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De Tomaso Revival Looks Unlikely

De Tomaso is a company name that stirs all sorts of feelings, most of them good unlit a few years ago. More than a year ago, a former Lancia boss Gianmario Rossignolo bought what was left of the De Tomaso factory and brand, with the plan being to build a number of vehicles to market, starting with a strange SUV, and continuing with a luxury limo and a mid-engined sportscar.
De Tomaso Deaville 1 photo
Photo: original image created by autoevolution
The idea sounded good on paper, but the De Tomaso Deauville looked very ugly and came with a 2.8-liter V6 unit that uses turbocharging to deliver 300 hp while carrying a starting price of €89,000 in Europe. Needless to say, nobody bothered with it and the newly established company found itself in trouble.

Reports indicated that financial setbacks forced them to sell the rights to build the car to an unnamed Chinese company for a modest €12 million ($15.6 million). With the money, we were hoping they would finally get to put the Pantera prototypes we had seen at that point into production.

Now though, reports coming out of Italy suggest a deal with a Chinese investor who wanted to buy the company from Gianmario Rossignolo has fallen. It’s not official yet, but it’s only a matter of time before the company goes bankrupt, with workers reportedly having gone unpaid for a number of months now.

As one of commentator on a previous reports puts it: “From the redesign of the cattle-brand-based logo to the gawd awful styling of the Deauville, nothing worthwhile has yet to come from the new owners of the marque. If anything of substance ever comes from the "new" DT I will be amazed.”

We couldn’t agree more, but it’s a shame when you think about what could have been!
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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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