With an exotic name and jaw-dropping bodywork, the De Tomaso P72 hypercar is a road-legal salute to the marque’s legendary P70 – and it’s solely available with a six-speed manual transmission.
Powered by a 5.0L supercharged V8 making the better part of 750 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque (that’s an even 900 Nm in Roman Catholic). Every bit of that shove is funnelled through the rear wheels, so it would behoove drivers to be paying attention when they uncork this beast. Weight is kept in check with a Slim Fast plan of carbon fibre, all of which is presented unpainted in this initial production-spec car which is planned to be used for final testing and validation before customers start taking delivery. The hand-assembled chassis is also hewn from the stuff of lightweight dreams.
Despite all these eye-popping stats and details, it’s the interior of VIN 001 which steals the show. Described as ‘analogue nostalgia’, the space is sodden with sumptuous upholstery and the type of gauge cluster typically found in the likes of Pagani or Spyker cars twenty years ago. The De Tomaso design team say the sextet of copper-hued gauges are inspired by the tony worlds of jewelry – we can see parallels to the craft of watchmaking as well, with beautifully knurled surfaces and finely crafted details. Its speedometer reads 180 km/h just halfway through its sweep at the 12 o’clock position, which is just tremendous.
It’s been over five years since the brand first unveiled this thing but an inconvenient pandemic and other hiccups mean this is the first production-spec example to appear. In a fit of marketing, De Tomaso is making just 72 copies of the P72, each priced at a cool 1.6 million Euros or roughly $2.4 million CAD at today’s exchange rates.
Sign up for our newsletter Blind-Spot Monitor and follow our social channels on Instagram ,Facebook and X to stay up to date on the latest automotive news, reviews, car culture, and vehicle shopping advice.