Check this out... think I'll build one someday

Really sweet. At first when i looked at the pic i thought DeTomaso Mangusta because of the side window shapes. Monteverdi also made gussied up FMJ bodied cars thru the 70s then their mopar , connection dried up.

What a shame they didnt produce more of this particular car with the Hemi in it. I bet if they made em for export to the US like Ford and DeTomaso did with the pantera, but mebbe sold it thru chrysler dealers as a high line sports car it would have done rather well.

The pantera sold thru lincoln mercury dealers had a 351 V8. Not sure if it was the cleveland, or the lighter windsor variant. The early panteras were plagued with a variety of quality control issues. Apparantly hand building low volume sports cars at a faster rate for the larger american market caused some of this.

I think its an interesting thing to banter about. Could monteverdi have produced enough of these to satisfy the american market at that time. Also would there have been enough well healed folks in the US that would have visited a chrysler dealer back then and plunked $12k for a Hemi powered 2 seat wonder such as the Monteverdi Hai.

Old history. We will never know since it never played out. Thanks for sharing

Matt

BTW. I know this isnt mopar related but look up Jim Hall, and Chapparal cars. This guy was a genius and transformed motor car racing. He took on europes finest and beat them at their own game with his chevrolet V8 powered chapparal race cars. Whats interesting to note is all this work was done in permian basin Texas about 4 hour drive from where i live. No race tracks there to test cars. Mr Hall put licence plates on these things and ran them on the street LOL. My favorite is the chapparal 2G series car. Big canilevered wing on the back, and an automatic transaxle. What looked like a clutch pedal in the car was actually a pedal so the driver could adjust the bite on the wing as the car was going. This car had many other innovations. The 2J (sucker car) was outlawed as it was designed to increase aerodynamic downforce by channeling air thru the underside of the car. The faster you went the more vacuum was created causing the car to suck down to the track. All this stuff is common stuff today, but back in the 60s it was revolutionary.