A
media report this week suggests that Gian Mario Rossignolo has found an Indian
institutional investor to pump 100 million euros
into his ambitious plans to revive the DeTomaso name
with a series of sports/luxury vehicles. The report
comes from the Wall Street Journal which quotes
"a person familiar with the matter".
After several years of trying to get his project off the
ground, including an ill fated attempt to tie up with
Lilli Bertone's failing contract manufacturing division,
Rossignolo, along with his son Gian Paolo, showed off
his first concept vehicle at the Geneva Motor Show in
March this year, the Deauville, a
5-door luxury crossover.
However the showcar was widely panned. The entire
cabin of the Cadillac SRX crossover had been lifted
straight into the Deauville
and it was unclear whether the car shown under the
spotlights in Geneva was actually anything more than a
light reskin of
GM's Theta Premium architecture.
The engines DeTomaso quoted at the Geneva preview fit
with the SRX line-up while the Rossignolo also said the
crossover would feature four wheel drive which is
already engineered into Theta. Pininfarina carried out
the Deauville's
design and was responsible styling which was in the most
part quite bland, the Turinese firm having landed the
job as part of a deal to sell its contract manufacturing
facility in Grugliasco.
Rossignolo promised to show a second vehicle this year,
this time a sports car that would revive the brand's
famous Pantera name on its 40th anniversary, but so far
there has been no signs of this model appearing and the
whole DeTomaso project has vanished off the radar since
its spring debut. Pininfarina's former contract
manufacturing facility in Grugliasco which was acquired
by Rossignolo in 2009 has sprouted DeTomaso badging on
the office block at the front although there seems to be
as yet few signs of activity from the sprawling assembly
plant.
A former Lancia marketing chief who was once the CEO of
Telecom Italia, Rossignolo hopes to revive the DeTomaso
brand with vehicles that use innovative method to form
the aluminum structures, dubbed UNIVIS, using fewer tools and
dies than would normally be the case.
The biggest hurdle seems to be a chronic lack of funding
with Rossignolo proposing a budget of just 116 million
euros to develop three models, an optimistic challenge
to undertake when OEMs can spend upwards of a billion
euros on model development. Even an additional 100
million euro injection is unlikely to go very far
towards the objective, which calls for a third model, a
limousine, to be added next year. Lotus, for example,
has been widely ridiculed for its sweeping plans to
develop five cars on a budget of around 1.5 billion
euros. The news however does show that Rossignolo is
still trying to achieve his dream and at the same time
revive the DeTomaso name which fell into bankruptcy soon
after Alejandro DeTomaso's death in 2003.
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