 | |
| Formerly | De Tomaso Modena SpA |
|---|---|
| Company type | Private |
| Industry | Automotive |
| Founded | 1959; 66 years ago (1959) |
| Founder | Alejandro de Tomaso |
| Fate | Filed for bankruptcy in 2012;[1] Company sold to Ideal Team Ventures in 2014[2] |
| Headquarters | Modena, Italy (1959–2004) |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | |
| Products | Supercars |
| Owner | Ideal Team Ventures Limited |
| Parent | Ford (1971–1974) |
| Subsidiaries |
|
| Website | detomaso-automobili.com |
De Tomaso Automobili Ltd. (previously known asDe Tomaso Modena SpA) is an Italiancar-manufacturing company. It was founded in 1959 byAlejandro de Tomaso inModena. It originally produced varioussports prototypes andauto racing vehicles, including aFormula One car forFrank Williams Racing Cars in 1970. Most of the funding for the automaker came fromAmory Haskell Jr.
In 1971Ford Motor Company acquired an 84 percent stake in De Tomaso with Alejandro de Tomaso himself holding the balance.[5] Ford sold back their stake in the automaker in 1974. The De Tomaso brand was acquired in 2014 by Hong Kong–basedIdeal Team Ventures and in 2019 the newly formed company presented their first product, a retro-styledsports car called theDe Tomaso P72.[3]
The company went on to develop and produce bothsports cars andluxury vehicles, most notably theFord-powered Italian-bodiedMangusta andPantera. From 1976 to 1993, De Tomaso owned Italian sports car makerMaserati, and was responsible for producing cars including theBiturbo, theKyalami,Quattroporte III,Karif and theChrysler TC. De Tomaso also owned motorcycle companyMoto Guzzi from 1973 to 1993.
De Tomaso went intoliquidation in 2004,[6] although production of new cars continued after this date.[7] By 2008, a buyer was being sought for the De Tomaso factory and trademarks, per the court-appointed liquidators.[8] In 2009, Gian Mario Rossignolo bought the De Tomaso trademark and founded a new company named "De Tomaso Automobili SpA". Rossignolo planned to assemble chassis and bodies in one ofDelphi Automotive's old production facilities inLivorno and to fit bodywork, paint and finish its cars in the formerPininfarina factory inGrugliasco.[9]
In May 2012 De Tomaso was again for sale after their business plan failed to gather sufficient financial backing.[10][1] In July 2012, Rossignolo was arrested following allegations that he misused 7.5 million Euro worth of government funds.[11] In September 2012, speculation emerged thatBMW might be interested in the brand factory to produce new BMW models.[12]
In 2014 the original workshop in Modena was in abandonment.[13]
In April 2015 an Italian bankruptcy court approved the sale of the company to Hong Kong–based Consolidated Ideal Team Ventures, for€1,050,000.[2] Per that sale report "A lawyer for the buyer announced that Ideal Team Venture plans to produce cars in China bearing the De Tomaso name."[2]
De Tomaso's first road-going production model was theVallelunga (named after theracing circuit) introduced in 1963; a spider competition version was being raced a few months before the introduction. This mid-engine sports car had a 104 hp (78 kW) 4 cylinder engine shared with theFord Cortina, and was able to attain a top speed of 215 km/h (134 mph). It had a fabricated steelbackbone chassis, which was to become a common feature of De Tomaso cars. Thealuminiumcoupé body was designed and several built byFissore before production was moved toGhia in 1965 where they were assembled withfibreglass bodies. In all, approximately 60 were produced.
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TheMangusta, 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-blockV8 engine andsteel and aluminium coupé bodywork fromGhia—an Italian coachbuilder also controlled byAlejandro de Tomaso. About 400 Mangustas were built before production ended in 1971.
