danc
Part of things
Posts: 42
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Some had suggested an Esprit early on in the thread, and although it's not what I'm looking for now, I have always liked the look of them.
Having been going thorough classic sports cars listings lately and seeing how much most have gone up, it makes me wonder why the Esprit has stayed affordable. I mean you can have some of them for Corvette prices. I have seen them cheaper than 928s too. The V8 is high, but still nowhere near Panteras and 80's Lambos like the Jalpa.
I have my theories as to why they are still affordable. But I would like to hear your opinions. I thought about starting a different thread, but it probably still fits here.
I know they are not the most reliable cars out there, although a person who I know that has one says they are very uncomplicated, straight forward and not really unreliable. But regardless, lack of reliability never held classic spots cars prices down. Actually it seems the more unreliable the more expensive. Or the NSX would be the highest priced sports car.
So what do you think are the reasons?
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Some had suggested an Esprit early on in the thread, and although it's not what I'm looking for now, I have always liked the look of them. Having been going thorough classic sports cars listings lately and seeing how much most have gone up, it makes me wonder why the Esprit has stayed affordable. I mean you can have some of them for Corvette prices. I have seen them cheaper than 928s too. The V8 is high, but still nowhere near Panteras and 80's Lambos like the Jalpa. I have my theories as to why they are still affordable. But I would like to hear your opinions. I thought about starting a different thread, but it probably still fits here. I know they are not the most reliable cars out there, although a person who I know that has one says they are very uncomplicated, straight forward and not really unreliable. But regardless, lack of reliability never held classic spots cars prices down. Actually it seems the more unreliable the more expensive. Or the NSX would be the highest priced sports car. So what do you think are the reasons? They're very handsome cars but very high maintenance. Unreliable is understating their qualities. You'd need very regular servicing, they eat gearboxes, AA membership highly recommended!
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quackshot
Posted a lot
...friggin' cars...
Posts: 1,354
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Not sure if this has been suggested but what about a Subaru SVX? Aside from the fact I am selling one at a great price (link below) retrorides.proboards.com/threads/recent/191834And with the right wheels and hit with the stick they look like this!!! More images... 230bhp out the box or replace MAF, injectors and a remap then they run 280bhp. People turbo them, fit nos and all sorts to run pretty savage power.
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danc
Part of things
Posts: 42
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Aug 24, 2016 10:35:18 GMT
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Not sure if this has been suggested but what about a Subaru SVX? Seriously?
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danc
Part of things
Posts: 42
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Aug 24, 2016 10:41:29 GMT
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I thought about posting something similar before, but didn't want to be unkind. But some suggestions are indeed quite a bit off. But you know, the wheels in that Quasar are 70's styled. So there may be a bit of Pantera in there after all, hehehe. Right, by carefully reading your post we've established that your budget won't stretch to the £80K-£90K needed for a half-decent Pantera. Have you considered the almost identical £2¾ Million Lamborghini Veneno? (OK, perhaps I'm just feeling a bit more cruel than you today!) Hehehe. I'm waiting for somebody to suggest a Civic with a turbo or a Ford Puma. I share the dislike for the Veneno design with Llewelyn though. And yes, a bat logo and matte black would be more fitting to the circus design. But would you wear the cape and mask too?
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danc
Part of things
Posts: 42
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Aug 24, 2016 10:45:27 GMT
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Some had suggested an Esprit early on in the thread, and although it's not what I'm looking for now, I have always liked the look of them. Having been going thorough classic sports cars listings lately and seeing how much most have gone up, it makes me wonder why the Esprit has stayed affordable. I mean you can have some of them for Corvette prices. I have seen them cheaper than 928s too. The V8 is high, but still nowhere near Panteras and 80's Lambos like the Jalpa. I have my theories as to why they are still affordable. But I would like to hear your opinions. I thought about starting a different thread, but it probably still fits here. I know they are not the most reliable cars out there, although a person who I know that has one says they are very uncomplicated, straight forward and not really unreliable. But regardless, lack of reliability never held classic spots cars prices down. Actually it seems the more unreliable the more expensive. Or the NSX would be the highest priced sports car. So what do you think are the reasons? They're very handsome cars but very high maintenance. Unreliable is understating their qualities. You'd need very regular servicing, they eat gearboxes, AA membership highly recommended! Sure. But is there a supercar which is not unreliable or high maintenance? Apart from maybe the NSX. I don't really think this is what keeps Esprits prices down. But what is high maintenance concerning the Esprit which is out of the spectrum of a car of that nature?
