I would like to confirm whether #9374 is a GT5 or a GTS. If it is a GT5, then it will have been the last GT5 in the main 1980 to 1985 production run. If not, then it will lower the total possible GT5 production by one.
Here's what I do know about the car. It was a light blue (celeste chiaro) Pantera, sold by the factory to someone in Italy, but then it passed through Stauffer Classics in Wisconsin. It was owned by Robert Garretson in California and then by Phillip Cannizzaro in Illinois who was a customer of Cory Gehling, proprietor of Collectors Choice in Dane, Wisconsin. The early history is odd, because as far as I know Stauffer acquired all the cars he imported into the US from De Tomaso distributor Claude Dubois, whose company, SAMI, operated from Switzerland and not Italy.
The car was written up in the Summer 1996 issue of PI Magazine, and the article quoted Cory Gehling as emphatically confirming it to be a GT5, which he repainted red and replaced the 351W with a 4.6 litre Lincoln Mk. III engine. Mind you, in the article he also claimed it to be the last GT5 when at least two (and possibly three) more were built after that.
The old Bill van Ess registry also shows it as a GT5, but the Marcel Schaub list (derived from factory records) shows it clearly as a GTS.
If anyone knows anything more about this Pantera, please post it here or PM me. I would really like to clear up whether it is a true factory GT5 or a conversion so I can finalize the production number estimates.
