How much does a car wash cost these days? It seems that it's too much for the seller of today's Pantera. Of course if it weren't all dusty, you wouldn't know it was found in a barn... er, garage, or so says that same seller. Will that rare and dusty provenance make its price a regular barn burner?

One would guess that attempting to sell a car with the words Bar Room Slut painted on it wouldn't exactly be a piece of cake. You know what's even harder? Trying to sell yesterday's that not only carried the aforementioned ode to bad taste, but also the stank of '80s hookup desperation. That alone garnered it a 78% Crack Pipe loss while barely considering its fifty-five hundred asking.

Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe custom VW has 'Bar Room Slut' painted on its ass like the…

Okay, enough with the shit, today let's have a candidate that's generally considered to be da-shit.

Alejandro de Tomaso's racing career proved to be kind of a bust. Born in Argentina he fled that country for Italy while in his late-twenties after allegedly participating in an attempt to overthrow the Argentinian president, Juan Perón.

Safely out of South America, de Tomaso raced in Formula One for a couple of years, with no success. He proved more successful in building cars, starting with purpose-built racers, and then - starting with the painfully beautiful Vallelunga - road cars with sporting pretensions.

Perhaps the most famous of de Tomaso's offspring is the Pantera, which was produced for more than 20 years and provided Ford - by way of Lincoln Mercury dealers - a righteous competitor to Chevy's home-grown sports car, the Corvette.

The Pantera was designed by an American, Tom Tjaarda while at Ghia, and the work is truly timeless; the Pantera looks just as badass today as it did upon its debut in 1970. Power was brought about by a Ford 351C and was laid down through a ZF 5-speed operated through a gated dog-leg shifter.

This has 42,812 miles on the clock, and is said to have been squirreled away in somebody's garage. I'm guessing that's an important fact to the seller as the pics provided in the ad show the car dustier than a post-CSI crime scene, and with the warning that the tires are so decrepit that they can barely keep the car off the floor.

You'll have to consider the replacement of those meats into the calculation of the car's overall value, and those will be expensive. The seller notes that otherwise the car is complete and in decent - if dirty - shape. There's the claim of no rust nor body damage, and that the car is just as it was when it left the dealer.

I'd take issue with that last bit as it does appear that someone at some point has cut a huge hole in the roof and plopped in a glass moonroof. There's also no sign of the fiberglass trunk liner in the pics nor description, but perhaps that's just laying around someplace. Such things do happen over time.

My wife's family used to have a Pantera of the same model year, and I was fortunate to have been thrown the keys on amore than one occasion. Okay, truth be told, they had to pry me out of it. These are a blast to drive, albeit pretty damn scary owing to the huge power - 330-plus ponies - and aerodynamics that tend to lift the nose precipitously at speed. Still, I highly recommend the cars.

The Pantera wasn't highly recommended for a long time, and in fact prices for the cars only recently - say within the past 10 years or so - have started to gain significant traction. Nice examples are now getting $60K to $75K or even more. It makes me wish my wife's family had hung on to theirs.

This one - owing to its garage/barn find condition - has an asking of $47,500. It's located in Blythe California, in the Inland Empire and the seller says he's willing to negotiate delivery because who the hell wants to go to Blythe now that it's been about 110-degrees there for a week.

What's your take on this long-garaged Pantera, and its $47,500 price? Does that make this an Italian stallion you might think worth corralling? Or, does that price make this a De Tomaso that's just de-pressing?

You decide!

Phoenix , or go if the ad disappears.

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