[DeTomaso] Racing Mangusta
JDeRyke at aol.com
JDeRyke at aol.com
Sat Jan 2 15:34:23 EST 2010
In a message dated 1/2/10 11:43:38 AM, johnson-61 at hotmail.com writes:
> Did Detomaso ever race the Mangusta, or in any way support a racing
> effort?
>
No; it didn't handle very well, being quite flexible- and didn't have
enough power for the weight. Also remember- when the 'Goose was new, radial tires
were experimental so all GT racing was on much less forgiving belted-bias
tires. A 78-profile tire was considered racy!
In fact, DeTomaso never directly sponsored ANYTHING. What they did in a few
cases was to supply a CAR, and 'best wishes' to any team planning to
compete with it. The factory didn't even homologate very many 'performance'
production parts and none at all for the Mangusta, so aspiring racers had to make
do with the car more-or-less as it was delivered. Thats one big reason
DeTomaso didn't have more racing success in GT classes than they did.
And Ford was worse- after some yahoo-son of a Ford VP put a brand new
Pantera upside down on Ford's test track, Carroll Smith of Ford's wildly
successful GT-40 program evaluated the Pantera, and told Ford that the entire rear
suspension of the Pantera 'was attached to nothing at all'... and that the
car was hopeless as a racer. That, plus the fact that 'King Henry' ll (Ford)
got religion or something in the early '70s, fired all the go-fasters and
completely dropped all performance efforts- even in programs that were already
successful. So U.S racers mostly switched to Chevy and Chrysler, and 40+
years later Ford is still trying to get back the aftermarket performance levels
they had in the early '60s, and threw away. Good luck- J DeRyke
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