Alejandro De Tomaso was an Argentine-born race driver and deal maker who entered the ranks of small-bore racing car specialists with some Ford-powered Formula Junior cars; we'd call them Late Period Etceterini. He attracted the attention of Carroll Shelby, an ex-race driver with similar talents for salesmanship, and they hatched a project to built 5 cars for an SCCA series for 1965. De Tomaso hooked up Shelby designer Pete Brock* with Italian chassis and body makers, and proposed a chassis design based upon his spindly, tubular single-seaters, with engine blocks taking chassis loads. This 1965 P70 used the backbone chassis that later formed the basis of the Mangusta. While De Tomaso fell behind schedule developing special heads for a bored and stroked version of the Ford 289, Shelby sent Brock to Italy to work with Carrozzeria Fantuzzi on forming the alloy bodies (and not incidentally, to keep an eye on De Tomaso). This time, Brock's design incorporated the adjustable rear air foil which he had originally suggested for the Cobra Daytona coupe. Shelby cancelled the P70 project when the special heads weren't ready for the 1965 race season (and when he was offered a key role by Ford in the Gt40 racing effort), and De Tomaso kept the two cars of five planned, outfitting the second version with a windshield and doors complying with European racing regulations. After taking over Ghia, De Tomaso credited that firm with the P70, but the design was all Pete Brock's. Like Shelby, De Tomaso was occasionally prone to take credit for work done by others, especially when it was drop-dead gorgeous...
De Tomaso had offered mid-engined Formula Juniors in 1963; these also used Ford-derived power; in this case 1100cc inline, short-stroke fours. The company only built a handful of these, but they gave De Tomaso experience with Ford as an engine supplier, and also provided the template for his first production car (well, sort of production), named after the Vallelunga race track. This design used the engine block as a stressed member in the chassis design, as in the Formula Junior car and the later P70.
While the designer was not credited, it was someone who deftly adapted tight contours and proportions to the mid-engined chassis, and the low belt line and glassy greenhouse work well. Only the towering bystanders give away the car's small size. The engine chosen was the 1.5 liter, 4-cylinder English Ford Kent unit tuned to make 104 hp, in this case without the Cosworth-designed twin-cam heads featured in the Lotus Elan.
Carrozzeria Fissore, which made the first few examples, had also produced the similarly glassy Elva BMW GT160, another mid-engined coupe that appeared in the same year. After Fissore produced 3 prototypes, production was taken over by Ghia*. Ghia's limited capacity may be one reason less than five dozen cars were completed, including 50 "production" cars, the prototypes and a handful of alloy-bodied road racers.
In 1966, De Tomaso exhibited the Pampero spider shown below at the car shows. Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for Ghia, it sat on the same chassis as the Vallelunga, with the same 1.5 liter Ford four. Sold by Ghia after a lukewarm response from critics and show-goers, its whereabouts remain a mystery...
But what happened next is not. Giugiaro had originally proposed a mid-engined design to Iso after designing their successful Grifo GT car; it was adapted by De Tomaso for the Mangusta (after the mongoose that slays cobras, a dig at Shelby). The Mangusta design deployed the creased flanks and low, oblong air intake framing quad headlights as the Pampero, but visual clues signal the V8-powered chassis derived from the cancelled P70 project. The Mangusta made its debut in November 1966 at the same Turin show as Giugiaro's Maserati Ghibli, possibly leaving onlookers wondering which of those two might be the most stunning new car there. Silver, Giugiaro's favorite show car color, shows off the creased, tightly contoured lines. Giugiaro emphasized the rear wheels and sloped the windshield steeply to impart form that was spare, focused and purposeful...
The butterfly engine lids dictated twin outer backlights; inside, a vertical backlight separated the passenger cabin from the engine, while deeply recessed vents in the lids echoed those aft of the side windows. Note how the horizontal crease dividing the upper and lower flanks is roughly tangent to the wheel tops. Rear tires were larger than fronts, and the design benefits from the designer's disinclination to add anything like practical bumpers at the rear...
