The Panther was built by the British after war for evaluation purposes. In 1977 it was discovered in a scrap yard in West Ewell Surrey. It was bought by Herr Flick (yes really) and shipped to Germany for restoration.
I remember reading a magazine about it, they had a huge pile of scrap that they processed, new scrap permanently topping the pile up, eventually the yard was to be closed and the scrap pile was being run down and when they got to the bottom everyone was stunned to see the panther sitting there with its barrel sawn off and lying besides it.