Mark McWhinney, POCA President, posted this today on the POCA forum.
The video was first shown at the Saturday awards dinner for the Fun Rally. To say it was well received would be an understatement.
Larry
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First, a bit of background info -- Claude DuBois was originally Europe's Shelby distributor, and in 1971,he began a journey with De Tomaso that positioned his dealership as the number one seller of Pantera's in the world.
With his racing background, Claude became a privateer of one of the first Pantera Race Teams. His race team experienced impressive early success with a Pantera propelled by relatively stock 351 Cleveland as hi-po engine parts were initially not available for his team.
Following his lead in late 1971, The Factory built 12 competition Panteras to contest FIAs now legendary Group 4
What many do not know is that Porsche was so concerned about the factory Panteras' arrival, that they coerced the FIA into homologating the Group 4 Panteras at a weight penalizing 2,755 lbs.
Our very own Motorsports Journalist, Mike Drew, who has traveled extensively in Europe and visited the automobile factories, has cunningly uncovered archival footage illustrating the anxiety the Pantera's initial success brought to Porsche. The Pantera has been credited with accelerating Porsche's engineering team to turbocharge the 911 and bring out the 930. Now, there exists documented proof.
Risking an international incident, Mike successfully ferreted this footage out of Germany and back to the States. Now, it is in the public domain on the POCA website.
The full-size video is at http://poca.com/PorschePantera.wmv It is 67 megabytes but well worth it. If you have a slow connection, you could try the smaller version at http://poca.com/PorschePantera320.wmv
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