…or any bumpers at the front, where the simple, forward-canted air intake tightly surrounded 4 round headlights that were 2 oblong units in Giugiaro's original sketch for rival maker Iso. For Iso the car was a lost opportunity, but it put De Tomaso on the map as a car maker. It went into production in autumn of 1967, the year De Tomaso took over Ghia. As the license plate indicates, just over 400 Mangustas would be made; of these, roughly 150 were for the European market. When Daryl Adams, owner of this pristine example, displayed it at a concours featuring Giugiaro's designs, the designer himself, a guest of honor at the show, signed the inside of the glovebox...
While the Mangusta was in production and De Tomaso was lobbying for a bigger project with Ford, Tom Tjaarda* designed the compact Mustela GT below, which appeared on the show circuit in 1969. Based on a Ford V6 drivetrain, the hatchback Mustela would have made a very attractive alternative to the Capri Ford introduced in Germany and England that same year...
Even with the black mask denoting high-impact bumpers that were added in the Seventies, the Mustela would have outshone the Ford Capri (sold as a Mercury in the US) and the hapless Pinto-based Mustang II Ford offered for 1974. But the Mustela was stillborn, partly because in the meantime, Ford had delivered that long-awaited big order to De Tomaso and Ghia...
The Mangusta had attracted the attention of Ford's corporate brass, and Lee Iacocca approached De Tomaso about a more practical production version of the Mangusta idea. Ford had bought Ghia in 1970 and Giugiaro had left Ghia to start his own firm, so new chief designer Tom Tjaarda*, recently arrived from Pininfarina, handled design chores. A mid-mounted 351 Cleveland replaced the 289 and 302 offered in Mangustas, again with the ZF transaxle, and though the new car was essentially the same size as its precursor it offered more space, along with bumpers. These were mostly decorative until the 1973 and '74 model years. Built at Vignale, also owned by Ford, owing to its volume production capacity, it overlapped the end of Mangusta production and went on sale at selected US Lincoln Mercury dealers in the spring of 1971. Over 5,600 were built during its US run, which ended after 1974. After that, as we shall see, production of the Pantera continued in Italy...
De Tomaso displayed another Tjaarda design, this Deauville 4-door sedan at the Turin Show in 1970, and began production in 1971, the year of the Pantera launch. The Ghia-built body was clearly derivative of Jaguar's XJ series, but the Deauville was so carefully contoured, proportioned and detailed that it did a better job of looking like a Jaguar than the XJ40 series which appeared in 1986, the year after the Deauville exited production after 244 examples were built. Power came from Ford's 351 Cleveland V8 as on the Pantera, suspension was all-independent, with 4-wheel power disc brakes. Transmissions offered were a ZF 5 speed and a 3-speed automatic. The chassis design was also used with longer wheelbase from 1979 on Maserati's Quattroporte III, as by this time, De Tomaso had a controlling interest in Maserati as well as a connection to Ghia...
If the Deauville was De Tomaso's answer to the Jag XJ, the Longchamp (produced from 1972-'89 in 409 examples) seemed a response to the Mercedes SL and shared similar forms and proportions. The Longchamp offered the same drivetrain and chassis design as the Deauville, but on a wheelbase 7 inches shorter at 102 inches. From '76 to '83, DeTomaso offered a Maserati-powered variant as the Kyalami. The Deauville and Longchamp were the only production model De Tomasos with front-mounted engines. In the end, it was the mid-engined Pantera that was De Tomaso's most popular car, with 7,260 produced before production ended in 1992.
*Footnote: Pete Brock's car designs were surveyed here in "Unsung Genius: Pete Brock, Car Designer", on Jan.16, 2017. Tom Tjaarda's career designing cars got a retrospective in "Architect-Designed Cars Part 4: Tom Tjaarda---Life Before and After the Pantera", posted on April 30, 2020. Other designs for Ghia, including those by Giorgetto Giugiaro, were featured in "The Italian Line: Ghia Part 2---From Custom to Corporate", posted on October 31, 2020.
Photo Credits
Top: hemmings.com
2nd, 7th & 14th: Ghia Studios
3rd: Lutziger Classic Cars
4th thru 6th (Vallelunga): the author
7th (Pampero): Ghia Studios
8th thru 11th (Mangusta): the author
12th, 13th & 14th (Pantera & Mustela): Ghia Studios
15th (Deauville): Honest John Classics
16th & Bottom (Deauville & Longchamp): Wikimedia
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