De Tomaso Modena SpA originally produced Formula 1 cars for Frank Williams’s team in the 1970s but the Italian carmaker is best remembered for their most popular model, the De Tomaso Pantera, a mid-engine supercar (we just called them sports cars back in the day) produced from 1971 to 1993. The Panther was De Tomaso’s most popular model with over 7000 sports cars built over its 20 year lifespan.
Suffice it to say, they don’t make supercars like those from the 60s and 70s like they used to anymore – the perfect confluence of superlative automotive engineering and intensely sensual bodywork. Thankfully, the guys from Apollo Automobil GmbH, makers of the Apollo Intensa Emozione V-12 supercar, are looking at the 60th anniversary revival of the De Tomaso heritage brand with the brand’s first production supercar in years – the De Tomaso P72 GT.
With curves reminiscent of 60s sports car icon, the Ferrari 330 P4, only 72 De Tomaso P72 GTs will be made, a potent statement of the newly resurrected firm following its 2014 buyout by Ideal Team Ventures, the same investment group that owns Italian car manufacturer Apollo.
The De Tomaso P72 GT will be built on the same platform as the V12-engined Apollo Intensa Emozione but it’s been designed by the Intensa Emozione’s designer Jowyn Wong as a modern take on the original 60s sports car. That said, the modern P72 GT is designed less as racer and more as a Grand Tourer, as hinted by its suffix.
“We have created a modern-day time machine that pays homage to an integral part of history and a car with its own provenance. When the final specifications and pricing for the car is revealed, people will realize how it adheres to the six core foundational pillars of De Tomaso: Heritage, Passion, Racing, European Design, and World- Class Performance at Extreme Value.” – Ryan Berris, General Manager and CMO
Taking muse from the P70, a little-known collaboration between company founder Alejandro De Tomaso and Carroll Shelby, a project which never came to fruition after De Tomaso took inadvertent insult to Shelby’s request that then designer Peter Brock was to oversee the project instead of De Tomaso’s own engineering team, the De Tomaso P72 takes the all-carbon chassis of the Apollo IE but dresses it with the sensuous curves of its 60s racing prototype. More importantly, unlike the original De Tomaso-Shelby P70, its modern incarnation will be road legal and a potentially an “everyday” car. Amazingly and quite contrary to modern supercars, the P72 will be manual-drive. That’s right, potential owners would need to be able to drive stick and given its gear-head credentials, it’s likely to attract only those ultra-wealth motoring enthusiasts who do know how to drive a stick-shift sports car.
Unveiled at the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed, the limited production 72 car run will be expected to cost 750,000 Euros.
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