1965 DeTomaso Vallelunga (Ghia)

Alejandro de Tomaso was an Argentinian race-car driver who emigrated to Italy to build competition machines after first settling in the United States, where he married and continued racing for a rime (with his wife). In the 1970s he built DeTomaso Automobili into a small power in the motor industry of his adopted country.

But in the early Sixties, Alejandro was struggling to make the shift from race-car constructor to road-car manufacturer, producing prototypes that always seemed to have a lot of potential but no future. Accordingly, no one took much notice when he revealed a Ford-powered mid-engine coupe in November 1966. Yet this car, the DeTomaso Mangusta, would become his first series-production model, thus laying the foundation for DeTomaso’s future mini auto empire.

The DeTomaso Mangusta wasn’t Alejandro’s first roadgoing sports car. That was the Vallelunga, which appeared in 1964. A smallish open two-seater, it featured a novel “backbone” chassis with all-independent A-arm suspension and a midships-mounted 1.5-liter British Ford four-cylinder engine. Alejandro hoped to sell copies or at least interest a major automaker in production rights, but could do neither.

Then, a turning point. In 1965, DeTomaso persuaded young Giorgio Giugiaro, formerly of Bertone but then working at the house of Ghia, to design a dosed body for the Vallelunga chassis. It attracted attention and Ghia built a few prototypes, only to discover that lack of chassis rigidity around the drivetrain created insoluble vibration problems. This left the Vallelunga stillborn but Alejandro with a valuable contact.