Driving joy outweighs the shortcomings of elegant open Kallista

Press, 13 February 1986, Page 28

Driving joy outweighs the shortcomings of elegant open Kallista

BEHIND the WHEEL with

Peter Greenslade

Comparatively recent developments in the automotive industry have made a mockery of Rudyard Kipling’s famous lines "East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet.” But the most recent development must surely be the one that rocked the most British of Britons to the core — the birth of the Panther Kallista, a classically styled twoseater sports car. Meticulously finished, I have no doubt that the tweed cap and stringbacked glove brigade, with its tweed skirt and twin-set camp followers, would see the Kallista as the most British of British sports cars. However, if one disregards the fact that the Kallista is assembled with tender loving care by the artisans of Byfleet, Surrey, the Kallista is about as British as Bagdad. Its extremely strong and rigid box-type ladder chassis and graceful aluminium body panels are made in South Korea, and its Ford running gear is drawn from the most convenient parts shelves of Ford. The Nelson-based Bowater Group has brought in the Panther Kallista under the liberalised import scheme. Now, limited numbers of the sports two-seater are reaching the local market and it would be a fairly safe bet that the number will remain limited because this rich man’s toy retails for $5 less than $56,400.

To the New Zealander in the street that may be an ox-choking wad of money to pay for what sounds like a kitset sports car. However, although the Kallista is an amalgam of East and West expertise, it could never be described as a kitset car. On the contrary, it is an extremely well-made and elegant open twoseater that looks so good

that it instantly commands the attention of all who see it. Moreover, it goes as well as it looks. , The Kallista is one of the progeny of Panther Westwinds, Ltd, an English company formed in 1971 to manufacture cars for people whose major problem in life was to spend money for which they really had no need. Panther Westwinds, using classic cars as a basis, produced modern versions with all the amenities of late twentieth century automobilism and equipped them according to individual customers’ requirements. However, it was not long before the founders of the company began to realise that, laudable though their cars were, they would never make them as wealthy as the people who bought their products. Consequently, they decided to develop and market a classic open twoseater sports car in the tradition of the MGs, SS Jaguars, and so on, of the thirties and immediate post-World War II years. Because of the short-sight-edness of Britain’s Stateowned volume car maker, British Leyland, mass-pro-

duced sports cars, once significant dollar earners, were being allowed to die. It is probably fair to say, however, that bureaucracy, and its obsessions with road safety, also played its part in killing off open cars.

So it was that in 1976 the Panther Lima, a fibre-glass-bodied open twoseater, nearly identical in appearance to the new Kallista, came on the market. It was powered by a 2279 cu cm Vauxhall engine and other General Motors running gear was used. But, even with the Lima in the range, the fortunes of Panther Westwins, Ltd, did not improve and it was not long before the company went into receivership. Fortunately for the open car buffs, about that time Mr Y. C. Kim, one of four brothers running Jindo Industries, of South Korea, visited London, saw a Panther Lima, was intrigued by it and ended by buying the British company for a song. It was a transaction that displeased his brothers, for their father had burnt his fingers in the automotive business earlier in Korea. As managing director of the Jindo group’s new acquisition, Mr Kim set about getting the Panther house in order. He de-, cided the business should concentrate on the production of a successor to the Lima and virtually discontinue exotic car production for the small and wealthy group for whom the old company had catered. Panther customises various vehicles, notably Range Rovers and Mercedes, for Arab sheiks and others with the money to spend. However, the Kallista is the main

product, although it will be joined by a second sporting car, a modern mid-engined Targa-topped coupe in the coming months. To be known as the Solo, it could make a real impact if it is as good as the Kallista. And make no mistake about it, the Kallista is a very good specialist car. I was able to use one for a few days recently. It was powered by the 2.8 litre Ford V 6 engine, fitted with a single Solex-Ven-turi downdraught carburettor, mated with the admirable Ford fivespeed gearbox. Ford componentry is used in the suspension set-up. Upper and lower wishbones with coil springs and telescopic dampers are fitted in the front and at the rear, the live axle is located by upper and lower trailing arms and a Panhard rod with coil springs and telescopic dampers.

Combined with the extremely robust Koreanmade chassis, this arrangement provides a relatively hard and flat ride and, with Ford rack and pinion steering, exemplary directional stability, something that was always just a little suspect in the open sports twoseaters of old. Their chassis tended to flex and, although experienced sports car drivers could turn that to their advantage, it was not a trait that was to everyone’s liking. Another by-product of the flexing chassis was scuttle shake, associated with squeaks and general body shudder.

Apart from customary contemporary cars’ occasional squeaks and rattles, the Kallista revealed none of the usual open car shortcomings during the few days I used it.

Shortcomings the car certainly has, but the sheer joy it gives its driver and passenger far outweighs the chinks in its otherwise admirable armour.

For starters, that V 6 engine in carburettor form develops 99kW at 5200 rpm and maximum torque of 217 Nm at 3000 rpm. Ally that with a car in which 48 per cent of its 995 kg weight is distributed over the rear end and you have something that could really do everything likely to be required of it on its upper three ratios, if it was not for the plain truth that something lower is required to get it rolling. I found, even on the tight, twisty and uphill sections of the regular test route, that third and fourth gears were more than adequate. That was probably because chassis, suspension and steering worked in harmony to provide a. good handling and predictable twoseater that could be driven safely and sanely at a regular pace without incessant opening and closing of the throttle.

The Kallista will, in fact, better 175km/h, but that is at the expense of a lot of wind noise and buffetting for its occupants. The car is happiest when being cruised around the lOOkm/h mark. At that pace one can listen to the radio and carry on an intelligible conversation while enjoying the summer sunshine, the smell of new-mown hay and anything else agricultural that pervades the senses.

Most of us have driven in tin boxes on wheels, insulated from the sounds of farm animals in the fields or children at play, too long to realise what we miss until we have an opportunity to travel in an open car such as the Kallista.

Those are the pleasures that cannot ever be matched against the Kallista’s rather breathtaking price tag. By the same token, the car’s litany of shortcomings seems to count for nothing against the obvious joys of outdoor motoring.

The folded soft-top sits so high it obscures the

rear view unless one cranes one’s neck. The seat squabs are malnourished to the extent that even the better-covered among us would pine for a more amply upholstered posterior. While on entering or leaving the cockpit all but the most lithesome will rue the day when they decided it really would not matter if they allowed themselves to go to seed.

And as one sits with elbows well bent and hands clasping a wheel that obscures a comprehensive, if incomprehensible, array of instruments, with legs extended so that the feet, hopefully small, just touch the pedals, one could contemplate what manner of man or woman Mr Kim’s designers had in mind when they laid out the cockpit. One thing that is certain, the Kallista was never designed with geriatrics in mind. The heavy clutch pedal action would almost certainly tax the strength of anyone who had achieved three score and ten, even if there were no signs of the onset of senile decay. But as you look through

the shallow windscreen, hold the smallish steering wheel steady and watch the road being swallowed, even the most retiring and timorous driver would soon come to feel master of all there was to survey. This is a car you drive and it makes you feel good doing so.

It is the sort of car that I am sure that everyone, with the exception of the most starchy among us, would secretly love to own.

Even the lustrous paint that enhances the Kallista’s elegant lines looks deep enough to bathe in.

In my sports car days, the urchins used to ask: “Wot’ll she do mister?” In my brief reborn sports car days, the kids just looked in awe while their parents politely asked about the price and the origins of the Kallista. Ah! Mr Kim, of Korea, you certainly have done something that has tangibly brought East and West much closer together. What is more in doing that you have evoked a lot of questions that Britian on its own should by rights still be answering.