Born into a politically prominent family in Argentina, Alejandro de Tomaso fled to Italy in 1955 after being implicated in a plot to overthrow the Argentinian president, Juan Perón. Settling in Modena, De Tomaso began his career in the auto industry as a factory driver for Maserati, where he would go on to compete in four Formula One Grand Prix races.

Having not scored a single championship point among those events, Alejandro hung up his racing helmet and founded the De Tomaso car company in 1959 with the initial intention of building racecars, but it wasn’t long before Alejandro’s focus shifted to high-performance road-going vehicles.



Though the Vallelunga’s 1.5-liter four cylinder engine only produced 104 horsepower, the mid-engine sports car was exceedingly light, tipping the scales at just over 1,600 pounds. The first five cars were said to have received aluminum bodies, while on the subsequent 48 machines, De Tomaso opted for fiberglass panels. Like the Mangusta and Pantera models that would come after it, all Vallelungas were outfitted with disc brakes and independent suspension at both the front and rear. (Photo Credit: Gauk Motors)

This would first result in the Vallelunga in 1964, a mid-engined rear wheel drive sports car that was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Carrozzeria Fissore and motivated by the 1.5-liter straight-four Kent engine from the Ford Cortina.

While the Vallelunga was a promising debut for the company, the 104-horsepower powerplant left something to be desired. Mid-’60s enthusiasts were accustomed to big horsepower, so Alejandro went back to the drawing board. Engineers would substantially tweak the Vallelunga chassis to allow it to accept a small-block Ford V8, while Giugiaro – who would later design automotive icons like the Volkswagen Golf and the DeLorean DMC-12 – gave the car entirely new bodywork.

While the Vallelunga was a looker, the Mangusta’s wedge shape and muscular haunches put its bodywork on par with mainstream mid-engine supercars of the day like the Lamborghini Miura. But where Lamborghini had chosen an exotic V12 powerplant for its car, the Mangusta would merge Italian aesthetic with an American muscle car soundtrack. Weighing in at 2,600 pounds, the Mangusta also had the straight-line performance to back up that burly rumble. (Photo Credit: Supercars.net)

Those efforts would produce the Mangusta, an Italian sports car produced by De Tomaso from 1967 to 1971 which boasted mid-ship Ford V8 power. Though somewhat flawed, the Mangusta was an undeniably compelling machine that would establish the trademark ingredients of De Tomaso sports cars for decades to come.

Italian Design Meets American Muscle

The Italian word for mongoose (an animal with a reputation for killing cobra snakes), the Mangusta is rumored to have received its name after a falling out between De Tomaso and Caroll Shelby. He opted to design his own car (the GT40) rather than use De Tomaso’s design for his new closed-roof prototype racer.

First introduced in 1966, the Mangusta was the first car De Tomaso produced in any significant numbers. It was loosely based on the P70, a one-off race car designed by Peter Brock for De Tomaso that was powered by a 4.7-liter Ford V8. The P70 would compete in just one race — the 1966 Mugello Grand Prix — and retired on the opening lap. After that unsuccessful outing De Tomaso mothballed the project to focus on a new V8-powered road car that would ultimately become the Mangusta.

Low slung and featuring a more broad-shouldered, aggressive look than the Vallelunga, the Mangusta’s 43-inch-high body was truly a sight to behold. Its rear gull-wing doors revealed both the car’s engine bay and storage areas were just icing on the cake.

De Tomaso now also had the hardware to match up with the Mangusta’s muscular look with Ford’s high-output, 306 horsepower 289ci V8 and the same ZF five-speed manual gearbox Shelby was using in the GT40. Later cars would get a bump in displacement when De Tomaso switched over to Ford’s 302ci V8, but the original 289 mills have proven to be more sought after for their more performance-focused original configuration in comparison to the low-revving 5.0-liter.

Outfitted with disc brakes at all four corners, fully independent suspension, rack and pinion steering, air conditioning, and power accessories, the Mangusta was either on par or ahead of the game versus other supercar designs of the day in terms of components and amenities. Weighing in at just over 2,600 pounds, the Mangusta recorded a sprint to 60 mph from rest in 6.3 seconds on its way to a claimed top speed of 155 mph, so the car was no slouch in a straight line either.

While said to be cramped for anyone over 5'6, the interior of the Mangusta is surprisingly accommodating for the time it was produced, outfitted with leather seats, air conditioning, and power windows. But with a Ford small block churning away just behind the occupants' heads, it's safe to assume the Mangusta was never intended as a good place to have a quiet conversation. Images: RM Auctions

However, with a 32/68 rear-bias weight distribution in a chassis that was already prone to flex before it was retrofitted with a Ford small-block, the Mangusta’s handling characteristics proved to be a handful, and the car was known for understeering and subsequently oversteering in hard corners as the chassis binds up and then unflexes, making the car’s at-limit handling behavior difficult to predict, even for skilled wheelmen.

One of the Mangusta's signature features are the pair of gullwing flaps that reveal the vehicle's storage compartments, spare tire, and engine bay. Like they're undoubtedly eye-catching, the fact that De Tomaso chose to produce these wings in steel rather than light weight aluminum certainly did no favors for the car's 32/68 rear-biased weight distribution, which contributed heavily to its often-maligned handling characteristics. Images: Tomini Classics

Legacy

Just 401 Mangustas would be built during its five-year production run, which ended in 1971 when De Tomaso introduced the Pantera to the world. Sporting a steel unibody design that remedied much of the handling issues found in the Mangusta and 351-cubic inch Ford V8 power, the Pantera went on to become De Tomaso’s signature vehicle, with the company selling more than 7,000 of the mid-engined sports car over a production period that spanned more than two decades.

For the first few years it was on sale the Mangusta had been spared from US safety regulations by being imported under federal waivers, which allowed De Tomaso to keep its bodywork unaltered from European spec. That changed after 1969 however, and De Tomaso would hastily implement changes to the front clip in order to comply with federal headlight standards. These pop-up headlights could be raised or lower by way of a cable-operated system that was fed into the cabin. While the rarer than the early Mangustas, these dual headlight models are generally considered not as sought-after as the quad-headlight models largely due to the compromised aesthetic. (Photo Credit: Classic Driver)

Among the 401 Mangustas constructed, 50 US-bound machines would receive pop-up headlights in 1970, while a single, special-order Mangusta was outfitted with a Chevrolet 327ci mill (Boo! – Ed.) by special request by none other than General Motors-Vice President, Bill Mitchell.

Just 250 original De Tomaso Mangustas are known to exist today (including Bill Mitchell’s special-order car), making an already-rare machine that much more uncommon. As a result they fetch a healthy sum at auction, with well-preserved examples going for well over a quarter-million dollars in recent years, eclipsing the value of the better-known Pantera by a wide margin.