De Tomaso Pantera tribute launched
Lamborghini Huracan-based Ares Panther supercar taps long-lost PanteraNo, the De Tomaso Pantera isn’t back. It’s the Ares Panther arriving for the very first time.
The Modena-built supercar will be built from May this year in a production run of only 21 cars, but there’s reason to be confident about the Ares Panther.
That’s because the Panther (the English word for ‘Pantera’) will lead off the custom coachbuilder’s Legends Reborn series, which is planned to deliver a run of homages to legendary sports cars.
Codenamed Project 1 during its development, the Panther is very clearly a modern interpretation of the Pantera – which was also originally built in Ares’ hometown of Modena, Italy.
There are plenty of future options for Ares to choose from, with Modena also the one-time (at least) hometown of other legendary brands like Ferrari, Scaglietti, Maserati, Bugatti (during Roman Artioli’s EB110 era) and Pagani, with Lamborghini less than 30km away.
It returns the car industry to a long-lost headache in pop-up headlights (which disappeared for weight, complexity and crash-safety reasons) on its way to mimicking the layout of the original De Tomaso.
It runs the Lamborghini Huracan’s 5.2-litre V12 engine, which is considerably different in both character and revs to the original car’s 5.8-litre Cleveland V8 from Ford and it will have less power and torque than the 1988 GT5 S.
The Panther’s body will be pure carbon-fibre, though it will still weigh about 45kg more than the Huracan Performante.
It plans to have six-piston front Brembo callipers and four-piston rear units with carbon-ceramic discs. There are 20-inch front discs and 21-inch rears, which it will need with a claimed 325km/h top speed.
Ares was founded and is run by controversial former Lotus boss Dany Bahar, and also has the brainpower of many of the engineers and designers who followed Bahar after his demise in Norfolk.
It’s far from the first time somebody has tried to recapture the classic Pantera shape, including the oft-troubled De Tomaso itself.
The owner of the De Tomaso brand indeed rescued the troubled Gumpert supercar operation back in 2016.
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