Mangusta thread

one of the most beautiful and exotic cars ever!

....haters note; (I said 'ONE OF')...

let's see any and all photos of this gorgeous car you may have please!!!!
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Always a great looking car, although the original wheels look alot better. Hope you have the original parts in a box somewhere.


Tom Tanner/Ferrari Expo 2009 model contest and photography/art display-Chicago April 25th 2009

 

I am working on the wheels...searching the world for a set...as far as originality, not with this one, too much bling. You either love it or hate it I guess, I love it! Now instead of ripping on my car, let's see some OTHER Mangusta's!
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Yes, I think they are really beautiful, too, and this seems like quite a fine example! What's the market like on a really clean one?

 

One coming up for sale in the Scottsdale auction: http://www.anamera.com/en/detail/car/34998/index.html?no_cache=1&ret=63

I just rediscovered this model due to a UK magazine test - they're quite awesome. Would make a nice combo with my 365 Boxer.


Onno

 

There was one at the recent Geneva IL show. There are a few other pictures of the car on the flickr page.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24302083@N05/2819852058/sizes/l/in/set-72157607061607020/

Also recall I being very surprised to see one in Honolulu at a Shell station being serviced about 10 years ago. It was in Manoa valley and was orange - I think. Old exotic cars are very unusual in Honolulu so it was a treat to see it.

Mike S., I have read that the Mangusta was developed very quickly from a show car. I suppose your modifications can be seen as improvements the factory never had time for. How is it to drive?

 

Heres one for sale.

http://www.hymanltd.com/search/Details.asp?stockno=3710&recordCount=16

 

this one was done to a berserk level back in mid 90's and driven only 180 miles since! An incredible amount of re-engineering and work went into it and I am just now going through systems to make sure it goes as good as it looks. I have the luxury of some VERY knowledgeable Detomaso 'people' assisting and they live VERY close..like within 5 miles! Jack and Judy DeRyke know more about my car than I do and are slowly teaching me about it.

check here, there are currently 5 for sale, and I know of one PROJECT mangusta for sale right now that is pretty much complete, but requires a LOT of work, I wouldn't touch it. With the market down right now, one just went for $64K on eBay...not sure of it's condition..

check here for 5 nice ones for sale and to see loads of Mangusta's!

http://www.mangustainternational.com/

 

Nice site we need more pictures!

 

This is a long overdue thread!! Among the most beautiful and compelling cars of all time!! Much appreciated.

 

This might be the same car mentioned in the post by johnei. This picture was taken at the 2007 Meadowbrook Concours.

 

Isnt it funny how the cost of restoration is quoted at $30K here:
http://www.geocities.com/detomaso4sale/1256Mangusta.html

And is quoted at $230K (with car bought at 45) in the auction catalog (Its the same paint job)

I think those are the worst body gaps I have ever seen on a Mangusta, and in the auction tent it is displayed with the hatches up, which makes it less obvious. (I am not saying this is intentional. ALL Mangustas are meant to be displayed with the hatches open)

 

mine was done at a cost of $225K 13 years ago and to see it you would not dispute it with this one..........it is obvious!

 

What is a steering wheel worth for one of these? I have one that is really nice except for a few cracks in the wood on top. It's been hanging on my office wall for about ten years. I figure someone might be needing one and it would serve better in a beautiful car than on my wall.

 

#646 is flirting with me!


Onno

 

Where are #8MA1170 today?

 

That was my car at Geneva. I looked at around 23 Mangustas before buying one as I had sentimental reasons for looking for a very original example. The photos show why. That's a much younger (and thinner) me standing outside the DeTomaso factory in December of 1970. (The Pantera is one of the first test mules, and was whisked away from me before I could take many pics.) Anyway, I decided the one keepsake I wanted from my year studying abroad was a Mangusta. I had to settle for a factory brochure and an owner's manual until 1999, when I was finally able to buy a 'goose of my own. I wanted a car just like the ones I saw in Modena. The car I found fit the bill. As the second pic shows, mine is one of the few silver grey Mangustas built with a red interior. I wanted black initially, but really liked the red when I saw it. Third shot is at Concorso Italiano a few years ago. Last shot shows the limit of my "bling". I cleaned up the engine and trans when I pulled it out to refurbish the cooling system. I had custom headers built in stainless to my design, and put a better carb on the car. The original owner had made improvements to the heads and cam. The engine is much stronger than stock. Otherwise, all is like the guys in Modena built it.
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great story! great Goose! What is your opinion of the Mangusta's place in the exotic auto 'world'? You have some amazing machines!

 

Here's a shot of another thing unique to my car. I was invited to exhibit the Mangusta at the "Eyes On Design" concours in Detroit back in 2001 when they flew Giugiaro in for a special retrospective of his career. They had one each of all his major designs present, and my car was awarded the big prize. That, and meeting Giugiaro, was the good news. The bad news was that while my Mangusta was off being photographed for its winning portrait, Giugiaro was back the display autographing all the other cars. I missed out. I tracked him down later, but he told me he was sorry but that he had to leave for Milan and would not have time to return to the display area to sign my car. He gave me an autographed book, which was cool, and I had won the big award, so I felt good. A few weeks later I was back in my office opening my FedEx when I noticed one of the envelopes was from Montcaliari, Italy. Inside was a small note card that said only, "This is for your glove box door". It was paperclipped to a piece of black upholstery leather that Giugiaro had autographed...in silver ink to match my car!! I was over the moon. He's really a class guy.
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Hi Daryl,

Glad that you were able to find this thread. I probably took about a dozen pictures of your car at the show. It really is a spectacular design by Giugiaro. Wasn't it originally just a show car that was rushed into production because the public's reaction was so favorable? It is impressive that you were able to buy one yourself, I doubt many people manage to do that, especially after seeing them at the factory when new.

