilt for the Pantera Plus project. I should pay some money and they will try to find all documents for my car. It was a sum arround 5k ! To much for a few papers, I tought.

The car got metal flares in 1973 and was sold with the 10 inch wheels. Also they mounted an aluminum rear spoiler and it should be a little nice version of the GT4 because there were no 345/35/15 tires for the street to buy and De Tomaso / or Autoitaly as their distributor want a clean nice looking car, without the fiberglass flares.

I am quite happy with the story of my car but have no documents or any papers Frowner . Are there any other persons, who know more ? Is there an other way- where I do not need to spend so much money for some documents ? Who knows more about the Pantera Plus ? Thanks a lot, sorry for my bad English.

Peter

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