Screaming V12’s, death defying speeds were the hall mark of Le Mans in the 1960s. Amongst the Ford vs Ferrari fiasco and other memorable moments, there was a company, founded in Modena in the late 50s who would go on to be the underdog of endurance era.
The company had humble beginnings as other car manufacturers and quickly started gaining traction by building F1 cars for Frank Williams. By that time, Detomaso started building luxury cars like the Pantera and within a short period of time owned Maserati and made some legendary cars like the Quattraporte II, Kyalami.
During the 1990s, almost all car manufacturers were recovering from the gas crises and so was Detomaso. But it was too futile for the company and it faded away into the never ending grave of car manufacturers.
Fast forward to 2019, Detomaso shocked the world when it announced that a new limited edition hypercard was underway. The new car named P72 is based on the Apollo Intense Emozione’s monocoque chasis, a car manufactured by De Tomaso’s sister company Apollo Automobile and 72 units of the car will be sold worldwide making it extremely rare.
In November 2022, Detomaso announced the P900, a track-only hypercard with 900 HP (670kW) 6.2 litre naturally aspirated V12 with an ear-piercing 12300RPM designed to run on synthetic fuels. They only plan to produce 18 units – each costing upwards of US$ 3 million.
As the number of car collectors are growing at a rapid pace, ultra limited production cars like the Detomaso P900 will be sold before it even enters production. The downside to this trend is however, the car will be locked up in a basement where it will lie dormant when it’s supposed to scream in the streets. Cars are meant to be driven and it saddens the whole car community that such a gem of a machine will stay away locked up forever.
This article was written by Parikshith
