Blue Oval Icons: De Tomaso’s Other
Ford-Powered Ride, The Mangusta
By BRADLEY IGER |
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.
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