[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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