When we first stumbled across the Hemipanter via Spinelli’s Save the Enzos, we thought “sweet, a hemi-powered Pantera”. How mistaken we were. First off, that Hemi’s been bumped out to (this is not a typo) 526c.i.. Secondly…crap. Every time I go to look over this guy’s website, I get sucked in for another five minutes of reading.

Goran Malmberg didn’t just shoehorn a fuel-injected Hemi into a Pantera. He started with a Pantera and built his version of the ultimate sports car. The suspension’s completely new, complete with engineering diagrams. The chassis is braced to end up at a torsional stiffness on-par with modern CF-chassis supercars. You’d think the all-steel Pantera with an iron block hemi would be a bit of a porker. Nope: 2600lbs, dripping wet.

The mix of mediocre english, late 90s web-design and over-the-top engineering expertise has me back in Vitali Nesterenko‘s MAE 130c: Vibrations. He’s actually got tons of great automotive engineering lessons mixed in with his explanations of why he built the car the way he did.

We’re taking this opportunity to put out a call for a new word. We need a word to describe the likes of Goran Malmberg,  Jay Eitel and Ken Imhoff: guys who go beyond just building a custom and actually engineer a car of their own creation. Maybe it’s two new words: one of the car and one for the builder. The point being, “custom” just doesn’t cut it. Help us out here.
Meanwhile, you should check out hemipanter.se. You might also consider buying a copy of Goran Malmberg’s book on building race cars. The dude obviously knows his stuff.