Other Corvette fighters that failed.....

In the last post, I talked about cars proposed by other GM divisions that the Chevy Brass had killed, because they didn't want them to steal the Corvette's thunder. The Vette is still with us today, and unless you spend 200K for a Ferrari, you can't top its performance. I think Patrick Bedard said it once- "There are a lot of sports cars that really need more power." "The Corvette isn't one of them." Like Bruce Springsteen said about Elvis,-"There are contenders and pretenders to the throne, but there is only one King."  Anyhow, other people have over the years come up with Ideas for two-seat sports cars to compete with the Mighty American, but none of them really mounted a serious challenge. # 1 Ford / DeTomaso Pantera. For years, Ford wanted a "Corvette fighter", and in 1971 They partnered with Italian automaker DeTomaso ( Who used Ford engines in the Mangusta ) and put the 351 Cleveland V8 in a Mid-engine chassis. It has 4-wheel disc brakes, and a ZF five-speed transaxle. Performance was good-top speed over 140 mph, 0-60 times in the six second range, and 1/4 mile times in the low 14's. About on par with what an early '70's Vette would run. However, for some reason, they were sold through Lincoln-Mercury dealers instead of Ford Dealers. Lincoln buyers are not your typical high-performance buyers. And they were expensive. $10,000 in 1971 dollars was a ton of money. Especially when a Pontiac Trans-Am listed for $4255.75 and a Corvette listed out for about $6,000. Even a Porsche 911 was only about $7,000. They were imported until 1976, but they never sold well. DeTomaso kept making them, and few were imported each year until about 1990. Today, they have kind of a "Cult" following, and a nice one will bring between $25-35K. Watch out for rust issues in the frames if you want one.  # 2 Bricklin. In 1974, a guy name Malcom Bricklin tried to market a mid-engined, gull-wing doored, two-seat sports car that looked like Mercedes M111. It had a racy body, and early models had 351 Ford V8s, so performance wasn't bad. However, he had a falling out with Ford and the later models used 360 AMC V8s with a Two-barrel carb, and the required catilytic converters for 1975 really killed performance. The car was a slug, and the gull-wing doors leaked when it rained or went through a car wash. Bricklin went bankrupt and stopped production in 1976. They are rare today, and don't really bring any money. # 3 DeLorean. John DeLorean wanted to make a stainless steel, gull-winged, mid-engine sports car, that could compete with not only Vettes, but Porsches and Ferraris. But he couldn't make a deal with his old employer-GM for small-block Chevys, and he insisted on building the factory in Ireland. As we know, it ended up with a (Yuk!) Renault V6 that was underpowered, and he ran out of money, and afoul of the law. They were only built from 1981-84, and their only claim to fame is being the time machine in the "Back to the Future" movies. No one wants them today. Mastermind