50 years of Pantera
1979 DE TOMASO PANTERA GTS vs 1983 LAMBORGHINI OUNTACH 5000S
De Tomaso vs Lamborghini
We drive the Pantera to mark this Americanengined supercar’s half-century. But is the Countach – twice the price in period – also twice the fun? We drive both to find out…
The American V8 faces its greatest test when it’s in rear-mounted. You could argue that the natural home for a Detroit iron-block in a car is up front behind a gaping grille to disperse the masses of heat. But there’s something distinctly bespoke about a mid-engined supercar, especially one with a Vee-configuration powerplant mounted longitudinally, F1-style; you can’t just transplant a humble saloon’s drivetrain and cooling system into a car like this on a tight budget.
Building a mid-engined supercar, then, just doesn’t suit the cost-cutting mindset that the bulk-buying of Ford Cleveland V8 engines might suggest – not that it stopped Alejandro de Tomaso from trying.
The Pantera debuted in Modena in March 1970. It was unveiled to its all-important US market at the New York Motor Show a few weeks later before going on sale in 1971. Produced to the replace the Mangusta, it was designed by Ghia’s Tom Tjaarda and employed the aforementioned Cleveland V8, initially in its 351ci displacement. The GTS that we’re sampling here was introduced to the European market in spring 1972.
Things could have ended prematurely for the Pantera when Ford discontinued the Cleveland 351 in 1974, but kept using it until 1982 thanks to the blue oval’s Australian arm. Thereafter, the Pantera utilised the Windsor 351 V8 and remains an exclusive machine today despite its long run – production ended in 1992 – with just over 7000 built.
The Lamborghini Countach is similarly limited. Unveiled to the public in 1970 as the Lancia Stratos Zero concept, the first showing of the actual prototype took place at the Geneva Motor Show the following year, with production beginning three years later.
The Countach entered production as the LP400 with its 3.9-litre V12 delivering 375bhp. The LP400S followed in 1978 with even more radical styling and improved handling thanks to its wider tyres. Then, in 1982, came the car featured here – the 5000S – which saw the V12’s displacement increase to 4.8 litres. Production ended in 1990 with almost 2000 built. Each Lamborghini was very much bespoke but Alejandro de Tomaso saw an opportunity to use mass-produced components and massproduction methods to subvert the supercar world’s exclusivity and bring the concept and its comparable performance to a much larger market for nearly half the Countach’s price. How successful was he? Let’s first sample what the Pantera was up against in order to decide.
FUELLED BY PASSION
There are plenty of Italian parts-bin bits all over the Countach’s cabin but Bertone’s concept-car coachwork – derived from Marcello Gandini’s Carabo re-design of the Alfa Romeo 33/2 Stradale – seems so impractical that its very existence outside a motor show defies logic. It’s as though no one was allowed to ask ‘But why…?’ at any point during the design process.
Noise rampages out of the engine bay the second the ignition key is turned and there’s a sense of vacuum-sealing both in the vertical closing of a door that angles so severely above your head and the way in which the car feels pressed to the road, even at low speeds.
Point the base of the windscreen – the furthest forward point visible from the driver’s seat – at the horizon, use your little toes against the extremities of the cramped pedal box to judge where the throttle and hard-sprung clutch pedal are and hit the accelerator. The Countach howls on to the straight on a surfeit of screams, yelps, bangs and clatters, the scenery blurs as the revs zing past 4000rpm and your eyes struggle to keep up with road furniture.
It’s more comfortable than you might expect; the driver’s head may be jammed against the roof but there’s plenty of legroom, although the pedal offset is such that the brake is almost where you’d expect to find the clutch in an ordinary car.
The Countach remains impressively flat in the corners, its wide front 225/50 VR15 tyres and huge 345/35 ZR15 rears seemingly impossible to unstick – from dry tarmac at least. The thickrimmed heavy steering wheel and wide tyres rob it of the delicate, tactile feel that characterised the previous generation of supercars, but you never lose the sense that you are the centre of gravity – the focal point of all this rage and thunder. The power and responsibility of directing it all is almost as dizzying an ego-boost as catching a reflection of yourself at the wheel in a shop window.
BUDGET HERO
Devised to cost not much more than a Jaguar XJ12, powered by ostensibly the same engine as a Ford Mustang Mach 1 and built as a steel monocoque rather than the Countach’s exotic racer-style tubular spaceframe, the De Tomaso Pantera GTS certainly looks every bit as dramatic as the Countach.
It may lack the Lamborghini’s wild scissor doors and double-stacked front lights but combines swaggering, exaggerated muscle-car curves with futuristic surfaces like nothing else. This is most obvious in the severe swage-line kick-up behind the doors, devised – Tjaarda says – to draw attention to the engine’s position.
However, the Countach’s bespoke glassfibre aerodynamic addenda make the manner in which the Pantera draws attention to its GTSmodel status – essentially through matt-black paint and big decals – look a bit cheap. And it sells the car short; those three letters point to high compression cylinder heads and heavy-duty solid valve lifters, courtesy of Ford Motorsport of Australia, that lend the out-of-the-crate engine genuine Bathurst credibility.
Jump in and it’s immediately obvious that the Pantera sits even closer to the ground than the Countach. The GTS warranted a more powerful engine than the Pantera L but also had a lower floor for improved usability. That said, the driving position isn’t as comfortable as the Countach’s and forces the driver’s left knee awkwardly between the Seventies accessory shop-style steering wheel and rather brittlelooking indicator stalk. It’s also baking hot in there thanks to the seemingly endless swathes of unventilated black vinyl and radiator pipes running below the floor.
Fire up the V8 and the Lamborghini’s scream is replaced by an even louder boom, its deep, resonant frequencies pulsing painfully across the eardrums. You’ll soon discover that you don’t need to rev the Pantera hard to access its performance; instead, you can use the V8’s sheer tractability, treating the gear ratios as wide spans of performance potential – rather than constantly shifting through them – and trusting that a planted throttle will keep the torque coming. It all seems strangely undramatic until a glance at the dials reveals that while the V8 may only be turning over at 2500rpm it’s also pulling 100mph – and still only in third gear.
The Gian Paolo Dallara-devised Pantera is just as planted and balanced as the Countach in the corners – each employs double-wishbones with coil springs front and rear so perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising – but the steering is more redolent of an earlier era. It feels light and twitchy through its larger-diameter steering wheel despite having the same-size front tyres as the Countach. And although the De Tomaso’s 275/55 ZR15 rear tyres are smaller than the Lamborghini’s monsters they still look and grip like period Formula One balloon slicks so there’s no threat of breakaway.