Brief History About Panther
Panther (Panther Westwinds) was founded in 1972 in England by Robert Jankel.
Robert worked for a tuning company at a young age as an engineer and designed and built his own cars. However money in the industry for him wasn’t very good, so he then joined the fashion industry. However he continued building a car here and there and eventually with requests increasing for his cars, setup Panther Westwinds.
The Panther cars were hand built to a high standard and were quite luxurious for the type of retro styled car being built and often used current model cars for their base. Contractors were originally used to help with the build, but with good sales, Robert was eventually able to buy-in many of the contractors and create a manufacturing structure now under Panthers control. A sleuth of car were built on demand by Panther and also shown at various motor shows.
In 1976 Panther built the Lima, a popular and well priced car, which had good sales. However a move to build more high end cars, starting with the 6 wheeled Panther 6, and with cash flow problems, eventually spelt the end for Panther under Robert Jankel.
With Panther struggling, it was then bought by Korean Young Chull Kim (Jindo Industries) in 1980, who renamed it the Panther Car Company. Young then made some changes to the current models and added the Kallista. In 1987 an 80% share of the Panther Car Company was sold to SsangYong and that same year the Solo was introduced. From 1990 production was stopped of the Panther cars due to production difficulties.
In 2001 Jankel bought back Panther to build another car, however he unfortunately died in 2005 just before realising his return with his new car and the project ended.
