(engine revving)
(gunshot fires) (glass breaking)
- What happens when you take an Italian Supercar,
throw an American V8 in the back,
and put it in the hands
of one of the most eccentric pop stars of the 20th century?
(gunshots fire)
If rock and roll was a car, this would be it.
It's loud, it's fast,
and this big old wedge of Italian Parmesan
has a Ford 351 in the back.
Not only did Elvis own this car,
he shot it with his revolver, (gunshot fired)
but why?
We're going blue suede shoes to pop-up headlights,
bumper to bumper on Elvis Presley's Pantera.
(upbeat music)
Hey, thanks to Omaze for sponsoring
this episode of Bumper to Bumper.
Do you like Supras?
(scoffs) Course you do.
Would you like to win one?
Of course you would.
Well, you're in luck.
Omaze is giving away a brand new
2020 Toyota GR Supra 3.0 Premium to someone, maybe you.
Just go to omaze.com/donut and enter for your chance to win.
Even better, you'll also get to customize your new Supra
with $50,000 worth of mods
with the help of Cody Walker, brother of Paul Walker.
Put an exhaust on it, (engine revs)
a body kit, whatever you want,
but the best part of all this
is that every donation benefits "Reach Out Worldwide,"
an incredible nonprofit founded by Paul Walker.
Just go to Omaze.com/Donut and enter right now
for your chance to win a 2020 GR Supra
with taxes and shipping included,
plus $50,000 of upgrades to make your Supra
unlike anything else on the road.
I'd do a wide body and some Ronal Teddy Bears.
Probably take it to SEMA next year.
(laughs) Yeah. (cameraman laughs)
(upbeat music)
Hey guys, really quick,
you might be wondering why I, Nolan,
am hosting an episode of Bumper to Bumper.
Well, if you haven't heard,
James just had a pretty serious health scare,
a heart attack.
He's doing okay now, thankfully.
But we're giving him all the time he needs to recover.
Some other familiar faces and I
are gonna be filling in for him.
Go send Uncle Palm some love in the comments.
And from all of us at Donut,
feel better, James, please.
Now back to the show!
(upbeat music)
If you don't know who Elvis was,
he was basically like the Justin Bieber of the 50s.
He had some slappers.
But even though this was Elvis' car,
this story is just as much about him
as it is about another crazy ass dude,
the guy with his name on the badge.
Alejandro De Tomaso was born in Argentina
and fled to Italy in 1955 after he was implicated
in a plot to overthrow the Argentinian government.
It really doesn't get more rock and roll
than overthrowing the government.
De Tomaso settled in Modena in northern Italy,
where he began his career as a race car driver for Maserati.
In 1959, he and his wife started
the De Tomaso Automobili Company
with intentions of building Formula One cars.
Unfortunately, that didn't pan out.
But De Tomaso wasn't known for giving up.
He was a fiery businessman
with a notoriously short attention span.
So De Tomaso pivoted from building F1 cars
to developing high-end sports cars.
The first car De Tomaso made was the Vallelunga in 1963.
I know I butchered that.
A few years later, they came out with the Mangusta.
Ford's chief designer at the time
bought himself a Mangusta and the dude loved it.
His buddy and president of Ford at the time,
Lee Iacocca, loved it too.
Together, they started pushing Henry Ford II,
AKA Hank the Deuce, to invest in De Tomaso.
When Ford engineers showed up at the De Tomaso factory,
they saw how shotty the build quality was and were like,
"If you come up with a car that can be easier built,
"let us know."
De Tomaso whipped up a one-fifth scale wooden mock-up
of the Pantera.
The Ford engineers were scared to go back to Hank the Deuce
with nothing, so they were like,
"All right, we'll take it."
(rock music)
The body was drawn up by an American designer
by the name of Tom Tjaarda at Ghia Coachworks.
This dude designed some of the most iconic cars
of the 20th century,
cars like the Ferrari 365 California Spyder,
the Mercedes 230SL Pagoda,
and the Chrysler Lebaron.
- [Man] It's a Lebaron.
- This is a 1971 Pantera.
It sits on a steel monocoque chassis
and has a curve weight of around 3,100 pounds.
The engine makes 310 buff horses
and 344 foot-pounds of torque, it pulls.
It also has pop-up headlights.
But just like its predecessor, the Mangusta,
the car was fraught with problems from the get-go,
like "Chinese Democracy" by Guns N Roses
or "Jesus is King" by Kanye West.
I give it a light five.
(hard rock music)
From scale model to the moment the Pantera
rolled off the production line, took only nine months.
Nine months.
That's an insane turnaround for a car company.
The Lexus LFA, which we did in another episode,
took 10 years to make!
This thing didn't even take a year.
(hard rock music)
The reason the development was so short
is because Lee Iacocca wanted to get the jump
on any potential competition.
He was afraid that someone would beat him
to the American-European Exotic Supercar punch.
Is this the part where Max is gonna phase me out
in some weird animation?
Brand (echoes) new, the Pantera cost around $10,000,
which is about $63,000 in today's money.
To put that in perspective,
a Corvette cost around a third of that
and a Ferrari Daytona was almost double the price.
So the Pantera was kind of in a class of its own.
A lot of the features on the car were pretty rare
for high-end European sports cars at the time,
things like air conditioning,
power windows and even a door chime
set this car apart from the competition.
(electric guitar music
De Tomaso slapped on those sick magnesium wheels
to cut weight and add a little pizazz.
I love 'em. (electric guitar music)
What's really cool is the tire profile isn't that insane.
