Autocross the cat ?

Hi Bob:

A few years ago I left my Pantera at home and took my BMW M Coupe to a weekend SCCA autocross school in SoCal. I found it to be very tough even on that year-old, full-warranty car and I swore that I'd never put my Pantera - which is fully race prepared by the way - through the kind of abuse I experienced while autocrossing. An instructor at Skip Barber once explained that, even though your car might be at full throttle, a road course would still allow it time to "breathe". This is not the case on an autocross course.

I suspect that Jack DeRyke, who is much more knowledgeable about every aspect of Panteras and their ownership than I, would disagree if the car were properly prepared. In fact, I understand that Jack autocrossed his own Pantera for several years. So try it - you can always just park your car if you don't like it. Lastly, I would suggest that you make sure you�ve got an upgraded oil pan before starting out.

Matt Merritt
#2171


My

I ran two different Panteras for 8 yrs in various classes, in Northern CA, where autocross was invernted. Earned 3 regional championships against 'Vettes and all manner of street-modifieds. Stock, the Pantera is a disaster- the factory-built underrsteer is horrible in low-speed turns and the tiny tires don't help. Lowering the car & adding 8" wheels to the front, with the biggest tires that fit under the fenders, helped (245-50x 15s frt & 275-55-15s rear on 10" Gotti wheels). Hoosier DOTs helped tremendously. Second, the ZF has a limited slip that can be of two types and one is twice as stiff as the other... predictably, we had one of each so none of the set-up data from one car matched the other until we found this. Fixing the tight one was expen$ive.. A tight posi causes even more understeer. Custom swaybars- 5/8 front & 1-1/4 in back, on custom braces trimmed the car to more-or-less neutral. Adding a big swaybar to the stock rear mounts only flexes the frame- it needs custom mounts & braces similar to the LeMans racers. There are others relating to front & rear wheel alignment, steering mods & tire pressures (we ran 42 psi frt/46-48 psi rears). At the end, the car worked very well, had around 550 horses and was still streetable.... and the body began cracking from sticky-tire cornering stress so we retired it. Nowadays, I'd first add a vendor's front & rear brace sysems before even thinking about this. Good luck.