I agree with everything said. However, a customer brought his car to Dave to work his magic and pay him accordingly.
The customer should have known better to start out with a garbage donor car instead of destroying a solid car (I did cringe at the thought of all that good metal being trashed). Again, if he has the money give him what he wants.
FWIW - I had the opportunity to meet Dave at the Woodward Cruise several years ago - we spent some time talking about cars - he is a very personable guy and I do love his work.
....OK, so I was off a teeny tiny $100K plus or minus another $100K, on my project cost guesstimate.....watching too many cheap assed home improvement shows with the wife....has my entire outlook on car projects distorted!!! 
I also think that being a solely Mangusta owner has given me a jaded edge at looking at our cars...with the GOose being so low a survivor from original production, putting any of the remains back on the road for one of those cars is great and I spent/spend a lot of time encouraging others to do so! Now, Goose is out of the picture and owning a Pantera leaves me with some of the same thinking still in the picture!
Then there's the ol' "ya can fix anything" way of thinking too, which I think my father instilled in me a bit!!!! Even rust! 
Hate rust.......
Good comments by all!!!
Merry Christmas!!!!
Steve
Hay, Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to everyone,
Let's take a brake and start bashing the "Reality Shows" later.
And we know that needs to be done!
I'm not surprised at any of this, including the responses. It was all very predictable.
Nothing positive will happen from all of it. The best that can happen is that it will be like the "Gone in 60 seconds" '67 GT500 and people will think THAT one is the real one. So much for name recognition?
For most billionaires a $100k pantera is viewed the way most would see a $100 car. No big deal.
I also did not like watching them chop it to pieces but was in awe of the metal fab those guys do. Absolute artists.
looking forward to seeing the finished product. Hopefully EBJ will bring it to the Tutto Italiano at Larz Anderson when it is done.
Kindig always seems to "start" with an original car and then cut. I wonder if that is because the original Pantera s/n and i.d. is retained and the owner can continue to say "it's an original 71 P" and Kindig's approach is to always use an original car as the basis - just his approach to customizing I guess. Having flared my car to Gp IV, I am not in a position to throw stones as we that have modified our cars are only different shades apart. I do agree with the comment that it "seems" Pantera's as a marque have had a fair amount of heavy customization by their owners as opposed to say the Ferrari or Lamborghini crowd, I assume because until recently, the cars were relatively inexpensive / unwanted relative to the other Italian marques. Perhaps that is changing now.
At the end of the day, the Pantera is not a super low production car. If they had carved up a Goose I think I would be more upset. Considering how many cars we have saved that probably should have made it to the great car heap in the sky it doesn’t bother me that much. And considering how customized many Pantera owners have modified their cars I guess I thought folks would have been less angry (probably too strong a word, maybe miffed). Reminds me of some of the feedback Stanceworks gets for carving up the 308. At the very least I like to see the discussion on the board!!
Granted that there is a degree of hypocrisy about the entire scenario but as soon as I heard who was going to do what to a Pantera, it's not surprising where it went and wound up as?
Some think it is ok for them to "modify" the car and not others?
I suppose if it was a Mustang coupe it wouldn't even be worthy of a mention?
"C'est La Vie" say the 'old folks, goes to show you never can tell?"