If you are the sort of person who likes being a bit different, without being labelled as so, than you will probably like the Qvale Mangusta.
What is a Qvale Mangusta? Stick with me and I’ll tell you......
The project for this car started out in Italy back in the mid-1990′s by De Tomaso, whose semi-successful Pantera model had been discontinued and its replacement, the Guara had not exactly been a sales success.
What Alejandro de Tomaso wanted was a grand touring sports car with radical styling and a proven drivetrain. De Tomaso, which in those days owned another Italian car company, Maserati, entrusted Giordano Casarini who was their technical director, to come up with a new sports car.
Casarini, who had made several business trips to the U.K. took a liking to the TVR Griffith, and visioned De Tomaso’s next car to be similar to that. Hence, the Mangusta has a multi-position roof, similar to that on the Griffith.
While TVR used modified Rover V8′s at the time, De Tomaso looked at its former engine partner Ford once again for engines. Hence the Mangusta got the 4.6-liter, V8 engine that one would also find in the SVT version of the Mustang.
For its design, De Tomaso hired Marcello Gandini famous for design work on the legendary Lamborghini Miura, Urraco, Jamara, Espada, Countach, Diablo, and the Maserati Shamal – to begin work on this new sports car.
Like the Griffith, the Mangusta was going to be a roadster with a clever roof design, only the mechanism was part power operated on this car.
The world got to see this piece of auto finement at the 1996 Geneva Motor Show, the production car didn’t make its debut until the Los Angeles Auto Show in January 2000.
What was less known at the time was the fact that the project for the Mangusta was mainly funded by Kjell Qvale, who had been the importer for Maserati in North America in the pre-Ferrari owned era.
The business relationship between Mr. Qvale and Mr. de Tomaso was however tarnishing, because both parties had different views on the future of their business. So the two split, and the De Tomaso Mangusta had become the Qvale Mangusta. Apart from the badge, nothing was changed on the car itself. Qvale, having had experience in selling low-volume, niche sports cars started marketing the car for sale mainly in the U.S.A.
The automotive press also got a hold of the car, and while their opinion on its styling was split, they all loved its performance. Having a V8 meant 320-hp which was fed to the back wheels vand was mated to a 5-speed manual or a 4-speed automatic taken directly from Ford, as were many other bits inside.
The performance numbers for the manual car were good too 0-100 km/h in just 5.3 seconds, and a top speed of 255 km/h. Enough credentials to put it in performance car territory.
Since Qvale was hardly a household name, the Mangusta did not sell in huge numbers. Still, selling 284-examples of a $70,000 sportscar that not many people knew about is not to be over-looked.
Qvale, who had put up most of the money for the development of the Mangusta was still surely going to lose money on this project. However, a deal with the MG Rover Group lead to them paying $11.2-million to buy the rights and assets to the Mangusta. MG used the Mangusta’s underpinnings when developing their own niche sports car, the MG X-Power SV in the late ninties.
So Qvale recovered its money and had made only one model, and was in the business only between the year 2000 and 2002. All the cars were made in Italy and powered by an American engine. While they are rare, it is not impossible to find a Qvale Mangusta for sale, especially in America. These days, you can pick one up for about $30,000 – which makes it cheaper to buy than a new Ford Mustang GT.
And given the choice, I’d much rather have the eccentric Italian any day.
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