I'm not a Pantera owner and never have been. Fate has led me in a different direction.
I do, however, have some history with the Pantera. Back in the '70s I had an encounter with a Yellow Pantera that had been stolen joy-ridden (obviously) and then dumped at the foot of my family driveway in Great Falls, Virginia. If you or someone you know is the owner of the Pantera that was stolen and recovered in that area about that time frame, you or they might find this story interesting.
If no car ID pops up here, posting a notice at the next meeting of Pantera owners meet-up would be the next best option.
This will probably be my last post on this forum unless there's a hit of some kind.
Happy motoring!
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The Other Driveway
John Rowland
I was coming home very late at night. I was on my way back from a long-distance date when I ran out of gas about a mile-and-a-half from home. My old Saab held only ten gallons. It was the perfect car for me, well engineered and a little dorky. The fuel gauge wasn't all that accurate. I knew it was very low but, even using every fuel-conserving trick that I knew, it just wasn't enough. I knew we had gas at home and with no better option available, I started walking. A warm night, it was a pleasant walk but a dark one. What little light there was trickled from the stars above through the thick foliage of the forest canopy. There were no other drivers to offer me rides or destroy my night vision with their headlights.
As I approached our lower driveway, I could see before me a parked car. Nobody parked there, ever. It was if I had spotted a supermodel in the swamp. It was the car of my dreams. A screaming yellow Ford de Tomaso Pantera; Ford's Italian-designed, V8-powered, mid-engined answer to the Corvette and guaranteed babe-magnet. With my night-vision fully adapted to the gloom, I was able to see the ignition harness hanging below the dashboard. I knew the car had been stolen, joy-ridden and ditched.
[Insert picture of a bright Yellow Pantera here]
My mind raced with the options before me. I could be the upstanding citizen and report my discovery to the proper authorities, or I could be the bad boy and act in my own self-interest.
I was fairly confident of my ability to get it started, drive it to the back of the barn, cover it with hay and wait 'til the statute of limitations expired, seven years, I thought. The owner surely had insurance. I knew just the spot that would accommodate the car. There was hay nearby; I could stack the bales to conceal the car until I came up with a longer-term solution. My father was somewhat hard of hearing, associated with his Ménière's; I was pretty sure that I could get it done before anyone was the wiser. I weighed the available options as I trudged the steepest part of the night's walk.
I called the police to report that the car was there and that I knew it had been stolen.
I went with the first option, electing to call it in to the police before I was seduced by the obvious practicalities of the second. As I was on the phone with the dispatcher (it was about 2:00 AM by then) I was asked for the address. That's when the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I knew that we were right on the border between two police jurisdictions. We had a “street address,” mailbox and driveway on River Bend Road in the Great Falls jurisdiction and the other driveway on Old Dominion where the Pantera was, was in the McLean jurisdiction. I took a deep breath and gave all the facts of the case to the dispatcher, taking pains to explain that although I was calling from my home in the Great Falls jurisdiction, the Pantera was in the McLean jurisdiction. I was somewhat repetitive for the sake of emphasis. I was promised that there would be no problem. Moderately reassured, I grabbed the gas can, pumped a gallon or so from the hand-pump fuel storage tank kept full by the Southern States co-op and started the long dark walk the mile-and-a-half back to my car.
As I walked I listened to the shrieking of the insects and the second guessing inside my own head. Would the police get it right or would some hapless cop knock on the door and initiate an uproar?
My Saab quickly started, I happily drove home, confident that I've done the right thing. To my dismay I discover my father awake and pissed. Really pissed. He glared it me from beneath his eyebrows.
It seems that the cop had indeed been hapless and, unable to locate the Pantera, came to the house from the Great Falls side. He knocked and roused my father, who, unaccustomed to such intrusions at that hour, in his skivvies, confronted the cop with his go-to gun, possibly the most wicked-looking handgun ever, his slim-snouted broom-handle Mauser.
[insert picture of Mauser here]
I arrived back home to find my father glowering from behind the kitchen table. He thought that I should have anticipated what happened. I had, kind of.... When I explained what had happened, my father seemed slightly mollified but I doubt that the cop was ever the same. My father felt that common sense meant having an anticipation of consequences. Accidents are not random; the fall into predictable patterns. Like the way an engineer might see the world, there are standard modes of failure. You should be able to anticipate what will happen given circumstance A, action B then consequence C should not come as a complete surprise. Just because your intentions for action B are good does not mean that there will not be adverse consequences.
It is said that no good deed goes unpunished, but that does not mean that we should quit trying to do good deeds.
I never did get a thank-you note from the owner of the Pantera.
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