I did a thing.......

Congratulations on the sale and purchase.  Keep us posted on how it goes and post some pics of the car.  

Does the car  have one of those Amerisport air boxes?

Rocky

The number of three "Shelby Panteras" comes from journalist reporting back around 1982.

When Shelby was at Chrysler with Ioccoca running it, Ioccoca was interested in offering an Italian exotic very much like "the Duece" did at Ford in 1962. That resulted in the Ferrari debockle.

Shelby's facility in California was called the "Skunkworks". There is where he had his people create the Shelby Chrysler products.

As far as I know, there were three 82 Panteras seen there by the press. I heard of one that Ioccoca had Shelby install a small block Dodge 318 or 340 in for testing.

The story as presented to the public by the press was that only one was modified.

That project never developed into an Italian exotic product for Chrysler but must have been involved with Chrysler's decision to buy Lamborghini and develop the Viper? The 91 or 92 Diablo clearly shows a Chrysler VIN tag on it and Leedo himself introduced it to the press.

In some discussion with Kirk Evans here on this forum, who was/is Amerisport, he stated that he had something of the order of a dozed, i.e., 12 Panteras with invoices shown as shipped to Shelby that he was contracted with to "legalize in the US".

Kirk had the job of "US legalizing" the cars, which were not DOT certified at the time. So the point of this post by me is to question the quantity of "Shelby Panteras" as only being 3?

One of our members here, BelgiumBarry, had a "Euro Pantera" that was originally "invoiced" to Shelby.

In discussing that here on this forum, he knew little about that subject and I believe that thread is where Evans chimed in about what he knew.

Maybe someone smarter then me can find that thread here? It might be of interest to you if in fact you hadn't know about it to begin with?

Doug,

    I truly don't know myself.  I have articles that there were three and I also have an invoice showing the vin number as being 9425,9426,and 9428.  The invoices were signed by Carroll himself.  I would certainly like to know the true answer to the question of quantity.  Not for any reason than to know.

It is an interesting story. I don't remember what BelgiumBarry said his unit number was? I want to say, but may be incorrect, that it was not one of those three?

I believe that he sold that car about three or four years ago and no longer appears here on the forum.

The story of the three Chrysler/Shelby Panteras is pretty much accepted as Gospel now.

It may have been Kirk Evans who removed the Mopar engine from the original test car? He made a bunch of special parts for those cars to get them certified. I believe that the air cleaner is one of those parts?

It should be pointed out about the "Shelby scam" though. Some have heard of this. Some have not.

While Carrol was alive, he had a manager that would take care of his car registrations and licensing.

When any of his cars started showing up at auctions and bringing very serious money, there was a flood of "previously owned by Carrol Shelby" cars appearing.

Shelby had this habit of ignoring much of what was being said about him negatively in the press and by word of mouth. It was reported, maybe more correctly stated as "rumored",  at some point that his "vehicle manager", for a fee, would register and title a car in Shelby's name.

In Carrol's typical avoidance of the issue, it was stated by "sources close" to him, that he had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about it.

What happened with that legally I don't know but it is "known/accepted" in the "hobby" that this situation occurred.

In the SAAC circles, it is positively known at least one of the car resellers/dealers who was selling these cars. He of course has stated complete innocence on the subject and unfortunately can not be openly discussed due to that persons affinity to sue for damages of "defaming".

Incidentally, even to this day, CS has a gaggle of attorneys with itchy trigger fingers at the sue button. So caution should prevail.

For some reason, BelgianBarry lost his enthusiasm for Panteras, and resigned from the forum.  

He was very enthusiastic about his ‘modern’ Morgan he had acquired…

According to Kirk Evans, he imported a total of five Panteras for Shelby (all just body shells) and put engines into two of them. For the early cars, the paperwork shows them as having been imported by Shelby directly, but Kirk says this was a product of confusion at the time as they were just learning as they went along.

When I asked him about this back in 2008, Kirk told me he had been working with Shelby and Roush circa late 1987 to “do a 50 states car” with a 425 hp supercharged Roush engine based on the Windsor block. He said the 50 states car, "had nothing to do with the development of the Viper. Carlini just wanted Shelby back, they wanted him for his name and were agreeing to whatever he wanted."

