History/driving impressions originally published AutoWeek October 26, 1988; republished by the author
The De Tomaso Mangusta. All the visual impact of the wrong end of Dirty Harry’s gun. Organic as a cat, fluid as a crayon on the sidewalk on August 15. Slick in the dorsal region and thick in the haunches. Colored Revlon’s best red, its ears laid-back and every sinew and fiber taut, it is coiled and primed and ready. It aches to drive.
But there’s the rub. Few cars are less suited to human habitation: to drive it is to ache. Even fewer cars have been less ready when offered for sale. An automobile more of passion than precision.
Under the skin of the Mangusta was a scaled-up Vallelunga, the first production road car built by De Tomaso. The mid-engined, four-cylinder, Ford-powered Vallelunga used the spine chassis made famous by Colin Chapman in the Lotus Elan, though there, of course, the engine was in the front.
The Mangusta also used the spine chassis, but the central box was wider and deeper, going from the front suspension to the front of the longitudinally mounted, small-block Ford engine, which served as the stressed member of the frame aft of the backbone. Front suspension was by unequal-length wishbones, coil springs and an antirollbar; rear suspension by wishbones, trailing links, coil springs and antirollbar. Steering was rack and pinion, and disc brakes, 11.5 inches in diameter front and 11 inches rear, were fitted. A claimed production car first were different sized wheels and tires front and rear: the front seven-inch-wide Campagnolo cast magnesium wheels with Dunlop 185HR-15 tires, the rear 225HR-15 Dunlop’s on eight-inch rims. In the engine bay was a quite ordinary 210 HP, 302 cid Ford V-8.
Giorgio Giugiaro, at that time with Ghia, was responsible for the shape that could break hearts, emphasizing the positive with muscular thighs and big wheel openings. Access to the engine was via a novel gull-wing hatchback. The Mangusta debuted at Turin in November 1966 (with that other lustmobile, the Lamborghini Miura), though it didn’t go into production until 1968.
Early reports raved about the Mangusta, both from a technical viewpoint and driving impressions. Longer looks, however, raised doubts about the cars handling, Paul van Valkenberg complaining in Sports Car Graphic that chassis flex gave the car simultaneous understeer and oversteer. Quality control was poor at best, with hoses and other rubber parts singled out.
What the reviewers generally didn’t point out, however, were the disadvantages of the car’s extreme lowness. By that I don’t mean the usual entry and exit acrobatics required of a car only 43 inches high nor the vision-in-traffic problems that come from sitting with one’s derrière mere inches above the road. The biggest drawback of the Mangusta is that its bellhousing is the lowest point on the car. The first slightly raised manhole cover, high railroad tracks or other road irregularity will halt the Mangusta like an oak trunk stops an inattentive skier.
This is not an idle concern. Standing next to the Mangusta owned by Mabe Pouncey of Linthicum, Md., I find I can barely slide my feet under the rocker panels. And in fact when Mabe bought the car and before he restored it, his Mangusta had struck it’s bellhousing against something and had suffered significant damage. Mabe repaired the damage – though he swears he wouldn’t do it again – and also installed a special dual twin-throat Weber carburetor setup atop the Ford engine.
Now I was to drive the car. A more frustrating experience I have not had in a car. I was prepared by other cars of similar configuration for the pedal offset necessary to clear the intruding wheel arch. I didn’t expect it to be quite so severe or for there to be no room for my left foot except on or under the clutch pedal.
Nor did I anticipate such a stiff clutch, though Mabe says that is partly his fault for the wrong return spring combination. And the carburetors look better than they work, there being a tremendous hole if one opens the throttle too suddenly. If one gets the balance right, the acceleration is impressive. Mabe says a Holly four-barrel will go on for driving, the Webers only for show.
If not luxurious, the accommodations are livable, at least for an exotic sports car for which one expects to make compromises. Never mind that, as Mabe notes, there isn’t room for baseball cap: the windshield is so steeply raked that it cannot be stored on the dashboard. That same steep rake prohibits wearing it, the bill hitting the top of the glass. And there’s no room at all behind the seats, so they don’t recline at all.
The dashboard is simple, a flat upholstered panel inset with an array of gauges and a phalanx of switches. The shifter for the ZF five-speed transaxle is gated and not the easiest to route through its maze, though it seemed learnable. The view out the front is great, even if rather plain, but the rear you couldn’t see Godzilla waiting behind you at a traffic light. But all of that I could live with. The un-boosted steering is light – thanks to the fact that two-thirds of the weight is carried on the rear wheels – but precise. The ever present rumble accompanies instant, if elusive, acceleration.
And you do get noticed.
What was frustrating, though, was the concentration required of the driver to avoid high-centering the vulnerable bellhousing. Pumping the clutch or dealing with the funny throttle or guiding the tricky shifter into the correct slot would have been so much more bearable if it were not for the constant manhole patrol. I never got to exploring the Mangusta was allegedly vicious handling. Maybe for the best.
It is the most difficult of approach-avoidance conflicts, at once the best and worst car in the world, not easy to live with but worth the effort, possibly the most beautiful car ever made. Given an honest chance and proper development, the DeTomaso Mangusta would have been one of the world’s great cars. Instead it’s as much art as it is automobile. Maybe that’s enough.
Addendum: “Mangusta” is Italian for “mongoose,” and a mongoose is the only animal capable of killing a cobra. The reason Alejandro De Tomaso chose that name for his exotic sports car should be obvious. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. It did atract enough attention, however, that Ford put the DeTomaso Pantera in Lincoln-Mercury dealerships. Read more about that here.
For the record, although it’s frequently if not usually spelled DeTomaso, the correct name is De Tomaso.
De Tomaso is an active operation. Check the company website here.
My uncle had one in the early-70s. Gorgeous car…questionable engineering…abysmal build quality.
It was always in the shop — the rear subframe would crack whenever he ‘got on it’, which was usually right after he got it back from the shop.
Oh, and the radiator was mounted horizontally, directly above the transaxle and exhaust pipes. Overheat much?