Review by Wallace Wyss
As the author of several books on De Tomaso, I’ve waited decades for a be-all, end-all De Tomaso book to be published that could provide the history of the marque from Day One through to the ignominious fade-out of the Italian automaker’s kingdom.
This book is almost it, a one stop history. The product is superb, hardbound with many detailed photographs.
I like the organization of the book; pretty much chronological, starting out with De Tomaso leaving his native Argentina and settling in as a race driver and car builder in Italy.
The origin of his open wheel Formula cars gets more attention here than in other books. But most readers want the road cars; the mid-engined Vallelunga is the first one covered. When the writers get to the Mangusta, the first V8-powered mid-engine road car, they fail to give Giugiaro an introduction, yet his is the best-looking De Tomaso ever. De Tomaso was lucky to harness such talent so early in the maestro’s career.
The authors might have been unaware that one reason Ford refused to import the Mangusta, though they wanted to market an Italian car, was because of a road test in Sports Car Graphic. The Ford brass found it had squirrely handling at the limit. But what really stopped them from importing it was that it took too much hand work to build it at Ghia, so De Tomaso bought Vignale to convince Ford that he had the capacity to build it there. Ironically when the follow up design, the Pantera, was selected, it was green lighted for production but built at Vignale, yet wore Ghia badges to give that company some glory.
The authors didn’t repeat what I heard back during the car’s introduction, that Ford was in such a hurry to have an Italian car they okayed the Pantera before a running prototype was built. The authors do go into all the fixes on the early examples before they were sorted out. It was a massive learning lesson for Ford.
A big omission was the lack of pictures of the (non running) Mangusta prototype. I saw the car at the factory in rough shape and the photos should have been included.
Panteras are the “meat” of the book and I’m glad it covers every variation; the GT4, the Euro models and the GTS, and even the post-Ford-imported models such as the GT-5S which De Tomaso continued to make after Ford decamped in 1974. The Deauville, a sort of Jaguar XJ6 style clone, gets some ink as does the Longchamp; it shows the Longchamp spyder but not enough views.
There are at least three pictures of the last model to bear the name De Tomaso. The authors maintain that it didn’t get into production, though I’ve seen pictures of the abandoned plant with at least six cars on the assembly line. (David Adler, a De Tomaso historian in the U.S. agrees with the authors that they were only prototypes.)
The adroit political maneuvering of Alejandro De Tomaso is addressed throughout the book, but the authors give him credit for keeping things moving, for example saving the Maserati marque. He is portrayed as being a very ambitious man, so anxious to produce the Pantera, for instance, that he pushed it through to production before it was ready.
There’s not much about Isabelle Haskell; nothing about how she owned racehorses before she got involved with car racing or her early adventures racing sports cars. And I wouldn’t have minded reading the story of how they met; the “cute meet” at the Maserati parts counter is not described. Before meeting him, she had previously fought to be accepted in races against men (rather than compete in “powder puff” races) so she was glad to meet a racer who wanted to build his own car, The authors claim her family money was never drawn upon to finance their car-building, but how does that square with the Haskell family becoming co-owners of Rowan Controllers who bought Ghia with De Tomaso?
The appendix is probably the most diligent effort to date on attributing serial numbers to significant cars. Unlike the Ferrari world where there are many experts and hundreds of books, the De Tomaso world has long needed someone to create some order out of the chaos of the creative world of the De Tomasos, Alejandro and Isabelle.
Overall I’d give De Tomaso: Racing Blue Blood a 90 percent rating as it covers most of De Tomaso’s mysteries and at last gives the marque some believability, not easy when De Tomaso himself fibbed about everything from horsepower to the identity of a car’s designer!
DE TOMASO: RACING BLUE BLOOD
Title
De Tomaso: Racing Blue Blood
Authors
Marcel Schaub [3], Alejo Pérez Monsalvo [4]
Publisher
McKlein Publishing, 2024
ISBN
3947156588, 9783947156580
350.00€ *
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THE REVIEWER Wallace Wyss is the author of three De Tomaso books. He can be reached at malibucarart@gmail.com