Ssangyong Solo III
Car of the Day #293: Ssangyong Solo III – A wolf in Panther’s clothing
I don’t track analytics here, so my estimate of my dear readers is that I won’t have to spend much time on how we’ve fast forwarded to Solo III — it’s the weirdest Panther Solo version, by far.
No clue what a Panther Solo is? Don’t worry, scroll down a bit and you’ll find the best stories I’ve come across on the subject of this mid-engined, four-wheel-drive British sports car.
As it happens, in 1980 Panther was bought by Kim Young-chull, a young entrepreneur (and later, media mogul) who’d bought an entire car company — with grand ambitions of eventually producing a mid-engined sports car. Mr. Kim put his plans into action in 1982 with the Solo 1, which was a budget-friendly rear-drive sports car.
More than a decade later, the Solo III sports car was, in keeping with the Panther legend, bought for a song when Mr. Kim sold his company to one of the major Korean automakers of that time: Ssangyong.
1995 Ssangyong Solo III at the 1995 Seoul Motor Show • source unknown
Fast-forward to the 1995 Seoul Motor Show and the Solo III debuted without its predecessors’ Ford engines, or the Solo II’s four-wheel-drive.
I believe this Solo II had a 3.2-liter M104 Mercedes-Benz inline-6, as official literature on the car lists it as having a DOHC six-cylinder, at a time when Mercedes’ V6s were SOHC.
1995 Ssangyong Solo III in profile — note the fixed projector headlights, very much in keeping with the style of that era • source unknown
This may help explain why the car is so loooong, once modified by the Korean automaker.
It was shown once, and never again.
Shame.
(Ssangyong — if you’ll believe it — was even the first Korean Le Mans entry, powered by a Mercedes-Benz engine within a light but temperamental WR chassis.)
I’ll leave you with text from Ssangyong’s press materials on the car, the final word on this cat-like Korean oddity:
