HAWAII FIVE-0 (1972) - "Death Wish on Tantalus Mountain"

Click above image to view a video trailer.

(Thanks to Mark McWhinney)

DeTomaso Appearance

Two DeTomaso Pantera sports cars are used in this episode; a yellow 72 pre-L and a red 71 Pushbutton. The first one (the yellow car) is destroyed in a fiery crash (Actually, the car that was destroyed was a Formula 1 race car which was used in the title sequence). The red Pantera is the replacement vehicle for the yellow Pantera that was destroyed.

About the Cars

The red 71 Pushbutton Pantera

The red Pantera used in the Hawaii 5-0 episode is a 71 "pushbutton" Pantera with single-slot Campys and is now owned by Dennis Yogi, a police officer in Honolulu, Hawaii. The former owner was a retired police officer too, and he's still a volunteer officer with the Honolulu Police Department. He did the driving scenes for the episode - stunt men were supposed to do the driving by union contract, but he refused to allow anyone to drive the car and since Panteras were (and still are) rare in Hawaii. So, the studio made an exception. Anyway, the Pantera was damaged during the filming when a crew member stood in the way on one of the mountain runs and he had to swerve to avoid him putting the car into the guard rail.

Most if not all of the filming was done on a restricted communication access road on Kokohead mountain, not on Tantalus as depicted in the movie.

Ford is mentioned in the credits at the end of the episode (actually every episode) because Ford supplied all of the police vehicles during the run of the series, not because they supplied the Panteras for the episode (which they didn't).

Learn more about this Pantera on Dennis' website.

The yellow 71 Pantera

The yellow Pantera used in the Hawaii 5-0 episode is now red and is owned by Klas and Kimber Norrhed of Sweden. Klas purchased the car from a prominent cardiovascular surgeon in Honolulu in 1997 and has been improving it ever since.

Additional Information

Click this icon to read the "POCA Profiles" article about the cars used in this episode.

AlohaPantera.pdf

David Bell's Review of the Hawaii Five-O Episode on the Space City Panteras website.

Oddities

There were a few oddities such as opening the front lid from the passenger side and a mechanic who checks the steering wheel fluid level. The best one is the giant box wrench used by the bad guy to loosen the half shaft bolts and whack the mechanic over the head.

Others I have found so far:
- windshield wipers that appear and disappear
- shifting from third to forth to go up a step hill
- my favorite -- a 9800 RPM redline (not a typo)

An interesting note: although the episode was originally shown on Sept 19, 1972 there was already a fair amount of surface rust in the engine bay particularly on the bolt heads. The black coating in the engine bay also looked pretty bad. I had assumed that un-restored engine bays looked bad these days due to the affects of age, but it looks like they were made that way.

(from Mark McWhinney - DeTomaso Forum post)

If you have any additional information about the cars used in this episode, the filming of the episode, or know who the owners were/are please contact me. I would like to include additional information about the cars, both then and now, and their owners on this website.

Additional Notes

Just a trivia note... "My family was on vacation in Hawaii that summer & we saw the
filming of that episode. That was my first Pantera sighting at age eleven. The
rest is history." Bill Harris, TPOC - Huntington Beach (from the DeTomaso Forum)

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