The first two instalments leading on from the Cat v Dog debate I wrote last week. Cementing my cat like unpredictability, who knows how many instalments there will be. Here for now is the first two of Cars Named After Cats. So grab some catnip and a cuppa tea and enjoy….
De Tomaso Pantera
Ahhhh, the 70s. No one really gave a toss about living did they? They cared more about L-I-V-I-N’ (to quote Wooderson from Dazed & Confused). L-i-v-i-n’ large. Every night. Unprotected. In slacks to show off your pack. Or in Sasoons to show off your moons. It was a sweaty, panther cage sex fight cocktail with a disco-punk shag-pile backbeat and ashtrays in hospital delivery rooms.
Rehab meant a holiday to recover from your holiday overdose. And it had a car of choice for anyone who made a bit of cash purely from strutting/singing or being a badass sport star. And therefore, it could only have one name: Pantera, which is Italian for panther obviously. A car so hard it makes the band of the same name seem about as menacing as the Drakensberg Boys Choir curled up under an eiderdown.
In it’s rather brief lifespan the De Tomaso Pantera was probably responsible for more celebrity trips to the hospital/morgue than their own vomit, light aeroplanes and cocaine combined. It was an absolutely brutal beast of a car, devised by a mad (even by Latin American standards) Argentinean named Alejandro De Tomaso to replace the equally impressively named Mangusta (Mongoose en Espanol).
In all only 7200 examples were ever built, all with giant 5.7l V8 Ford Cleveland engines, with varying compression rates and outputs mainly to adhere to American emission laws following the ’70s oil crisis. But that’s the only time the Pantera played by the rules. It was popular Stateside but like a seemingly “tamed” panther in some sideshow at a State Fair, the Pantera would often decide it had had enough, claw the face off the ringmaster, jump off a bridge and go on a tri-state killing spree.
It killed NHL (ice-hockey) hard-man and Hall-Of-Famer Tim Horton (anyone who’s visited Canada would’ve seen one of his famous coffee shops on every corner). Then, getting a huge nod of respect from heroine, it managed to dispose of Nicholas Dingley (aka Razzle) the drummer from hair-metal band Hanoi Rocks while Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil was driving. But like most cats it wasn’t just deadly when the mood struck it, it was also hugely unreliable.
A certain Elvis Presley once fired a handgun at his when it refused to start. Aaah. The 70s. A great era for cats. Feline and felon alike.
Lamborghini Cheetah
Saying Lamborghini has made some daft cars in its time is like saying Salvador Dali saw landscapes a little differently. But the daftest of them all was undoubtedly the LM002, initially dubbed the Cheetah. Having seen it for the first time, Ferdie Porsche must have lowered his binoculars slowly, opened a re-enforced drawer marked “re-look in 25 years” and placed a file entitled “Projekten 4WD:Koden Namen Cayenne” neatly inside before turning on his heel and striding out stifling a laugh.
For a “cat” car the Cheetah was a dog. The original was a mish-mash hybrid of committee thinking courtesy of the US Government, a company called Mobility Technology International and the run-around-waving-your-arms-in-the-air style of management team then in place at a fast-fading Lamborghini. It was destined to be doomed.
Who decided on the name Cheetah we’ll never know, but you’d expect that when a manufacturer who makes Supercars decides to name a vehicle after the fastest cat on the planet it wouldn’t be a lumbering ox-wagon. I blame the Yanks for the name. “Let’s call it a Cheetah! I mean it’s gonna do service in the jungle AND the desert for godssakes! Just like them damned African huntin’ cats!Yee-haaaaa!”
The first of many problems for the Cheetah was a gargantuan 5.8l Chrysler V8 engine pushed all the way to the back (while producing a whopping 180bhp! Wow!) It was bolted to what we can only assume was a beach buggy that had been on a De Niro in Raging Bull weight-gain program before it got to Sant’ Agata for “finishing touches”. We say assume, because rumour has it, the car was so ill-devised for its purpose that the only prototype was destroyed by the Yanks with 48 nuclear warheads and a speech.
This led to BMW canceling their M1 project with Lambo and quite conceivably recruiting the Navy Seals to steal back the plans from Sant’ Agata when they refused to release them to Bee-Em. It’s not surprising that out of all this inter-Continental cloak and dagger, ham-fisted beaurocracy, plain stupidity and military intelligence the contract was given to a company who ended up making the Humvee, which unfortunately led to the Hummer. Meanwhile Lamborghini refused to give up and created the equally misguided missile, the LM004, with their own Countach engine up front.
