Marv’s Garage: La Pantera Bianca; the white panther.

This amazing vehicle comes from the fertile minds of ex-McLaren F1 and Can-Am designer Barry Lock, and entrepreneur Paul Halstead; La Pantera Bianca, or the white panther. Built to run in the Aussie GT Championship in the mid-1980s the Pantera was a clean-sheet build using all the ground-effects wizardry permeating racing at the time. In other words, this thing was the duck’s nuts.

Halstead had a business building the 351ci Cleveland V8s used in DeTomaso Pantera, exporting them to Europe and gaining him import credits to import Panteras in CKD kit form to sell as low-volume specials. Halstead began the race car build in 1985 by importing a lightweight shell from Italy and handing it over to Dr Frankenlock to build his monster.

With a thunderous (for the time) 612hp 383ci Ford small-block powering the featherweight 900kg, 96cm-tall car and those ground-effects working their magic on the handling the Pantera was dominant.

It debuted with driving ace and 2-time GT champ Kevin Bartlett behind the wheel in the 1986 Australian GT Championship and won every race it entered, lapping the entire field of cars at its final appearance at the Winton circuit in Victoria. This, in probably the most competitive period of GT racing Down Under!

A rule change for the 1987 season made the car illegal and, rather than bastardising their amazing machine, Halstead chose instead to park it. Several years ago he had Lock recommission the car and had Larry Perkins race it at the Phillip Island Classic, proving its formidable speed hadn’t diminished in the ensuing 27 years.

Interestingly, Lock has now restored a few of his most famous 80s creations. As the man behind the epic Kaditcha racing cars he built Bap Romano’s Kaditcha K583 (also known as the “WE84”) which Lock rebuilt after a huge crash at Amaroo Park in 1986… but maybe that’s a tale for another time