I think the rest of my photos from the show are visible at http://www.flickr.com/photos/24302083@N05/sets/72157607061607020/
the links on flickr are not the most obvious

John

 

The Mangusta has an interesting story. I have gotten to know Dick Ruzzin, who is a retired design chief from GM and owns the Chevy engined Mangusta originally owned by Bill Mitchell. Dick is good friends with Giorgetto Giugiaro and shared many interesting facts about the design genisis of both the Mangusta and the Lamborghini Miura. The body design of the Mangusta was originally intended to be an Iso. (You can see a family resemblance between the nose of the Mangusta and those of the Iso Grifo and Lele) When Ghia presented the design to Renzo Rivolta of Iso he liked it very much, but didn't want to underwrite the developement of a mid engined chassis, so it didn't go anywhere. Meanwhile, up the road at DeTomaso, Alejandro DeTomaso was having a falling out with Carroll Shelby (no surprise there...battle of enormous egos) over a project they were working on using DeTomaso's spine chassis concept. So...DeTomaso had a chassis and no body, and Ghia had a body but no chassis, so they put them together and took the resulting car (which DeTomaso named Mangusta, or Mongoose, as a dig at Shelby's Cobra) to the Turin auto show in 1966 along with the Maserati Ghibli. Both cars were sensational hits, making Giugiaro a design star and causing lines of people with their checkbooks to ask DeTomaso to build them a Mangusta. Being the consumate business hustler, DeTomaso couldn't pass up the opportunity and set up production. Through a crazy turn of events, DeTomaso was able to buy the entire Ghia coachworks and factory for a rediculously small cash outlay, and started production of the Mangusta body shells. The problem was that the Mangusta didn't meet any of the new design laws in the USA (headlamps too low, toggle switches on the dash, no crash protection, etc). The only way he could sell the car in the USA was under a special, low volume exemption of 500 cars or less, and only through 1969. As of 1970 the car would have to start meeting the laws. (That's why the 1970 Mangustas have pop-up headlamps and rocker switches on the dash) There was no time to do the required engineering developement to the Mangusta, so DeTomaso just started building what amounted to copies of the Turin show car. While the Mangusta was being hand-built, DeTomaso was concentrating on developing the more mass-produced, regulation compliant Pantera. Mangusta owners were left to fettle their own cars. Unfortunately, although the Mangusta was a superb example of Ghia's hand crafted coachwork, the engineering of deTomaso's chassis had three crucially important flaws. The car was way too tail-heavy, the chassis was not torsionally stiff enough, and the steering rack (taken from the Renault 4) was way too slow. As a result, hard cornering tended to cause a fatal sequence of events. The chassis would flex under lateral load, causing a sudden shift from under-steer to over-steer, the heavy tail would swing out, and the slow steering could not catch it, resulting in a spin. Lots of Mangustas were crashed that way. Other owners, accustomed to the refined handling of their Ferraris or Maseratis, found their Mangustas a driving nightmare and dumped them on the used car market. That's why so few have survived intact. Many Mangustas were ruined by owners who could not afford to properly maintain them, or who tried to "fix" them. You have to consider the Mangusta as a rolling sculpture, not a high-performance road machine. But for just cruising around, it's perfectly fine!! People at the gas staion just freak out when I open her hatch up to refuel. Oh..and you can't be too tall...and you should have long arms....and....

 

Daryl, although that story is pretty well documented by Detomaso historians, no one has conveyed it in such detail! I have been a LONG time fanatic of the Mangusta and knew a fellow in the San Francisco east bay (Orinda to be exact) that had TWO goose's...one green original and one red - super modded/restored back in the late 80's. Kevin Romak is his name. I actually witnessed him part with both over a period of a year or so = very sad. I was a big fan after looking at his cars and thinking just how beautiful these relatively unknown cars were (at the time I had a warehouse full of exotics incl. Lambo, Ferrari, etc.) and I was smitten with the goose.

many years later I have a beauty in my garage and I can't get over it....just incredible to look at! As far as driving, I just can't fuss, too much trouble!

you nailed it when you called it a rolling sculpture...
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I think I may be having brain fade. I seem to remember that Renzo Rivolta died some time during 1966, so it may have been his son, Pierro, that turned down Giugiaro's design.

 

Here's one of my favorite detail views of my Mangusta that illustrates the beautiful hand craftsmanship they did at Ghia. The window frame on the door is hand formed and brazed into one piece - not a mitre and screw connection like "ordinary" production cars - and then chromed. Same with the delicate frame around the side window in the aluminum hatch. Behind the hatch louvers is a hand-formed baffle box that (supposedly) catches rainwater that is drawn through the louvers and conducts it to a tube that drains to the roadway below. Each and every part is stamped with the individual chassis number of the car, since that's the only car it will fit perfectly on. Just an insane amount of hand work. It's like a time capsule that connects you back to the crafstmen that built it. The second shot is of the assembly line at Ghia where they are building the Mangustas. On the other side of the line you can see they are building Maserati Ghiblis.
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