[DeTomaso] New Detomasos to be built in China

[Charles McCall]

Someone correct me if they know better, but here's what I think I know. 

I haven't found any articles that spell out explicitly what the story is, so there is a little bit of theory mixed in. 

Rossignolo took over the DeTomaso name in 2009, got a bunch of millions of Italian public aid to refloat the DeTomaso company, and bought the former Pininfarina factory in Turin, Italy. He was supposed to use this public money to retrain the workers and provide them with job building DeTomaso cars. He was arrested in 2012 because of a lot of this money had disappeared, he couldn't get the rest of the funding he needed to launch the company, and it closed before it started. This much is fairly well documented. I don't know where the workers came from - if they were former Pininfarina workers or ?? But I have found articles stating that they have been laid off since 2010 while waiting for this Rossignolo deal to get straightened out. 

They haven't actually produced anything in years - probably since at least 2009 - but they were hoping to get work again when the DeTomaso factory started producing. 822 workers.

I also found an article that has a photo of the DeTomaso building in Turin, which I hadn't seen before - 
http://www.highmotor.com/la-plantilla-de-de-tomaso-en-paro-insta-a-turin-a-buscar-un-nuevo-futuro-para-la-fabrica.html



-----Original Message-----
From: Carguy60 [mailto:sjcarguy60 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: sábado, 9 de mayo de 2015 18:22
To: Charles McCall
Cc: Rob Dumoulin; DeTomaso Mail List
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] New Detomasos to be built in China

So what was the current workforce producing?  Just curious. 

Dennis Valdez 

> On May 9, 2015, at 5:56 AM, Charles McCall <charlesmccall at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I've read a few articles that implied the same - apparently the only business plan that was presented that involved maintaining the workforce and production in Italy was that presented by the Swiss, and that didn't come through. This implies that the other plans included delocalization. 
> 
> IMO, delocalization to China would be a huge mistake. I can understand buying the DeTomaso name for a million dollars, euros, whatever. To a certain extent, it is somewhat philosophical whose capital is behind a well-known name. As Julian (I think) said, Jaguar is owned by Indians,  and while they may call the shots the cars are built in the same factories as before and are infused with English culture. Therefore they maintain much of the value of the name.
> 
> Designing and manufacturing a supercar in China will also infuse the car with Chinese culture. Not sure how many customers they can lure away from Corvette, Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc to buy an all-Chinese car instead. It will have to be very, very, very good to overcome that stigma and partially defeats the benefit gained from buying an Italian name. 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: DeTomaso [mailto:detomaso-bounces at poca.com] On Behalf Of Rob Dumoulin
> Sent: sábado, 9 de mayo de 2015 11:45
> To: DeTomaso Mail List
> Subject: [DeTomaso] New Detomasos to be built in China
> 
> Or so the article states
> 
> http://europe.autonews.com/article/20150507/ANE/150509893?template=mobile02
> 
> 
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