For Sale: 1982 De Tomaso Pantera in Huntington Station, New York

--Lime Green with Cognac ruffled leather interior Black carpeting, Restored, Powered by its 351ci Ford Cleveland (5.7 liter) V8 engine with Single Holley 4-Barrel Downdraft Carburetor producing 350 BHP at 6,000 RPM, 5-speed ZF manual gated-shift transmission, Campagnolo wheels, Tuned suspension and Quad exhaust, European specifications.  With a sumptuous leather interior, wood veneer dash, gated shifter (an iconic feature of the Pantera) as well as factory air conditioning, the Pantera GT5 produces a comfortable yet performance-focused cockpit. Alejandro De Tomaso founded his auto building firm, De Tomaso Automobili, in Modena, Italy in 1959.  Like many race car builders, he hoped to emulate Ferrari and build road cars that would embody the qualities of his racing cars and be fast, good handling cars. His first effort at a road car, introduced in 1963, was the Vallelunga, a small fastback coupe named after a racetrack near Rome.  It was powered by a practical four cylinder Ford Cortina engine.  This became a De Tomaso hallmark--to feature exotic styling on the outside but always using an off-the-shelf production engine under the engine lid. After 52 Vallelunga coupes were made, DeTomaso received some investment capital and decided to build the bigger Ford V8-powered mid-engined Mangusta (Mongoose).  Having established himself as a serious automobile manufacturer with the Mangusta coupe, Alejandro De Tomaso commissioned Lamborghini designer, Gianpaolo Dallara, to produce the chassis for his new mid-engined supercar, the Pantera.  Styled by Tom Tjaarda at Carrozzeria Ghia, the stunning coupe body was in fact built by Vignale, both companies being part of De Tomaso's empire in the early 1970s.  Visually, it was a match for Lamborghini's Miura and later Countach, though its Ford V8 was not high-tuned as the engines in purebred foreign exotics.  In 1969, Ford Motor Company in Dearborn happened to be looking for an Italian exotic car company to buy.  Fortunately, De Tomaso gave Ford an advance peek at models for his new car, the Pantera. Today, Panteras are among the most bulletproof of exotic Italian cars on the road and, as a result, they are far cheaper to run and own than Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis.  This, due to De Tomaso and Ford's choice of an off-the-shelf Mustang engine, the 351-C, as the powerplant. Even though Ford canceled importation of the Pantera to the U.S. in 1974, De Tomaso had retained the right to market the car in the rest of the world.  Therefore, several thousand Panteras were manufactured in the next two decades.  This included the rare and exciting GT-5, with its "running boards," deep front spoiler and optional tall Countach-style rear wing-on-stilts.  One of Approximately 250 GT5 Variants Built Between 1980 and 1988, this stunning blend of classic mid-eighties Italian exotica with American V8 muscle.  This is an excellent example of a highly rare and collectable Italian supercar that has enjoyed previous long-term European collector ownership as well as a recent restoration.  This rare GT5 is one of only a handful of Pantera GT5's imported to the United States, this particular example only recently imported by Autosport Designs, Inc.