De Tomaso

De Tomaso Vallelunga

De Tomaso's first road-going production model was the Vallelunga (named after the racing circuit) introduced in 1963. This mid-engine sports car had a 104 hp (78 kW) 4 cylinder engine shared with the Ford Cortina, and was able to attain a top speed of 215 km/h (134 mph). It had a fabricated steel backbone chassis, which was to become a common feature of De Tomaso cars. The aluminium coupé body was designed and several built by Fissore before production was moved to Ghia in 1965 where they were assembled with fibreglass bodies. In all, approximately 60 were produced.

De Tomaso Mangusta

The Mangusta, introduced in 1966 was the first De Tomaso produced in significant numbers. With the Mangusta, De Tomaso moved from European to American Ford engines. The car had a 4.7-litre iron-block V8 engine and steel and aluminium coupé bodywork from Ghia—an Italian coachbuilder also controlled by Alejandro de Tomaso. About 400 Mangustas were built before production ended in 1971.

De Tomaso Pantera

The Mangusta was succeeded by the Pantera. It appeared in 1971 with a 351 Cleveland Ford V8 and a low, wedge-shaped body designed by Ghia's Tom Tjaarda.[15] Through an agreement with Ford, De Tomaso sold Panteras in the USA through Ford's Lincoln and Mercury dealers. Between 1971 and 1973, 6,128 Panteras were produced in Modena, the largest number of cars De Tomaso produced. The 1973 oil crisis and other factors compelled Ford to pull out of the Pantera deal at the end of 1973, a few months after buying all of De Tomaso's shares and getting control of the entire production process in the three factories that shared the workload in northern Italy.[16]

But De Tomaso retained from Ford the right to produce the car for the "rest of the world" market, so he continued Pantera production at a greatly reduced scale of fewer than 100 cars per year during the 1970s and 1980s. From then on, the cars were largely hand-built, even more than before.[17]

Incorporating a Marcello Gandini facelift, suspension redesign, partial chassis redesign and a new, smaller Ford engine, the Pantera 90 Si model (the i standing for iniezione – Italian for fuel injection) was introduced in 1990. There were 41 90 Si models manufactured with 2 crash tested, 38 sold, and 1 example going directly into a museum[18] before the Pantera was finally phased out in 1993 to make way for the radical, carbon-fibre-bodied Guarà.

De Tomaso Guarà Spider

The Guarà succeeded the Pantera and began production in 1993. The Guarà was designed by Carlo Gaino of Synthesis design,[19] an Italian design house; Gaino also designed the Maserati Barchetta.[20] Based on a Maserati competition car from 1991, using Ford and BMW parts in a composite body, the Guarà was available in coupé and barchetta versions. As with all De Tomasos except the Pantera, production was both limited and sporadic.

De Tomaso Biguà/Qvale Mangusta

In the early 2000s two other cars were planned by De Tomaso, but both proved abortive. A two-seat Gandini-styled convertible, the Biguà, was developed from a 1996 Geneva concept in partnership with Qvale, an American firm which had long imported European sports cars into the USA. But as production of the Biguà—renamed the Mangusta—began, the relationship between De Tomaso and Qvale soured; Qvale took over the car and rebadged it as the Qvale Mangusta. Production was short-lived, and Qvale's Italian factory was bought in 2003 by MG Rover and the Mangusta's mechanicals were then used as the basis of the MG XPower SV. In April 2002, De Tomaso began a project to build off-road vehicles in a new factory in Calabria in partnership with the Russian company UAZ, but this too floundered. The deal projected a production rate of 10,000 cars a year by 2006: however, no cars were built and De Tomaso went into voluntary liquidation in June 2004 after the death of Alejandro de Tomaso in 2003. The Guarà remained available in some markets in 2005 and 2006, but it appears that no cars were built after 2004.[21]

De Tomaso P72 at its first appearance during the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2019

The P72 is a retro-styled sports car introduced at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed under the newly reformed DeTomaso brand. Designed by Jowyn Wong, the car is a homage to the P70, a race car built by Carroll Shelby and styled by Peter Brock for De Tomaso, introduced in the late 1960s. The design of the car is meant to be hailing back to the LeMans race cars of the 1960s. The interior of the car is meant to have a modern outlook with opulent instrumentation. The chassis built to LMP1 standards is shared with the sister company Apollo Automobil's Intensa Emozione.

Logo of De Tomaso Automobili launched in 2009

In 2009 the De Tomaso trademark was bought by Former Fiat executive Gian Mario Rossignolo who founded a new company named "De Tomaso Automobili SpA". A new business plan for the company called for producing three models for a total of 8,000 vehicles: 3,000 crossovers, 3,000 limousines, and 2,000 two-seater sports cars.

Deauville Concept at Geneva in 2011

At the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, De Tomaso presented a new model.[24] The new De Tomaso Deauville was to have been a five-door hatchback/crossover vehicle with all-wheel drive, which, in the details of its styling, quotes models from BMW and Mercedes-Benz.[25]

The proposed range included two gasoline engines with 300 PS and 500 PS as well as a diesel from VM Motori with 250 PS. The Deauville remained a prototype, as the new company never started production and the company chairman, Rossignolo, was arrested in 2012 on account of misappropriation of funds taken from the Italian government to revive the De Tomaso brand. As a result, 900 employees of the company were made redundant.[26] Rossignolo was sentenced to five and a half years of imprisonment on the charges of fraud and embezzlement in 2018.[27]

The rights to the De Tomaso brand were acquired by Norman Choi of Ideal Team Ventures in 2014. The new management under Choi's leadership undertook the task of reviving the brand. Five years later, the company unveiled its first product, the P72 retro-styled sports car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, at the time of 60th anniversary of the De Tomaso brand. The car had been in development under the code name of "Project P". The new car is based on the Apollo Intensa Emozione's monocoque chassis, a car manufactured by De Tomaso's sister company Apollo Automobil and 72 units of the car will be sold.[28]

In November 2022, De Tomaso announced a track-only hypercar named the P900.[29] The new vehicle will have a 900 hp (670 kW) 6.2-liter naturally aspirated V12 engine designed to run on carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. De Tomaso only plans to produce 18 P900s and sell them for a starting price of US$3 million. At the time of the announcement, the V12 engine was still in development and would not be fully ready until late 2024, leading De Tomaso to also offer a V10 engined option.

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