De Tomaso heralds something special on Dec. 9.
Italy's De Tomaso is back, and the revived company is focusing on high-performance cars. The first of these is the stunning P72 supercar, which will be unveiled in 2019 and is expected to begin deliveries in the first half of 2023.
But the P72 is not the only project underway at De Tomaso. The company has been working on another project for some time and will reveal all on December 9.
All that is currently available is a teaser video titled "The Paradigm Thread." The video features two cars, both the same shade of turquoise blue: one is a modern P72 and the other is a one-off car built by De Tomaso in 1965, which appears to be the P70 that inspired the P72.
If you are not familiar with De Tomaso's history, the P70 was the result of a collaboration between De Tomaso's founders, Alejandro De Tomaso and Carroll Shelby. It was a racing car derived from de Tomaso's Vallelunga sports car, but it was powered by a Ford V-8 and had a custom-built body designed by Peter Block.
It was scheduled to compete in the U.S. Road Racing Championship, but the project was cancelled before the P70 had run its first mile. Shelby had just been pulled out of the project by Ford for its GT40 program. De Tomaso continued the project and presented it at the 1965 Turin Motor Show under the name Ghia de Tomaso Sport 5000.
A year later, the P70 raced in its first race at the 1966 Mugello GP, but retired after the first lap and never saw action again. Alejandro de Tomaso kept the car in his collection for decades before selling it to a client in California.
The project was not a complete waste: the chassis developed for the P70 was mounted on the original de Tomaso Mangusta sports car, launched in 1967. Mangusta means "mongoose" in Italian, a small mammal capable of killing cobras.
As for the modern P72, we know that it will have a custom-built carbon fiber monocoque construction, a manual transmission, and a V-8 engine; like the P70, the V-8 engine will be sourced from Ford, in this case a Coyote 5.0-liter V-8 engine will be installed, but tuning will be handled by Roush. Production will be limited to 72 units.