The De Tomaso brand was an Italian based sports car manufacturer based in Modena – the home of Italian sports cars. Alejandro De Tomaso was Argentinean of Italian heritage and it is rumoured that he did a runner from Argentina after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Juan Peron, the President at that time. His father was a politician and his mother’s family managed a huge agricultural business.
Regardless of that being true or not, De Tomaso was a mechanical engineer and wanted to build race cars with the Maserati brothers. De Tomaso was also an accomplished racer and even competed in two Formula 1 races towards the end of the 50s.
He set up De Tomaso Automobili to develop sports and racing cars using an aluminium chassis and also built luxury saloons as well. He built quite an empire, buying coachbuilders like Ghia and Vignale, car makers Innocenti and Maserati and even motorbikes – he owned Benelli and Moto Guzzi.
He sold Ghia to Ford – hence the Ghia badge on many Ford models and he sold Innocenti and Maserati to FIAT but not before saving Maserati from being shut down by Citroen whom he bought the company from.
His first road going car was the Vallelunga of 1963 powered by a Ford Cortina engine with the lightweight chassis and a fibreglass body. Ford became a very strong partner supplying not only engines but also a dealer network in the US. The Mangusta of 1966 replaced the European Ford engine with a US based 4.7 litre V8. The Mangusta was replaced with the most well known model, the Pantera, also fitted with a Ford 351 V8 but now sold through Ford dealers in America. Sadly the oil crises of 1973 did a lot of damage to the sales and ultimately the Ford relationship.
The Pantera continued to be built in Italy through to the early 80s as a low volume sports car competing against Ferrari and Lamborghini and then the GT5 and GT5-S versions were launched. These models had bigger everything and were given even more conspicuous bodywork! Production numbers were shrinking all the time and only a handful of the last Pantera – the 90i were built.
Then came the Guara in 93 – a race car based on a Maserati design but converted to road use with firstly BMW X5 mechanics and then Ford V8s. The cars continued to be built and sold even after De Tomaso had died in 93 and the company, now run by his son, was in liquidation. In fact the last model was developed in conjunction with Qvale, who had been building cars for the liquidated company. They took the design and called it the Mangusta (after the earlier model) and this car eventually was badged as an MG SV after MG acquired the rights to the design! Despite having 3 different brand names it didn’t save the car!
Other well known cars with the De Tomaso badge include the Longchamp, a 2+2 coupe and the Deauville, a 4 door saloon trying to compete with the Jaguar XJ6. The Longchamp was used as the basis for the Maserati Kyalami! Both De Tomaso models used the Ford V8 seen in the Pantera although the Kyalami replaced it with a Maserati 4.2 litre V8.
A little known fact about De Tomaso was his relationship with Daihatsu and he built a sports version of the tiny Charade for them in Italy although the car was destined for the Japanese market.
And the final vehicles were to be off-road cars designed and built for the Russian UAZ company. However De Tomaso finally bit the dust and no cars were built.