The Mangusta was succeeded by thePantera. It appeared in 1971 with a351 Cleveland Ford V8 and a low, wedge-shaped body designed byGhia'sTom Tjaarda.[14] Through an agreement with Ford, De Tomaso sold Panteras in the USA through Ford'sLincoln-Mercury dealers. Between 1971 and 1973, 6,128 Panteras were produced inModena, the largest number of cars De Tomaso produced. The1973 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.[15]
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.[16]
Incorporating aMarcello Gandini facelift, suspension redesign, partial chassis redesign and a new, smaller Ford engine, thePantera 90 Si model (thei standing foriniezione—Italian forfuel injection) was introduced in 1990. There were 4190 Si models manufactured with 2 crash tested, 38 sold, and 1 example going directly into a museum[17] before the Pantera was finally phased out in 1993 to make way for the radical,carbon-fibre-bodiedGuarà.
TheGuarà succeeded the Pantera and began production in 1993. The Guarà was designed by Carlo Gaino of Synthesis design,[18] an Italian design house; Gaino also designed theMaserati Barchetta.[19] Based on a Maserati competition car from 1991, using Ford andBMW 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.
In the early 2000s two other cars were planned by De Tomaso, but both proved abortive. A two-seatGandini-styled convertible, theBiguà, was developed from a 1996Geneva concept in partnership withQvale, 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 theQvale Mangusta. Production was short-lived, and Qvale's Italian factory was bought in 2003 byMG Rover and the Mangusta's mechanicals were then used as the basis of theMG XPower SV. In April 2002, De Tomaso began a project to build off-road vehicles in a new factory inCalabria in partnership with the Russian companyUAZ, 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.[20]
The P72 is a retro-styled sports car introduced at the 2019Goodwood 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 byCarroll 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 companyApollo Automobil's Intensa Emozione.
Although De Tomaso is principally known as a maker of high-performance sports cars, the firm also produced luxury coupés and saloons in tiny number throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
The 1971Deauville was an effort to rival contemporaryJaguar andMercedes-Benz saloons. With the same engine as the Pantera mounted in the front, the Deauville was clothed in an angular Tjaarda/Ghia four-door body. The Deauville did not compete with its rivals, especially those from Germany, on the perspective of build quality. Despite remaining on De Tomaso's offerings until 1985, only 244 were ever made. A single example of an estate was built for Alejandro de Tomaso's wife, the American racing driver Isabelle Haskell.[21]
In 1972 De Tomaso introduced a coupé based on the Deauville with a slightly shortened Deauville chassis and the same Ford V8 engine, called theLongchamp. Its body design, however, was substantially different, and influenced by the Lancia Marica prototype, also designed by Tom Tjaarda.[22] A total of 409 cars of all variations were built by the time the production ended in 1989.
With the assistance of the Italian government, De Tomaso took over Maserati in 1976 after its owner, Citroën, declared that it would no longer support the loss-making company. The first Maserati De Tomaso introduced, the Kyalami, was a Longchamp redesigned byFrua, with the Ford engine replaced by Maserati's own 4.2-litre V8. The Kyalami remained in production until 1983, when it was superseded by the Biturbo, introduced two years earlier. Other cars Introduced under the De Tomaso ownership included the Quattroporte III/Royale and IV, the Barchetta, the Ghibli and the Shamal. All of the latter cars other than the Quattroporte III were based on the Biturbo while the Quattroporte was based on the Kyalami platform. De Tomaso introduced this concept of platform sharing to save development costs on new models. In 1993, De Tomaso sold Maserati toFiat S.p.A. due to slumping sales and low profitability.
In 1976 Innocenti passed to Alejandro de Tomaso and was reorganised by the De Tomaso Group under the nameNuova Innocenti.
From 1976 to 1987 the top of the range Innocenti was the Innocenti Mini de Tomaso, a sport version of the Innocenti Mini developed by De Tomaso, initially equipped with theBLMC 1275 cc engine, and from 1982 to 1987 with a 1.0-litre 3-cylinder turbochargedDaihatsu engine.
De Tomaso sold Innocenti toFiat S.p.A. in 1993.
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.