The wheel is relatively big for the era
and it makes it look pretty contemporary.
Panteras also came standard
with four-wheel independent suspension
and four-wheel power-assisted disc brakes.
That doesn't sound too crazy nowadays,
but it wasn't that common back in 1971.
This thing could stop quite well.
Because the Pantera was a higher end model,
Ford sold them through Lincoln dealerships.
It was presumably at one of these Lincoln dealerships
that Elvis Presley, a noted Lincoln enthusiast,
moon-walked in one day in 1974
and bought a used Pantera for $2,500,
or $13,000 in today's money.
But more on that in a little bit.
Panteras were immediately
a huge pain in the ass for dealerships.
Car salespeople didn't know how to sell them.
Mechanics hated working on them.
And the first 100 of them had to be recalled
because of a suspension issue.
Electrical gremlins were a headache as well because,
as one mechanic put it,
"No two Panteras were wired the same."
Not good.
There was one thing that Ford mechanics
knew how to deal with:
The Ford engine. (rock music)
This particular car doesn't have a trunk,
but straight from the factory,
Panteras had a removable trunk bucket compartment
that sat right above the engine, somewhere in here.
It was actually a pretty big trunk for a supercar.
Powering this twisted sister fit
is a 5.8 liter naturally aspirated V8,
AKA the Ford Cleveland V8.
You know what else is in Cleveland?
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Coincidence?
You tell me.
European versions made 330 buff horses,
but in the US, it only made 310
because of emission standards.
Ya know, typical.
Speaking of emissions,
did y'all see that quad exhaust in the back?
(engine revs)
Even though this car has an American V8,
De Tomaso engineers tuned the exhaust to give the Pantera
a growl unlike anything coming out of Detroit at the time.
The big old 351 right here is routed through
a ZF transaxle five-speed gearbox right here.
I don't really see stuff like this very often.
That's pretty cool.
Pantera can do zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds.
That's quick, man!
It might not seem that fast nowadays
because everything has like 800 horsepower,
but this is 1971 we're talking about.
The twice as expensive Ferrari Daytona
did zero to 60 in just 5.4 seconds.
That raw speed is part of the reason
Elvis bought this car in the first place.
If I know anything about Elvis,
he loved speed.
But the real reason that Elvis bought this Pantera
was to impress his new girlfriend Linda Thompson.
Can you imagine those freakin' lovebirds in here?
Some big complaints of the Pantera
are that the steering wheel is in an awkward position,
which blocks the gauges,
and that the pedals are shifted
towards the center of the car,
what makes it hard to use the clutch.
This is uncomfortable, who would drive this?
How did Elvis go to the dealer, sit in this and say,
"Yes, this is a comfortable car that I would like to drive"?
Panteras were notorious for overheating and vapor locking,
which is when gasoline in the fuel lines
changes from a liquid to a gas,
which kills fuel pressure and stalls the engine.
Not what you want in a supercar.
Something else was stalling at that time, too:
Elvis' career.
The unfortunate combination of a faltering career
and abuse of prescription drugs
meant that Elvis gained a reputation
for being erratic and a bit of a hothead.
Add to that his love of firearms
and what you get is absolute rock and roll.
He shot his TV because Robert Goulet was on-screen
and Elvis didn't like his face.
He would sit next to his pool
and shoot floating light bulbs with his .22 for fun.
He brought a gun into the Oval Office.
This guy liked guns. (upbeat music)
During one fateful afternoon,
Elvis jumped in his car
after an argument with his girlfriend,
when the Pantera didn't start up, surprise.
Elvis grabbed the revolver out of his ankle holster
and fired two shots into it. (gunshot fires)
One of them popped the tire
and the other ricocheted off the steering wheel
and shattered the windshield.
You can still see the mark on the steering wheel,
right here. (upbeat music)
That's what you do when you're the
King of Rock and Roll, baby.
Shoot your car.
Now that's not even the coolest freakin' part.
Elvis sold this car in 1976,
and a few years later in 1981,
it was traded for $300,000 worth of diamonds
at an auction in Newport Beach.
Apparently, there was this trend in the early 80s
where people traded diamonds for cars
and houses and stuff like that,
which is insane.
It's the ultimate rich bastard move.
Soon after the diamond trade,
it was sold again to Robert Petersen
of the Petersen Automotive Museum,
where it lives today.
I'm a little disappointed
because it's my first episode of Bumper to Bumper
and I really wanna start this thing up,
but the battery's dead and it won't start.
(somber music)
(upbeat music)
The De Tomaso Pantera is still a fast,
stylish and underrated supercar.
It could've been so much better
if they had just spent more time developing it.
Panteras were still produced until the early 90s in Italy
because of a clause that De Tomaso
slipped into the contract with Ford
that allowed them the rights to build Panteras
outside of the US.
If you can get your hands on one of these things,
you can find guides and kits to make it run
and handle the way it should have.
Elvis has kind of turned into a punchline nowadays,
but he was actually a great entertainer for his time.
Elvis was the king of rock and roll,
but the Pantera is rock and roll.
(rock music)
Donut wants to send a huge thank you
to the Petersen Automotive Museum.
If you're in LA, you must check it out.
We love coming here.
I love you, Petersen.
So, thank you so much.
Be nice, see you next time.
(upbeat rock music)
(imitating rock music)
RIP, Dimebag.
Someday (laughs)
Someday you're the (beep)
Some tay, someday you're the,
the (beep)
(bass booms)