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markbognor
South East
Posts: 9,970
Club RR Member Number: 56
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Aug 24, 2016 16:33:43 GMT
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Aug 24, 2016 17:51:46 GMT
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OP, I feel your pain as the Pantera is probably the best looking car ever in my eyes. Not a wedgy front, but how about a Shelby (or Superformance) Daytona?
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Last Edit: Aug 24, 2016 17:53:24 GMT by docjock
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Aug 24, 2016 18:03:35 GMT
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They're very handsome cars but very high maintenance. Unreliable is understating their qualities. You'd need very regular servicing, they eat gearboxes, AA membership highly recommended! Sure. But is there a supercar which is not unreliable or high maintenance? Apart from maybe the NSX. I don't really think this is what keeps Esprits prices down. But what is high maintenance concerning the Esprit which is out of the spectrum of a car of that nature? I don't think quite as unreliable as the Esprit. Yes other supercars needed frequent servicing which would be expensive work but I think most cars would find that kept issues in check between services / maintenance. I've heard horror stories of Esprits having factory replacement gearboxes which only lasted hundreds of miles, obviously once the car was out of warranty you could be in serious trouble & involved with significant ongoing expense. Colin Chapman's approach to auto design was to bring affordable speed to the middle class which duly filtered down as secondhand speed to the working class. His cars weren't megabucks to start with when you compared them to other cars with similar performance. The first tenet of his formula was to keep it as light as possible, lightness negated the need for big engines which in turn helped to keep the weight down. The second part of this formula was extracting maximum power from these small lightweight engines. My Dad is friendly with John Teychenne who was supplying the chassis to Lotus in the early days, (John, at 90, is the only principal figure still alive from the early days of Lotus), he's spoken to my Dad of how Chapman would obsess about using increasingly thinner metal & narrower tubing on the frames to shave a pound or two off the overall weight of a car. The end result was cars which were light, fast, chuckable & relatively inexpensive but often very compromised in terms of build quality & ride. Creature comforts / equipment just weren't considered in the Chapman formula. He moved from using tin-foil thin aluminium panels to pioneering fibreglass designs. A fibreglass body on a lightweight chassis is lighter than a steel monococque but fibreglass inherently has its own problems, you could find yourself having to regularly repair / respray. Crashes, even fairly low speed ones can have disastrous & very expensive results. How many fibreglass supercars can you think of? Probably not many and they're at the cheaper end of the range. The fastest car I've ever seen around the track at Castle Combe was a TVR Cerbera but again these cars weren't megabucks to buy new and are a very realistic proposition as secondhand buy. I've got a bit of a soft spot for the Jensen CV8, it was a bona fide early 1960's supercar but because it was produced with a fibreglass body the prices have never become absurd. I think with fibreglass cars there's always an issue in getting the cars to feel 'tight', they vibrate, they rattle they don't feel expensive. People who are spending big money on a fast car prefer to be sat inside real metal. In later years Lotus made a bit of an effort to make certain models look & feel like a luxury item but this was a cosmetic exercise done on the cheap and this 'luxury' equipment is very often cheap bits from other manufacturers & often unreliable. I've never been in an Esprit but I imagine they might not feel as good as they look, they probably feel cheap, rattly & wobbly with a tremendously hard ride, I imagine the later cars are better than the earlier ones. When you factor in the regular main dealer maintenance & periodic reliability issues, bodywork maintenance, their attractiveness wanes even more and that's why prices have never been silly. Just my thoughts anyway. I'd love an Esprit but it certainly isn't a car for everyday use!