At the 2011Geneva Motor Show, De Tomaso presented a new model.[23] The newDe Tomaso Deauville was to have been a five-doorhatchback/crossover vehicle with all-wheel drive, which, in the details of its styling, quotes models fromBMW andMercedes-Benz.[24]
The proposed range included two gasoline engines with 300 PS and 500 PS as well as a diesel fromVM 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.[25] Rossignolo was sentenced to five and a half years of imprisonment on the charges of fraud and embezzlement in 2018.[26]
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 theApollo Intensa Emozione's monocoque chassis, a car manufactured by De Tomaso's sister companyApollo Automobil and 72 units of the car will be sold.[27]
In November 2022 De Tomaso announced a track-only hypercar named theP900.[28] 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 ofUS$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.
| Formula One World Championship career | |
|---|---|
| Engines | OSCA,Alfa Romeo, De Tomaso,Ferrari,Ford |
| Entrants | Scuderia Serenissima, Scuderia Settecolli,Frank Williams Racing Cars |
| First entry | 1961 French Grand Prix |
| Last entry | 1970 United States Grand Prix |
| Races entered | 15 (10 starts) |
| Race victories | 0 |
| Constructors' Championships | 0 |
| Drivers' Championships | 0 |
| Points | 0 |
| Pole positions | 0 |
| Fastest laps | 0 |
De Tomaso made a handful ofFormula One appearances from 1961 to 1963, with their own chassis and a mix of engines. During 1962 the "De Tomaso 801" appeared, with an original 135-degree 1498 cc V8 with a claimed 200 CV (147 kW) at 9500 rpm, and a six-speed De Tomaso transmission (although presumably developed byValerio Colotti). The stubby and somewhat unaerodynamic design of the car raised some questions among period writers, as did the claimed max power.[29] The De Tomaso 801 was entered in a number of races but only appeared at the1962 Italian Grand Prix, where it failed to qualify.[30]
De Tomaso then built a Formula One chassis (designed byGiampaolo Dallara) forFrank Williams Racing Cars to use in the1970 Formula One season. The car was uncompetitive, failing to finish the first four races of the year. In the fifth, theDutch Grand Prix, theDe Tomaso 505/38 flipped and caught fire, killing driverPiers Courage. The team persevered, first withBrian Redman, thenTim Schenken. However, with no results, the partnership was dissolved at the end of the season.
(key)
| Year | Entrant | Chassis | Engine | Tyres | Drivers | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | Points | WCC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1961 | MON | NED | BEL | FRA | GBR | GER | ITA | USA | 0 | - | ||||||||||
| Scuderia Settecolli | De Tomaso F1/002 | O.S.C.A.S4 | D | Roberto Lippi | Ret | |||||||||||||||
| Scuderia Serenissima | De Tomaso F1/001 | Giorgio Scarlatti | Ret | |||||||||||||||||
| De Tomaso F1/003 | Alfa RomeoI4 | Nino Vaccarella | Ret | 0 | - | |||||||||||||||
| Isobele de Tomaso | De Tomaso F1/004 | Roberto Bussinello | Ret | |||||||||||||||||
| 1962 | NED | MON | BEL | FRA | GBR | GER | ITA | USA | RSA | 0 | - | |||||||||
| Scuderia Settecolli | De Tomaso F1/002 | O.S.C.A.I4 | D | Roberto Lippi | DNQ | |||||||||||||||
| Scuderia de Tomaso | De Tomaso 801 | De TomasoFlat-8 | D | Nasif Estéfano | DNQ | 0 | - | |||||||||||||
| 1963 | MON | BEL | NED | FRA | GBR | GER | ITA | USA | MEX | RSA | 0 | - | ||||||||
| Scuderia Settecolli | De Tomaso F1/002 | FerrariV6 | D | Roberto Lippi | DNQ | |||||||||||||||
| 1970 | Frank Williams Racing Cars | De Tomaso 505/38 | CosworthV8 | D | RSA | ESP | MON | BEL | NED | FRA | GBR | GER | AUT | ITA | CAN | USA | MEX | 0 | - | |
| Piers Courage | Ret | DNS | NC | Ret | Ret | |||||||||||||||
| Brian Redman | DNS | DNQ | ||||||||||||||||||
| Tim Schenken | Ret | Ret | NC | Ret |
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