De Tomaso Pantera: Time For Coffee?
When your company car allowance gets pretty exotic!
It may not be so likely these days, but it's exactly what happened to Gary Corcoran back in 1983 - after three years of employment, the company he worked for offered him a $250 company car allowance, serious money for the time. Many of his colleagues opted for Mercedes and BMWs, but Gary was more intrigued by exotics. Good for Gary.
Having considered a number of Corvettes, he even went to look at a Ferrari Dino but, as fate would have it, whilst driving down the Pacific Coast Highway he came across a De Tomaso Pantera in one of Ferrari's very own dealerships. The styling appealed to Gary and, after he found out that it had a Ford-derived engine mounted to a ZF gearbox, he had to have it.
Despite having paid the same price as a Dino ($20,000 back then), Gary says that he doesn't regret buying the Pantera at all. Life eventually got in the way and Pantera ownership stopped being a priority but, with his son beginning to show an interest, Gary set about restoring to its original glory. If you can keep a car like this in the family then you really should, right?
Watch the video here.
I worked for an American IT company in the UK in the early nineties and whilst the company car policy at the time gave you an allowance for sensible cars ( they needed 4 seats ) , when the company was starting out a few years before then you were just given the car to buy something and some were still around in the car pool.
So I worked through the pool , the highlight being an XR4x4 on an E plate - a great car to have and go on holiday in but being a 2.9L the tax was crippling ( although luckily I was doing business mileage ) . There were also XR2i , Renault 5 GTX ( 1.7L ? ) , Audi 80 and also the odd Volvo 740 which was crippling on fuel but useful for moving furniture around happy days !
They look good with a bank of Cibies hanging on the front .
From my perspective as an impoverished law student he seemed to live in a different , and much better world
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