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Aug 24, 2016 18:08:28 GMT
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Not sure if this has been suggested but what about a Subaru SVX. 230bhp out the box or replace MAF, injectors and a remap then they run 280bhp. People turbo them, fit nos and all sorts to run pretty savage power. Even with standard power they regularly chew their way through gearboxes. It really is their Achilles' heel. They are striking to look at though...
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quackshot
Posted a lot
...friggin' cars...
Posts: 1,354
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Aug 24, 2016 20:49:19 GMT
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Not sure if this has been suggested but what about a Subaru SVX. 230bhp out the box or replace MAF, injectors and a remap then they run 280bhp. People turbo them, fit nos and all sorts to run pretty savage power. Even with standard power they regularly chew their way through gearboxes. It really is their Achilles' heel. They are striking to look at though... True, they never made a manual box at the time which could reliably take the power/torque although nowadays we have legacy gearboxes which pretty much drop straight in, or if you're feeling flush, a 6 speed from an impresa sti. To be fair, OP wants a pantera and nothing else will truly scratch that itch. Many other cars can be had, some cheaper than others which allows for some money to be spent in the performance/handling but.... and it is a monumental but... none of it, nothing will be the pantera.
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Aug 24, 2016 23:07:55 GMT
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AC3000
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danc
Part of things
Posts: 42
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I can't help thinking about this... Half Pantera, half Mustang, a Mustera, or a Pantstang if you will. Of course if you had deep enough pockets to get this built, you'd probably already own you Pantera and we wouldn't be having this conversation! Arguably one of the most legit suggestions so far. Ranks up there with all the good suggestions such as the Bitter CD, Monteverdi, Merak/Bora, GT40 etc. I honestly don't think the engine move to the back calls for that deep of a pocket. It's the remaking of the whole car with the wider and longer body, longer wheelbase etc that will eat the coins. But it's not only beautiful. I would put it against any European exotic. I kind of prefer it than a Ford GT, if only because of the uniqueness. Even though not really feasible for me, as you pointed it out, still a very welcome sight in the thread. Specially after the last few suggestions. I look at some of them and think I would be better off buying a 1988 Fiero, working the engine and having some fun. It would be way, way closer to a Pantera than many of the suggestions in the thread.
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danc
Part of things
Posts: 42
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OP, I feel your pain as the Pantera is probably the best looking car ever in my eyes. Not a wedgy front, but how about a Shelby (or Superformance) Daytona? Long bonnet, GT style, not really what I want at the moment. But I doubt those are affordable, are they? Anything old, good and with a Shelby badge will be crazy expensive.
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danc
Part of things
Posts: 42
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Even with standard power they regularly chew their way through gearboxes. It really is their Achilles' heel. They are striking to look at though... True, they never made a manual box at the time which could reliably take the power/torque although nowadays we have legacy gearboxes which pretty much drop straight in, or if you're feeling flush, a 6 speed from an impresa sti. To be fair, OP wants a pantera and nothing else will truly scratch that itch. Many other cars can be had, some cheaper than others which allows for some money to be spent in the performance/handling but.... and it is a monumental but... none of it, nothing will be the pantera.That's not really it. An original GT40 would definitely scratch the itch and there are few others which would too. But when somebody asks for alternatives to a De Tomaso Pantera and you post an old Subaru as a suggestion, well.
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That's not really it. An original GT40 would definitely scratch the itch and there are few others which would too. But when somebody asks for alternatives to a De Tomaso Pantera and you post an old Subaru as a suggestion, well. [/quote]
Some people eh? It's almost as if this was a forum full of people who like old, weird, obscure cars.
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Jaguar S-Type 3.0 SE
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andyf
South West
Posts: 415
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Aug 25, 2016 10:39:59 GMT
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AC3000 When I saw the first Pantera picture this was what sprang immediately to mind.
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1980 Triumph TR7.
