De Tomaso Longchamp
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The De Tomaso Longchamp is a grand tourer which was produced by the Italian
automaker The automotive industry comprises a wide range of companies and organizations involved in the design, development, manufacturing, marketing, and selling of motor vehicles. It is one of the world's largest industries by revenue (from 16 % such a ...
De Tomaso De Tomaso Automobili ltd. (previously known as De Tomaso Modena SpA) is an Italian car-manufacturing company. It was founded by the Argentine-born Alejandro de Tomaso (1928–2003) in Modena in 1959. It originally produced various prototypes a ...
from 1972 to 1989.


History

The Longchamp was derived from the
De Tomaso Deauville The De Tomaso Deauville is a luxury four-door saloon first exhibited at the 1970 Turin Motor Show. The Deauville was powered by the same 351 in³ (5,763 cc) ''Ford Cleveland'' V8 as the De Tomaso Pantera, rated at . The car has a top s ...
four-door saloon, using a shorter wheelbase chassis with the same suspension, engine and transmission. The same platform underpinned the
Maserati Kyalami The Maserati Kyalami (Tipo AM129) is a four-seat GT coupé produced by Italian automobile manufacturer Maserati from 1976 to 1983. The car was named after the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit in South Africa where a Maserati-powered Cooper T81 had wo ...
grand tourer and the
Maserati Quattroporte III The Maserati Quattroporte () is a four-door full-size luxury sports sedan produced by Italian automobile manufacturer Maserati. The name translated from Italian means "four doors". The car is currently in its sixth generation, with the first ge ...
saloon as Maserati was owned by De Tomaso at the time. The Deauville and the Longchamp were the only
front engine In automotive design, a front-engine, front-wheel-drive (FWD) layout, or FF layout, places both the internal combustion engine and driven roadwheels at the front of the vehicle. Usage implications Historically, this designation was used reg ...
production cars produced by De Tomaso. The Longchamp was first exhibited at the 1972 Turin Motor Show and was initially offered only as a 2-door 2+2
coupé A coupe or coupé (, ) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and two doors. The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the French past parti ...
. It was designed by Tom Tjaarda of
Ghia Carrozzeria Ghia SpA (established 1916 in Turin) is an Italian automobile design and coachbuilding firm, established by Giacinto Ghia and Gariglio as "Carrozzeria Ghia & Gariglio". The headquarters are located at Corso Guglielmo Marconi, 4, Turin ...
and was influenced by his previous Lancia Marica prototype. The taillights were the same units as were used for the Alfa Romeo 1750/2000 saloon. The headlights and front indicators are from the Ford Consul/Granada. The name Longchamp is likely a reference to the
Longchamp Racecourse The Longchamp Racecourse (french: Hippodrome de Longchamp) is a 57 hectare horse-racing facility located on the Route des Tribunes at the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, France. It is used for flat racing and is noted for its variety of interlaced tr ...
in Paris and/or
Longchamps, Buenos Aires Longchamps is a city in Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, located about 30 km south of Buenos Aires, in the Almirante Brown Partido (district). The city owes its name to the race track of the same name located on the Route des Tribunes in th ...
, a city near de Tomaso company founder Alejandro de Tomaso's birthplace. The Longchamp featured a long and wide hood to accommodate the American power train, i.e. the 351 cubic inch (5,769 cc) Ford Cleveland V8. The 351 Cleveland, a popular and very potent engine in early 1970s Ford
muscle car Muscle car is a description according to ''Merriam-Webster Dictionary'' that came to use in 1966 for "a group of American-made two-door sports coupes with powerful engines designed for high-performance driving." The '' Britannica Dictionary'' ...
s, was the same unit used in the
Pantera Pantera () is an American heavy metal music, heavy metal band from Arlington, Texas formed in 1981, and currently comprised of vocalist Phil Anselmo, bassist Rex Brown, and touring musicians Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante. The group's best-kn ...
. It was rated at a power output of and gave the Longchamp an official top speed of . After Ford stopped manufacturing the 351 Cleveland V8 in the US, De Tomaso sourced the engines from Ford Australia. The standard gearbox was a three-speed Ford C-6 ''Cruise-o-Matic''
automatic transmission An automatic transmission (sometimes abbreviated to auto or AT) is a multi-speed transmission used in internal combustion engine-based motor vehicles that does not require any input from the driver to change forward gears under normal driving c ...
; however around 17 cars were equipped with a five-speed ZF
manual transmission A manual transmission (MT), also known as manual gearbox, standard transmission (in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States), or stick shift (in the United States), is a multi-speed motor vehicle transmission (mechanics), transmission ...
. The suspension was independent front and rear wishbone unit equipped with coil springs. Steering was power assisted rack and pinion and the car came with vented disc brakes all around with the rear brake discs being positioned inboard. The interior of the car was quite luxurious and it was almost fully upholstered in leather, although the use of Ford sourced parts (steering wheel, gear shift) took away somewhat of the luxurious impression.


Development

Production of the Series 1 began in 1973. For the 1980 model year, the modernised Series 2 was introduced, with slight modifications occurring later as well. A sporty GTS variant was introduced at the 1980 Turin Motor Show, featuring wider wheels and flared wheel arches. and minor suspension setting differences to better utilise the wider
Campagnolo Campagnolo is an Italian manufacturer of high-end bicycle components with headquarters in Vicenza, Italy. The components are organised as groupsets (gruppi), and are a near-complete collection of a bicycle's mechanical parts. Campagnolo's flagsh ...
wheels with
Pirelli Pirelli & C. S.p.A. is a multinational tyre manufacturer based in Milan, Italy. The company, which has been listed on the Milan Stock Exchange since 1922, is the 6th-largest tyre manufacturer and is focused on the consumer production of tyre ...
P7 tyres. A Longchamp
cabriolet A convertible or cabriolet () is a passenger car that can be driven with or without a roof in place. The methods of retracting and storing the roof vary among eras and manufacturers. A convertible car's design allows an open-air driving expe ...
variant ("Spyder") was also introduced alongside the GTS. It was made by Carrozerria Pavesi of Milan, and a small number of cars were built to GTS specifications. Pavesi also converted a number of older coupés to Spyders. After supplies of American-built 351 V8s dried up, De Tomaso began sourcing their engines from Australia, to where the production line had been transferred. The engines were tuned in Switzerland before being installed, and were available with power outputs of 270, 300, or 330 PS (199, 221, or 243 kW). In the eighties another version also appeared, the GTS/E. This was the top-of-the-line version, fitted with twin round headlights and extra spoilers, skirts, and a rear wing. A total of 409 cars were built (395 coupés and 14 spyders) between 1972 and 1989, with only a couple of cars per year built during the last years. The vast majority are of Series 1 specifications. Some claim that production actually came to an end in 1986, with later cars being sold from stock. The Maserati Kyalami and Maserati Quattroporte III, which were also developed from the chassis, and conceived just as Alejandro de Tomaso took over Maserati, was very similar i.e. mechanically virtually identical to the Longchamp. The Narrative derivatives however used a Maserati V8, rather than the Ford unit favoured by De Tomaso.


Gallery


Notes


External links

{{De Tomaso Longchamp Coupés Convertibles 1980s cars Cars introduced in 1972 Grand tourers