The De Tomaso Pantera is a mid-engine sports car produced by Italian automobile manufacturer De Tomaso from 1971 to 1992. Italian for “Panther”, the Pantera was the automaker’s most popular model, with over 7,000 manufactured over its twenty-year production run. More than three quarters of the production was sold by American Lincoln-Mercury dealers from 1972 to 1975; after this agreement ended De Tomaso kept manufacturing the car in ever smaller numbers into the early 1990s.

The Pantera was designed by the Italian design firm Carrozzeria Ghia’s American-born designer Tom Tjaarda and replaced the Mangusta. Unlike the Mangusta, which employed a steel backbone chassis, the Pantera’s chassis was of a steel monocoque design, the first instance of De Tomaso using this construction technique. The car debuted in Modena in March 1970 and was presented at the 1970 New York Motor Show a few weeks later.  Approximately a year later the first production cars were sold, and production was increased to three per day.  De Tomaso sold the U.S. rights to the Pantera to Ford, which marketed the cars through its Lincoln-Mercury dealerships.