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Rob M
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,915
Club RR Member Number: 41
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Aug 25, 2016 11:37:50 GMT
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Sure. But is there a supercar which is not unreliable or high maintenance? Apart from maybe the NSX. I don't really think this is what keeps Esprits prices down. But what is high maintenance concerning the Esprit which is out of the spectrum of a car of that nature? I don't think quite as unreliable as the Esprit. Yes other supercars needed frequent servicing which would be expensive work but I think most cars would find that kept issues in check between services / maintenance. I've heard horror stories of Esprits having factory replacement gearboxes which only lasted hundreds of miles, obviously once the car was out of warranty you could be in serious trouble & involved with significant ongoing expense. Colin Chapman's approach to auto design was to bring affordable speed to the middle class which duly filtered down as secondhand speed to the working class. His cars weren't megabucks to start with when you compared them to other cars with similar performance. The first tenet of his formula was to keep it as light as possible, lightness negated the need for big engines which in turn helped to keep the weight down. The second part of this formula was extracting maximum power from these small lightweight engines. My Dad is friendly with John Teychenne who was supplying the chassis to Lotus in the early days, (John, at 90, is the only principal figure still alive from the early days of Lotus), he's spoken to my Dad of how Chapman would obsess about using increasingly thinner metal & narrower tubing on the frames to shave a pound or two off the overall weight of a car. The end result was cars which were light, fast, chuckable & relatively inexpensive but often very compromised in terms of build quality & ride. Creature comforts / equipment just weren't considered in the Chapman formula. He moved from using tin-foil thin aluminium panels to pioneering fibreglass designs. A fibreglass body on a lightweight chassis is lighter than a steel monococque but fibreglass inherently has its own problems, you could find yourself having to regularly repair / respray. Crashes, even fairly low speed ones can have disastrous & very expensive results. How many fibreglass supercars can you think of? Probably not many and they're at the cheaper end of the range. The fastest car I've ever seen around the track at Castle Combe was a TVR Cerbera but again these cars weren't megabucks to buy new and are a very realistic proposition as secondhand buy. I've got a bit of a soft spot for the Jensen CV8, it was a bona fide early 1960's supercar but because it was produced with a fibreglass body the prices have never become absurd. I think with fibreglass cars there's always an issue in getting the cars to feel 'tight', they vibrate, they rattle they don't feel expensive. People who are spending big money on a fast car prefer to be sat inside real metal. In later years Lotus made a bit of an effort to make certain models look & feel like a luxury item but this was a cosmetic exercise done on the cheap and this 'luxury' equipment is very often cheap bits from other manufacturers & often unreliable. I've never been in an Esprit but I imagine they might not feel as good as they look, they probably feel cheap, rattly & wobbly with a tremendously hard ride, I imagine the later cars are better than the earlier ones. When you factor in the regular main dealer maintenance & periodic reliability issues, bodywork maintenance, their attractiveness wanes even more and that's why prices have never been silly. Just my thoughts anyway. I'd love an Esprit but it certainly isn't a car for everyday use! Oh I dunno, many Lotus owners will tell you that hibernation or very irregular use is asking for problems. I'm now in the process of bringing my Excel out of hibernation, it went away with no issues and now has niggles that are boiling my p*ss. If only id have just kept it in use even for a few days every week!!
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Rob M
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,915
Club RR Member Number: 41
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Aug 25, 2016 11:46:36 GMT
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True, they never made a manual box at the time which could reliably take the power/torque although nowadays we have legacy gearboxes which pretty much drop straight in, or if you're feeling flush, a 6 speed from an impresa sti. To be fair, OP wants a pantera and nothing else will truly scratch that itch. Many other cars can be had, some cheaper than others which allows for some money to be spent in the performance/handling but.... and it is a monumental but... none of it, nothing will be the pantera.That's not really it. An original GT40 would definitely scratch the itch and there are few others which would too. But when somebody asks for alternatives to a De Tomaso Pantera and you post an old Subaru as a suggestion, well.
Don't be too dismissive of people who are only trying to help. You have umpteen cars offered as a suggestion and most of them you have turned your nose up at. What more do you want? There isn't a magic wand that will conjure up an alternative that suits you, its all about perspective, your idea of an alternative isn't necessarily anybody elses, of course you are going to get wide ranging ideas!! So tell us what cars out there would scratch your itch, give something back to the contributors of this thread.
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