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What's the story of prototype #01025?

dvildvilI'm here sometimes
Hi Folks,
I’m starting this thread to show an example of an early Pantera, and to hopefully shed some light of the history. It’s been sitting in my garage for too many years, but I’m slowly working against making it ready for the road again.

After owing it for so many years, knowing it’s history have become more interesting. What I know, is the long line of owners in Norway, but nothing before that. The look you see here is how it looked when I got it in 1996. After a major fire a previous owner had bought it as a wreck from the insurance company. There were rust to fix and lot’s of original parts were gone in the fire. Unfortunately I have no pictures nor details.

I’ll start out with a little story about the registry. My VIN is listed in the Bill Van Ess registry as being yellow and with an owner in USA. For long I was afraid there were two cars with the same VIN. I sent a letter (remember; 1996!) to a person with this name, but never got an answer.
Last year I had a visit from Chuck “Rocky” Huber and we had a chat about this. Luckily Chuck was able to make contact with the correct owner of this registry entry. Turned out that there was a mix of VIN’s between my Pantera and his Amerisport. The Amerisports have dual VIN’s. The Amerisport was sold several years ago, apparently after too much technical challenges. Chuck told me he would now like to have it back. It’s not listed in the Provamo registry.

Thank you Rocky, for solving this for me!

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rockyrockyMember
Espen’s car was a little bit of a detective story.

I learned the American owner’s name and city from Espen’s copy of the Bill Van ESS registry. Once I had that, it was pretty easy to Google away and get a lead.

I sent the owner listed in the registry a postcard, and he replied.

We got the VIN number confusion somewhat aligned. As Espen said, the GT5-S owner would like to get his Amerisport back.

It also turned out he had one of those original Amerisport air boxes, and carbs sitting on his garage shelf. He said the car didn’t run well with it, he thought it was caused by a carb issue, and removing it was the first thing he did to the GT5-S car. The carb/air box eventually got back into circulation via eBay in ~2017.

Anyway, Espen’s car still has a couple mysteries to solve, like a very early VIN, with (some) late features, for example - late (non-push button) door handles.

Maybe the later mysteries are a job for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo “....


Rocky
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kirkevanskirkevansAmeriSport GT5-S builder Pantera Parts Vendor
Not following this???

AmeriSport cars were all S models. They have the original THPN number all over 9385 (last 4), some still have the ZDT number exposed on the right front fender (still having the same last 4 Detomaso numbers) and most have a 1A9 number which was the US 17 digit vin we were granted by the NHTSA. The early AmeriSport cars carried the THPN number only---I was still learning how to correctly identify them at that point.

The AmeriSport cars should be listed in all registries as 1A9--and the last 4 number (1025) so there is no confusion with early 71 cars showing THPN--1025.
rockyrockyMember
Hi Kirk -

Neither of us newbies understood the Amerisport number system. Espen only knew there appeared to be a second (yellow) car with the last 4 digits of the VIN as 1025. He had his - and there was another 1025 out there that wasn’t the one in his garage.

Neither of us was as saavy with regard to VINs as you, or Peter H.

A bit of research indicated the “second” 1025 car was one of your Amerisports, as opposed to Espen’s vehicle, and between us, we alleviated Espen’s concerns.

Probably not a big deal to the experts, but we thought we were pretty cool when we figured it out...

Chuck
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dvildvilI'm here sometimes
Thank you guys.
The case is solved, as Inspector Clouseau would have said - with his excellent french accent. Big Grin
For those who have never seen the first registry; here's a picture of the actual part. A big thank to Bill Van Ess (and probably others) for doing that major task.

Suburb; yes, it's a pushbutton. I'll come to that. Stay tuned.

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bosswrenchbosswrenchMember
Espen, some very early '71s- not just pushbuttons- had wider lower a-arms along with removable front spindles. That means those cars had frame mount-tabs further apart than on the production cars. Maybe a way for DeTomaso to use up body shells that were welded for the wide arms? DeTomaso never threw anything away that he could sell, you know!

I've seen one car -in N. California a looong time ago, that had one front suspension with a wide arm & removable spindle on one side and the other side as 'production'. Don't remember how it was rigged to do this or how it handled.
kirkevanskirkevansAmeriSport GT5-S builder Pantera Parts Vendor
That is not a factory mod Espen, on the control arm. The silver spacer to the right between the dust shield and control arm pin mount sleeve was added. I will take some pictures of the early 71 lower rear arm and front removable spindle. Also just an FYI the early front upper a-arm had a fixed caster position with out shims for the ball joint.
dvildvilI'm here sometimes
Thank you guys,
Just measured the distance between mounting tabs for lower rear arm; cc is very close to 400 mm.

Which leads me to the next picture. Here’s the wheelhouse. The ribs look different than others I have seen. They are almost square. How many were made like this?
There is traces of some homemade rustrepair, but are in decent shape.

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dvildvilI'm here sometimes
So, what's the distance between ears for the later Panteras?

Here is the upright. The wall is closed, and the they are not drilled for left and right use.
Thinking of the additinal spacer of the lower pivot. Where's the difference in width?
Is the shaft longer, or the upright shorter?
Shaft measures 280 mm. Upright is approx. 168 mm measured form outside of dustshield.

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bosswrenchbosswrenchMember
Not surprising, Espen, since we already know the upper subframe rails are built differently than in the production model. I suspect that pushbutton frames front & back are different in a number of areas. One owner tried to fit the alloy fuel tank from a pushbutton to a '72 some years ago, and he spent more time cutting & rewelding the alloy tank to make it fit the later car's subframe, than a properly built new alloy tank would have cost.
dvildvilI'm here sometimes
Ok,
Now, the real cause of this thread. I wonder when my Pantera was first sold to a customer?
Recently I got some photos from the first owner in Norway. Here’s a picture taken in 1979, when it was imported. Norwegian road authority has it listed as a 74, but we know it’s made in 1971, right?
There were some serious rust issues, so it was stripped for repair and repaint.

My belief is that deTomaso modified this prototype, and sold it as seen here. “New” in 1974. But how do I find proof for that?

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kirkevanskirkevansAmeriSport GT5-S builder Pantera Parts Vendor
There were many differences in the 71 cars to the 74s. It should be easy to see from the outside. Do you have any pictures of the door glass trim, windshield trim, rear taillight panel, deck, front lower valance, front grill, I can keep going. You can clearly see the front valance is missing the marker light pods that were on most of the cars starting in mid 1972 when the US L model car started in production. This car had marker light pod bumpers.
dvildvilI'm here sometimes
I can picture everything of interest, as long as I don’t need to take the car apart. :-)
The doors are of later design. That means no onepiece window-frame, as the first cars had.
Photo from 1979 show no marker light. I don’t think they were common in Europe, and forbidden in Norway (not anymore).
I now see the turn signal light on the fender was not there in 1979. Must have been installed here. It’s mandatory to be able to see the turn signal from the side.

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