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Mastretta Cars is a Mexican car maker and design studio established by
Nine years later, in their #149 issue for June 2007, the magazine announced the production of Mastretta's third car, the MXT, now produced in Mexico City by Daniel Mastretta's company Tecnoidea.
With a proposed production of 200 MXT autos per year, Mastretta's Tecnoidea calls itself Mexico's only automaker. Although the engine, transmission, and other components are U.S.-made, the MXT's chassis, body, interior, and numerous other components are fabricated onsite in Mexico.
Even though the MXT has been lauded by the NY Times as the Mexican lotus (https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/mastretta-mxt-a-mexican-lotus/) it hasn't made much of an impact in the car world. As of 2019, the company's website (https://web.archive.org/web/20091020175648/http://www.mastrettacars.com/) no longer functions.
Mastretta Cars
Manufacturer website {{Automotive industry Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1987 Kit car manufacturers Bus manufacturers of Mexico Manufacturing companies based in Mexico City Mexican brands Car brands Car manufacturers of Mexico Mexican companies established in 1987 Sports car manufacturers
industrial design
Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufactu ...
er Daniel Mastretta
Juan Daniel Mastretta Guzmán (born 1953, Puebla) is a Mexican engineer and designer. In 1987 he founded Mastretta Design, a design and automotive company. Mastretta was chiefly responsible for the development of the first Mexican sports car, the ...
in Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
in 1987. During the 1990s, Mastretta developed a small number of kit car
A kit car is an automobile available as a set of parts that a manufacturer sells and the buyer then assembles into a functioning car. Usually, many of the major mechanical systems such as the engine and transmission are sourced from donor ve ...
s under the brands Tecnoidea and Unediseño, but the 2010 MXT is the first developed vehicle to reach international commercial availability. Mastretta is often incorrectly claimed to be the first Mexican mass-production car maker, but other Mexican automotive companies Dina
Dina ( ar, دينا, he, דִּינָה, also spelled Dinah, Dena, Deena) is a female given name.
Women
* Dina bint Abdul-Hamid (1929–2019), Queen consort of Jordan, first wife of King Hussein
* Princess Dina Mired of Jordan (born 1965), Princ ...
, Ramirez Industrial Group, VAM and D.M. Nacional had developed their own vehicles since the 1950s to a small national scale.
History
During the 1990s, Mastretta focused on microbus (Mexico City metropolitan minibuses) bodychassis
A chassis (, ; plural ''chassis'' from French châssis ) is the load-bearing framework of an artificial object, which structurally supports the object in its construction and function. An example of a chassis is a vehicle frame, the underpar ...
design and engineering, as well as that of urban buses. This experience led to the construction of their first kit-car
A kit car is an automobile available as a set of parts that a manufacturer sells and the buyer then assembles into a functioning car. Usually, many of the major mechanical systems such as the engine and transmission are sourced from donor ve ...
in 1995, the Unediseño-Mastretta MXA. The Unediseño Mastretta was built on a Volkswagen Sedán (VW Type 1) chassis and platform, using the VW boxer flat-four engine
A flat-four engine, also known as a horizontally opposed-four engine, is a four-cylinder piston engine with two banks of cylinders lying on opposite sides of a common crankshaft. The most common type of flat-four engine is the boxer-four engine, ...
as power source. For this prototype, the engine delivered and reached a top speed of .
A few hand-made units were exported to Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
, Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
and the USA, where the kit-car marketing was attractive for many collectors at the time; those that remain in Mexico are owned by Mastretta. A variation of the same model, the MXB, was also built. It featured different headlights and other minor modifications.
'' Automóvil Panamericano'' car magazine's February 1998 annual edition of ''Modelos'' (''Models'', a special catalogue with information about every commercial model on Earth and since that year, a few pages dedicated to kit-car makers) featured a paragraph on the Unediseño Mastretta.
Mastretta MXT
Nine years later, in their #149 issue for June 2007, the magazine announced the production of Mastretta's third car, the MXT, now produced in Mexico City by Daniel Mastretta's company Tecnoidea.
With a proposed production of 200 MXT autos per year, Mastretta's Tecnoidea calls itself Mexico's only automaker. Although the engine, transmission, and other components are U.S.-made, the MXT's chassis, body, interior, and numerous other components are fabricated onsite in Mexico.
Even though the MXT has been lauded by the NY Times as the Mexican lotus (https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/mastretta-mxt-a-mexican-lotus/) it hasn't made much of an impact in the car world. As of 2019, the company's website (https://web.archive.org/web/20091020175648/http://www.mastrettacars.com/) no longer functions.
Logo
Mastretta's logo features a non-sharped shield with the colours of theMexican flag
The national flag of Mexico ( es, Bandera de México) is a vertical tricolor of green, white, and red with the national coat of arms charged in the center of the white stripe. While the meaning of the colors has changed over time, these thre ...
(green, white and red) and a diagonal black and white racing stripe, representing the Mexican coat of arms. The name "Mastretta" appears across the top.
See also
*DINA S.A.
DINA (''Diesel Nacional, S.A. de C.V'', in English: ''National Diesel'') is a Mexican bus and truck manufacturer based in Ciudad Sahagún, Hidalgo, Mexico. It was created by the federal government of Mexico in 1951 as Diesel Nacional, S.A., and ...
* VUHL
*Cars in Mexico
This article is about the automotive industry in Mexico.
History
Early years (1903–1960)
In 1903, motorcars first arrived in Mexico City, totalling 136 cars in that year and rising to 800 by 1906. This encouraged then president Porfirio Díaz ...
References
External links
Mastretta Cars
Manufacturer website {{Automotive industry Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1987 Kit car manufacturers Bus manufacturers of Mexico Manufacturing companies based in Mexico City Mexican brands Car brands Car manufacturers of Mexico Mexican companies established in 1987 Sports car manufacturers