Alejandro de Tomaso was an Argentine born in 1928 who emigrated to Italy in the 1950s. Originally competed with OSCA and Maserati cars. Later in 1959, however, he founded his own company, De Tomaso Automobili Spa , and began manufacturing sports cars. His successful Formula 1 , 2 , 3 and Junior car designs ensured profits for the company. The first civilian car was the Vallelunga type from 1965, which had a four-cylinder Ford 1.5 , but it did not bring much sales success. So for the next car, de Tomaso decided to create it with a combination of European styling and racing components. And just like that, Mangusta was born in 1967.
Its shape was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for Studio Ghia . A typical feature was the rear trunk lid split in the middle, which flipped upwards, similar to the hoods of old interwar veterans. And under the very strange hood was a 306-horsepower Ford V8 , familiar to fans from the Cobra or GT40 cars. American customers could feel cheated, they got only 221 horses. Also, the ZF transmission, independent all-wheel suspension and disc brakes were the same as those from the Ford GT40 . Air conditioning could not be missing, although it gives the impression that an asthmatic is sitting behind its exhalations trying to breathe on you. Another disadvantage was worse workshop processing and zero anti-corrosion protection.
The Mangusta was also notorious for its "temperamental" driving. And handling wasn't helped much by the 32/68 weight distribution. But don't take it to mean that it was completely uncontrollable, it just required great care and concentration to drive it. The car's cabin is not very ergonomic and has a bad view. And then its low ground clearance, which goes hand in hand with its problems with going over every bump, is also an integral part of the car's nature. But wouldn't it be a real supercar if you didn't have to make a lot of compromises while driving?
The successor to the Mangusta was the much more famous Pantera . But the Mangusta is much rarer, with only 401 cars built during production between 1967 and 1972. Of these, only 250 still exist today, the rest did not survive the adverse weather or the inexperience of the owners. The funny thing is that the mongoose is a small beast that is able to bite off the head of a poisonous cobra. Historians explain it by the fact that Alejandro was originally supposed to produce a sports car with Caroll Shelby as a successor to the famous Cobra , but the agreement was not reached in the end. If this is true, then this controversy gave us a not very well assembled, but all the more charismatic and pleasing sports car.
Source: Petrolicious
