What kind of car is Panama?
David Lee Roth has been clear that the Panama is a car he saw racing in Sin City, but the car heard revving its engine in the song is actually guitarist Eddie Van Halen’s 1972 Lamborghini Miura S. Attaching microphones to the vehicle’s exhaust pipe, producer Ted Templeton recorded the sound of the car as Eddie backed it up towards 5150 Studios, the guitarist’s own recording facility, in Los Angeles, where the group laid down 1984.
It’s also possible that Roth found some lyrical inspiration slightly closer to home, for his 1969 Opel Kadett Caravan wagon was also nicknamed Panama. While that latter suggestion is purely speculative, Panama is definitely a song about a fast car which Roth decided to write after one music critic accused him of “singing about only women, partying and fast cars”.
That appraisal may have been intended as a jibe, yet Roth was quite happy to accept it at face value – even though, at that point, he’d yet to write a song about any type of car. The lyrics he penned for Panama, however, could just as easily be heard as automotive-related double entendres (“Ain’t nothin’ like it, her shiny machine”).
What key is Panama in?
Regardless of the minutiae, Roth’s bandmates like their frontman’s words, and the group tasked Eddie Van Halen with writing a suitable riff to hang the song on.
“The guys asked me to write something with an AC/DC beat,” Van Halen revealed in Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill’s book, Eruptions: Conversations With Eddie Van Halen. “That ended up being Panama. It really doesn’t sound that much like AC/DC, but that was my interpretation of it.”
Nonetheless, Eddie’s no-nonsense, Malcolm Young-esque riff fitted the song like a glove, and with rhythm section Michael Anthony (bass) and Alex Van Halen (drums) working up a steadfast, four-to-the-floor groove, the group had the basis of yet another classic track, all topped off with the sound of Eddie’s 1972 Lamborghini Miura S rolling up to the studio doors.
“They thought we were nuts to pull up my Lamborghini to the studio and mic it,” the guitarist told Guitar World magazine. “We drove it around the city, and I revved the engine up to 80,000rpm just to get the right sound.”
In the end, the group got exactly the right sound on Panama, though, to confuse the issue, official documents differ from what can be heard on record. Despite the published score claiming that Panama is in the key of E major, the song is actually in the key of E flat major, and it has a tempo of approximately 144 beats per minute.
