defining car culture 095GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED
De Tomaso P72
De Tomaso has always been an interesting outsider
in the supercar genre, traditionally focusing on Italian
coachbuilding stuffed with blue-collar American V8s. The
Pantera is perhaps their best-known model, looking a bit
like a Countach but with a sodding great Detroit motor in
the middle; the Mangusta was their cheekiest car, being
so-named just to annoy Carroll Shelby. Because Mangusta
means ‘mongoose’, and mongooses eat cobras...
The company suffered financial crises through the 1990s
and 2000s, and after the death of founder Alejandro de
Tomaso in 2003, production stopped. However, a Hong-
Kong based outfit named IdealVentures bought the De
Tomaso name in 2014, and this is what they’ve been
working on since: the P72. Designed to look like a 1960s GT
racer, it uses an Apollo carbon fibre monocoque (because
IdealVentures also bought obscure German supercar
outfit Gumpert) and is dripping in polished copper details.
They won’t tell anyone what engine it’s running just yet,
although we can see it has a proper manual gearbox, and it
sounded great running at full-bore up the hill. Here’s hoping
it’s got the Apollo IE’s 6.3-litre V12...