Alejandro de Tomaso

Alejandro de Tomaso

Nation:	Argentina
Automobile world championship
First start:	1957 Grand Prix of Argentina
Last start:	1959 USA Grand Prix
Constructors
1957  Scuderia Centro Sud  • 1959  OSCA
statistics
World Cup balance:	no World Cup placement
Starts Victories Poles SR 2 - - -
World Cup points :	-
Podiums :	-
Leadership laps :	-

Alejandro de Tomaso (born July 10, 1928 in Buenos Aires , Argentina , † May 21, 2003 in Modena , Italy ) was an Argentine racing driver and founder of the sports car manufacturer De Tomaso Modena SpA

biography

Personal

Alejandro de Tomaso was born the son of the socialist politician Antonio de Tomaso (1889-1933), who in turn was descended from Italian immigrants. His father died when Alejandro de Tomaso was five. He left school at the age of 15 and made a living from casual jobs, including driving a truck. According to one source, he was politically active in his home country; he is said to have published an anti-Peronist underground magazine. In Argentina he drove several car races. In 1955 de Tomaso moved to Italy. The reasons for this are unclear. According to some sources, he emigrated for political reasons, according to other reports the emigration took place because de Tomaso saw better prospects for his racing career in Italy.

De Tomaso was married twice. His first marriage to Lola Guiraldes in Argentina had sons Santiago, Alessandro and Pablo De Tomaso. In 1958 De Tomaso married the American racing driver Isabelle Haskell , whom he met when she was buying parts for her Maserati . As the granddaughter of William C. Durant , the founder of General Motors , Haskell belonged to a wealthy entrepreneurial family and financed her husband's automobile and motorsport projects in the early years.

In 1993 Alejandro de Tomaso suffered a severe stroke, as a result of which he was dependent on a wheelchair. His wife and son Santiago de Tomaso then took over the management of the company, which was insolvent in 2004 and was dissolved in 2012 after several takeovers.

Racing driver

After emigrating to Italy in 1955, Alejandro de continued his activity as a racing driver and drove one race each for the Formula 1 World Championship in 1957 and 1959 .

Entrepreneur

In 1959, de Tomaso founded his own automobile factory in Modena and initially built racing cars. From 1961 to 1963 his works team Scuderia De Tomaso , which he temporarily named Scuderia Isobel De Tomaso after his wife, was represented in Formula 1 without success. 1970 his company returned briefly as a chassis supplier with the De Tomaso 505 used by Frank Williams ; The project ended, however, after the Williams driver Piers Courage had a fatal accident with his 505 at the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort .

From 1963 De Tomaso started manufacturing street sports cars under his own name. Since the 1960s, he tried to build a broad-based company. It all started with the acquisition of Carrozzeria Ghia , which he sold to Ford in 1969 . For several years he then cooperated with the Ford group, which took care of the sale of its sports cars. During this time, the production of the mid-engined sports car Pantera, largely financed by Ford, took place. After the connection with Ford was broken in 1974, de Tomaso acquired the traditional manufacturer Maserati , a little later also the motorcycle manufacturer Benelli and the body shop Innocenti . After the Fiat group took over Alfa Romeo in 1986 , De Tomaso's group was the largest independent Italian car manufacturer. From 1988 De Tomaso sold his Maserati shares gradually to the Fiat group; the takeover was completed in 1993.

Alejandro de Tomaso was a colorful figure in the history of sports car manufacturers. He let his ideas and experience as a racing driver flow into the planning and development of his high-performance sports cars. With his companies he brought many sports cars onto the market that were successful in Europe as well as in the USA. These include the Mangusta , Pantera and Longchamp models , as well as the Maserati Biturbo series , which made Maserati a series manufacturer and which brought the company back into profitability after years of economic difficulties.

Assessments

Alejandro de Tomaso was considered difficult in personal dealings. Contemporaries described it as erratic; he had a "very short attention span". The designer Tom Tjaarda , who worked with him for a long time and designed almost all the bodies for De Tomaso, described him as a player who tried to challenge Giovanni Agnelli .

statistics

Statistics in the automobile world championship

general overview

season	team	chassis	engine	run	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Race laps	Points	WM-Pos.
1957	Scuderia Centro Sud	Ferrari 500	Ferrari 2.5 L4	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	NC
1959	OSCA	Cooper T43	Osca 2.0 L4	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	NC
total				2	-	-	-	-	-	-

Single results

season	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9
1957
	9
1959
									DNF

Legend
colour	abbreviation	meaning
gold	-	victory
silver	-	2nd place
bronze	-	3rd place
green	-	Placement in the points
blue	-	Classified outside the point ranks
violet	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)
	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
	TD	Friday test driver
without	DNP	did not participate in the training (did not practice)
	INJ	injured or sick
	EX	excluded
	DNA	did not arrive
	C.	Race canceled
		no participation in the World Cup
other	P / bold	Pole position
	SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	*	not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered
	()	Streak results
	underlined	Leader in the overall standings

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1958	Automobili OSCA	OSCA Sport 750TN	Colin Davis	11th place and class win
1959	Alejandro de Tomaso	DB HBR5	Colin Davis	failure	Gearbox damage

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1956	Alejandro de Tomaso	Maserati 150S	Isabelle Haskell			failure	Gear lever broken
1957	Argentine Auto Club	Osca MT4 750	Isabelle Haskell			failure	malfunction
1958	Automobili Osca	Osca S750	Isabelle Haskell	Robert Ferguson		Rank 8 and class win
1959	Alejandro de Tomaso	Osca S750	Isabelle Haskell	Denise McCluggage	Ricardo Rodríguez	Rank 18

Individual results in the sports car world championship

season	team	race car	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th
1955		Maserati A6GCS	BUA	SEB	MIM	LEM	RTT	TAR
			7th
1956	Alejandro de Tomaso Isabelle Haskell	Maserati 150S	BUA	SEB	MIM	ONLY	KRI
			4th	DNF	DNF	DNF
1957	Osca Argentine Auto Club Madunina	Osca S1500 Osca MT4	BUA	SEB	MIM	ONLY	LEM	KRI	CAR
			6th	DNF		DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF
1958	Isabelle Haskell Osca	Osca F2 / S 1500 Osca S750	BUA	SEB	TAR	ONLY	LEM	RTT
			DNF	8th	DNF		11
1959	Alejandro de Tomaso	Osca S750 Osca FS1500 DB HBR	SEB	TAR	ONLY	LEM	RTT
			18th		DNF	DNF

Web links

Commons : Alejandro de Tomaso  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Alejandro de Tomaso at Racing Sports Cars

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Giles Chapman: Alejandro de Tomas: Argentinian who became a captain of the Italian sports-car industry. www.independent.co.uk, May 23, 2003, accessed February 8, 2017 . 
2. ^ ^{A b} Joseph Siano: Alejandro DeTomaso, 74, Maker of Sports Cars, Dies. www.nytimescom.com, May 23, 2003, accessed February 8, 2017 . 
3. ^ Adam Cooper: Piers Courage. Last of the gentleman racers . Haines Publishing, Sparkford 2010, ISBN 978-1-84425-863-5 , p. 252.
4. ↑ Manuel Bordini: De Tomaso visto da vicino: intervista a Tom Tjaarda. www.vitadistile.com, November 10, 2015, accessed February 8, 2017 .