Robert Jankel

Robert Jankel (1938 to 2005) was a British car designer and coachbuilder who founded the Surrey sports car maker Panther Westwinds in 1972. Born in London and trained in engineering, he built his first car at sixteen and worked in his family's fashion business before selling a rebuilt 1930 Rolls-Royce gave him the confidence to start a car company at Weybridge. Under his direction Panther built the Jaguar-based J72, the De Ville, the Rio, the Lima and the six-wheeled Panther 6. After Panther failed and was sold to the Korean businessman Young Kim, Jankel put his effort into the Jankel Group, a coachbuilder he had founded in 1955, which made limousines, police vehicles and armoured cars. He bought the Panther name back in 2001 and was designing a new sports car when he died in Weybridge in May 2005.