Gavin Williams
1. De Tomaso Pantera
Ahhhh, the 70s. No one really gave a toss about living did they? They cared more about L-I-V-I-N’ (to quote Wooderson from Dazed & Confused). L-i-v-i-n’ large. Every night. Unprotected. In slacks to show off your pack. Or in Sasoons to show off your moons. It was a sweaty, panther cage sex fight cocktail with a disco-punk shag-pile backbeat and ashtrays in hospital delivery rooms.
Rehab meant a holiday to recover from your holiday overdose. And it had a car of choice for anyone who made a bit of cash purely from strutting/singing or being a badass sport star. And therefore, it could only have one name: Pantera, which is Italian for panther obviously. A car so hard it makes the band of the same name seem about as menacing as the Drakensberg Boys Choir curled up under an eiderdown.
In it’s rather brief lifespan the De Tomaso Pantera was probably responsible for more celebrity trips to the hospital/morgue than their own vomit, light aeroplanes and cocaine combined. It was an absolutely brutal beast of a car, devised by a mad (even by Latin American standards) Argentinean named Alejandro De Tomaso when it replaced the equally impressively named Mangusta (Mongoose en Espanol).
In all only 7200 examples were ever built, all with giant 5.7l V8 Ford Cleveland engines, with varying compression rates and outputs mainly to adhere to American emission laws following the 70s oil crisis. But that’s the only time the Pantera played by the rules. It was popular Stateside but like a seemingly “tamed” panther in some sideshow at a State Fair, the Pantera would often decide it’s had enough, claw the face off the ringmaster, jump off a bridge and go on a tri-state killing spree.
It killed NHL (ice-hockey) hard-man and Hall-Of-Famer Tim Horton (anyone who’s visited Canada would’ve seen one of his famous coffee shops on every corner). Then, getting a huge nod of respect from heroine, it managed to dispose of Nicholas Dingley (aka Razzle) the drummer from hair-metal band Hanoi Rocks while Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil was driving. But like most cats it wasn’t just deadly when the mood struck it, it was also hugely unreliable.
A certain Elvis Presley once fired a handgun at his when it refused to start. Aaah. The 70s. A great era for cats. Feline and felon alike.
2. Lamborghini Cheetah
Saying Lamborghini has made some daft cars in its time is like saying Salvador Dali saw landscapes a little differently. But the daftest of them all was undoubtedly the LM002, initially dubbed the Cheetah. Having seen it for the first time, Ferdie Porsche must have lowered his binoculars slowly, opened a re-enforced drawer marked “re-look in 25 years” and placed a file entitled “Projekten 4WD:Koden Namen Cayenne” neatly inside before turning on his heel and striding out stifling a laugh.
For a “cat” car the Cheetah was a dog. The original was a mish-mash hybrid of committee thinking courtesy of the US Government, a company called Mobility Technology International and the run-around-waving-your-arms-in-the-air style of management team then in place at a fast-fading Lamborghini. It was destined to be doomed.
Who decided on the name Cheetah we’ll never know, but you’d expect that when a manufacturer who makes Supercars decides to name a vehicle after the fastest cat on the planet it wouldn’t be a lumbering ox-wagon. I blame the Yanks for the name. “Let’s call it a Cheetah! I mean it’s gonna do service in the jungle AND the desert for godssakes! Just like them damned African huntin’ cats!Yee-haaaaa!”
The first of many problems for the Cheetah was a gargantuan 5.8l Chrysler V8 engine pushed all the way to the back (while producing a whopping 180bhp! Wow!) It was bolted to what we can only assume was a beach buggy that had been on a De Niro in Raging Bull weight-gain program before it got to Sant’ Agata for “finishing touches”. We say assume, because rumour has it, the car was so ill-devised for its purpose that the only prototype was destroyed by the Yanks with 48 nuclear warheads and a speech.
This led to BMW canceling their M1 project with Lambo and quite conceivably recruiting the Navy Seals to steal back the plans from Sant’ Agata when they refused to release them to Bee-Em. It’s not surprising that out of all this inter-Continental cloak and dagger, ham-fisted beaurocracy, plain stupidity and military intelligence the contract was given to a company who ended up making the Humvee aka the Hummer. Meanwhile Lamborghini refused to give up and created the equally misguided missile the LM004 with their own Countach engine up front.
Tags: cats, cheetah, de tomaso, dogs, elvis, horton, lamborghini, lm002, lm004, pantera, tim
