<< Prev Page 2 of 2 With its racing-inspired underpinnings and light weight, it was no surprise that some customers took the Vallelunga racing, and some even fitted a much more powerful, twin-cam version of the engine. All this did was more blatantly reveal the inherent weaknesses of the Vallelunga's design. Chief among them was the lack of rigidity of the backbone chassis and the poor and inconsistent build-quality.
While production lasted through to 1968, it is believed that little over 50 examples were built of the little Vallelunga. DeTomaso tried to address some of the issues with the equally striking Mangusta, which combined the backbone chassis with a small-block V8. Needless to say, adding more power was not what the already overstressed chassis needed, and accordingly the Mangusta suffered from much the same problems.
In 1970, DeTomaso had plans to revive the Vallelunga with a transversely mounted engine but this project did not get any further than a rolling chassis. Although ultimately a failure, the Vallelunga did show the way forward, being Italy's first mid-engined production road car. DeTomaso's road car efforts would only become successful by the early 1970s with the introduction of the Pantera, which featured a more conventional unitary chassis/body. << Prev Page 2 of 2
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Vallelunga
With its racing-inspired underpinnings and light weight, it was no surprise that some customers took the Vallelunga racing, and some even fitted a much more powerful, twin-cam version of the engine. All this did was more blatantly reveal the inherent weaknesses of the Vallelunga's design. Chief among them was the lack of rigidity of the backbone chassis and the poor and inconsistent build-quality.