John Davis is one of the most prolific automotive journalists working. An eloquent TV presenter with a distinctive way of speaking, he’s been a fixture at MotorWeek for decades and has probably put his hands on more cars than my colleagues and I combined. His reviews tend to focus on the practical elements of automobiles, which is why I found it funny and interesting that one of his favorite personal cars was a DeTomaso Pantera.
The Pantera was (is) incredibly cool. While it’s conceptually kind of a Ferraroghini knockoff, the intense lines (Italian) and V8 engine (American) make it impressive in its own right. Today, it’s a bona fide collector’s item, probably because a lot were wrecked, and the rest were tough to keep running.
That’s the real thrust of this funny anecdote from Davis, revealed during a MotorWeek podcast looking back on the show’s 45-year history. He’s got such an upright, even stilted, delivery and a buttoned-down appearance in all the video car reviews I’ve seen him host. But apparently, back in the ’70s, he was swinging wrenches in the rain to keep a wacky Italian/American wedgemobile on the road. It’s just a fun and funny dichotomy to me as a longtime fan of his.
Toward the end of the episode, about an hour and fourteen minutes in, host Jessica Ray asks about cars from the past that Davis misses, and the legendary auto journo says:
“One car that I did own, that we never tested on the show … the DeTomaso Pantera … I had one back in the early ’70s. That was a car that always comes up in my head every time I think about great cars, or the ones … I wish I could buy back.”
He talks about buying a salvaged one in 1975, taking it apart and rebuilding it, and wrenching on it all the time.
“You were under the car working on something every weekend, no matter what the weather was. My [then] soon-to-be-wife, Cheryl, had an apartment with an uncovered driveway, and I’d be out there in the rocks, you know, in the gravel, trying to fix something underneth it.
Ah, yes, well, the joys of temperamental car ownership have not changed.
I’ve never met Davis in person, but I love his reviews and still sometimes catch one I haven’t seen on replay on YouTube (MotorWeek runs old reviews on its YouTube channel all the time). Here’s the whole anniversary-episode interview. It’ll be particularly interesting to my fellow millennial-and-older car nerds who remember watching John Davis years ago and appreciate lore from this era of car media.
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