Kirk had an agreement in principle with Roush about them building the  engine to be compliant with EPA regulations in every state including California, and he said he still has the paperwork on that. The concept was that the engines would be shipped to Italy and the cars assembled there, then imported and sold in the US by Shelby and Kirk. Kirk said "De Tomaso had given Shelby the West Coast".

They had investors lined up who had committed a couple of million dollars to the project but then the October 19, 1987 “Black Monday" stock market crash happened and killed the whole thing. In another conversation, Kirk further explained to me that, "The one thing that did more damage than anything else was when engineer Bertocchi died. He was the brain. He ran the Pantera project – De Tomaso did not want anything to do with it."

So that is the back story insofar as I understand it, and I hope Kirk will weigh in here to correct anything I have misunderstood. Now on to the registry; my records show two narrow body and five wide body Panteras in the 9000 series:

#9262 GTS    This is the famous Paul Donderwinkle race car with a 340 wedge (see POCA Profiles 2016 #1  & the May 1986 edition of Hot Rod Magazine starting on page 79). Paul lives in Waharoa, New Zealand.  Gale Banks Engineering and Carroll Shelby built three twin-turbo 340 prototype blocks for Chrysler. Two of the three cars they were installed in were dismantled or destroyed. The motor in Paul's car, the lone survivor, has Mopar aluminum heads and an intercooled Gale Banks twin turbo setup. Just as a fun aside, the rumour is that 9262 was supposedly owned by Jim Henson at some point.

#9281    GTS          red with beige interior       [auctioned off by Shelby’s estate by Bonhams in June 2018]

#9425    GT5-S   red with beige interior. Sold by Shelby to Dr. Stan Drab in Wheatton, Illinois, then it went to Belgium, and then back to the USA     [last known to be in New York, NY]

#9426    GT5-S   Black on black.   Sold by Shelby to Dr. Stan Drab in Wheatton, Illinois.               [currently owned by Mike A, Kansas City, Missouri]

#9428    GT5-S   red with black interior.  Sold by Shelby to Dr. Stan Drab in Wheatton, Illinois.

#9430    GT5-S   white with black interior     [Pat Mical’s car in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts]

#9461    GT5-S   white on white with a Mopar engine. Sold by Shelby estate to Galpin Auto Sports, USA - see the Discovery Channel "Driven" program which features the car [auctioned off by Shelby’s estate by Bonhams in June 2018]

- Peter H

Peter, thank you for the information.   Do you know what engine 9426 had.   It’s blue and my other car 9421 had a black engine. Assume blue is American and black Australian.  This whole Shelby thing is interesting and unique.   Gathering this information is fun.  Thank you again!

Mike:

I believe from the documentation that I posted above that 9426 was sold by De Tomaso to Shelby, and then on to Dr. Stan Drab, as a body only, without an engine. Whatever engine was subsequently installed would not, therefore, be factory original and so there is no correct answer as to the colour of the block.

Peter

Peter.  Thank you for your input.   Clearing things up go me!

Who is Dr. Stan Drab, and why did he buy three chassis without engines?  

Interesting stuff!

Rocky

I heard there were 5 Shelby imported cars.  From the letter Carroll sent to the Dr. it appears to be correct.  He did buy the first three and there were two more coming.  I do not know if the other two ever came or who got them and when.  This journey with this car is very interesting.  There seems to be more information all the time.  It is maybe not so unusual for the mid 80's to not know a lot of details but even Kirk Evans has memories and not a lot of facts.  He has been good at filling in the blanks.  He thought the first three had motors in them and maybe even came across with engines already in them but it sounds like they were sold to the Dr. as rolling chassis.   Interesting stuff.

What's the story behind Dr. Drab owning the 3?  That's 3 towns over from me.

Have not heard that story as of yet.  The paperwork shown above verifies that but I don't know anything about him.  He may of just been buying them from Carroll and flipping them, could of been the money man, or may of been in partnership with Carroll on them.  That might be something that Kirk knows.  Seems like all of these cars have a story and these three or five have even more of a story.  I would love to chat with the owners of any of the other Shelby cars.  I know 9425 is still around, I saw it advertised a year ago that it was running through auction.