| Notes |
- ALESSANDRO DE TOMASO
Nationality: Argentina
Date of birth: July 10, 1928 - Buenos Aires
Born into a well known and powerful Argentine family in 1928, de Tomaso raced in his home country in the early 1950s but fled Argentina in his own airplane in 1955 to escape persecution from Juan Peron's regime. He settled in Modena, hoping to make a name for himself as a racing driver. He talked his way into a job as a mechanic at Maserati and soon became a driver. Not long afterwards he met and married American heiress Isabelle Haskell, a Ferrari customer who raced the cars in the United States and together they decided to set up their own racing car company in Modena. While this was being established he enjoyed some success with OSCA (which had been established by the Maserati brothers after they sold Maserati to the Orsi Family). He raced to ninth place in the 1957 Argentine Grand Prix in a Scuderia Centro Sud Ferrari 500/625. Two years later he retired from the US Grand Prix at Sebring in a Cooper-OSCA. At the end of that season he retired from racing and began to build up DeTomaso Automobili SpA to build road cars. The company produced a variety of racing cars in the early 1960s beginning with an F2 car which appeared in the hands of Roberto Bussinello at Modena. It crashed heavily but reappeared the following year as an F1 car. He hired ex-Maserati engine designer Alberto Massimino to design a flat eight engine and the de Tomaso cars were seen from time to time until end of 1965. The de Tomaso cars enjoyed a limited amount of success in the junior formulae with Mario Casoni winning at Caserta and a young Clay Regazzoni racing for the team. The company began producing road cars in the late 1960s and in an effort to advertise the company de Tomaso decided to have another attempt at Formula 2 and hired Giampaolo Dallara, a Lamborghini road car engineer, to design an F2 car for 1969. This was run by an ambitious young team owner called Frank Williams and was raced by Jonathan Williams, Jacky Ickx and Piers Courage. Williams and de Tomaso then did a deal to enter F1 in 1970 with Courage, Cosworth engines and a Dallara-designed chassis. Courage finished third in the International Trophy and was running seventh in the Dutch Grand Prix when he crashed and died in Holland. The team continued until the end of the year with drivers Brian Redman and Tim Schenken but then withdrew.
The de Tomaso car company enjoyed some success with the Pantera model and was able to buy up a number of bankrupt engineering companies including the Benelli and Moto Guzzi motorcycle companies and the Innocenti car firm. In 1975 de Tomaso put together a rescue package to buy Maserati and tried to revive it. This was a success and in 1993 he sold the firm to FIAT and went back to running De Tomaso. Not long afterwards he had a stroke. The company was taken over by his son Santiago under the guidance of his wife Isabelle.
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The San Diego Union-Tribune
May 24, 2003
Alejandro DeTomaso, whose company produced a sports car that combined Italian flair with American horsepower, died on Wednesday in Modena, Italy. He was 74. The cause was heart failure, his family said.
In 1971, Mr. DeTomaso's company, DeTomaso Automobili, based in Modena, began selling the Pantera, a sports car with the sleek, angular profile of a jet fighter, which had a Ford V-8 placed behind the two-seat passenger compartment. Mr. DeTomaso built the car after being approached by Lee A. Iacocca, then president of the Ford Motor Co., who a few years earlier had helped create another populist sports car, the Mustang. Ford, which had failed in an attempt to buy Ferrari, wanted a high-performance European car for its showrooms.
The Pantera was sold in the United States by Lincoln-Mercury dealers. Although it cost more than twice as much as a typical sedan, it was also less than half the price of a Ferrari, Maserati or similar limited-production Italian sports cars of the time, making it an exotic car accessible to the middle-class buyer.
As many as 6,000 Panteras were sold before Ford ended the arrangement in 1974 because safety and emissions laws would have required a major redesign of the car. Mr. DeTomaso continued to make the car through the 1990s, selling it in countries other than the United States.
Mr. DeTomaso was born on July 10, 1928, in Buenos Aires to parents prominent in Argentine politics and agriculture. In 1955, he fled Argentina to avoid the wrath of Juan Peron. He moved to Modena, where he raced cars for Maserati and OSCA, another limited-production auto maker.
Through racing, he met his second wife, Isabelle Haskell, a member of a wealthy family from Red Bank, N.J. She bought Ferraris and raced them against the world's best drivers.
In 1959, the couple formed DeTomaso Automobili, starting off by building racing cars. Their first car for public roads, the Vallelunga, had its debut in 1963. It featured an unusual backbone chassis, a central spinelike frame running the length of the car. About 60 were made.
A few years later came the Mangusta, designed by the Italian stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro. It caught Iacocca's eye and led to the Pantera. The success of the Mangusta and Pantera allowed Mr. DeTomaso to acquire Maserati in 1975 and keep it running.
In the 1980s, Iacocca, then at Chrysler, again collaborated with Mr. DeTomaso to produce a Chrysler-Maserati convertible, but the car sold poorly. Mr. DeTomaso sold his controlling interest in Maserati to Fiat in 1993 and returned to his original company, but a stroke soon after required Isabelle Haskell DeTomaso and a son from his first marriage, Santiago, to take control. They continue to run the company.
He is also survived by his sons, Alessandro and Pablo, from his first marriage to Lola DeTomaso.
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1928 - 2003 (74 years)
