Thank God. Thank God and all the known and unknown car lords the new De Tomaso isn’t hideous, or worse, a crossover. No, the De Tomaso P72 is gorgeous, retro, petite and has a manual. Everything we could hope for. And its copper detailing is simply to die for.
As I scrolled through photos of the car this past weekend, I couldn’t get over the copper accents all over the place. Copper or rose gold details have become increasingly popular on cars these days (the Genesis models in particular spring to mind), and the shade is just generally very chic.
Silver is traditional and therefore boring and yellow gold is just tacky. You want that copper or rose with the small touch of orange or pink hue. It’s lovely. Let’s find all the places where the P72's designers managed to sneak it in.
Starting from the outside, it’s obvious that the wheels are copper-colored. I didn’t think I’d like copper wheels on a red car, but then again, I loved the gold wheels on the Ferrari F430 Scuderia.
Then there’s the underside of the engine bay. You wouldn’t see this unless you lifted the engine cover, but there it is. Maybe it’s just this photo, but it looks more yellowy than the rest of the copper. Perhaps it’s a gold heat deflector like on the McLaren F1.
And the headlights! The headlights have copper accents, too, which makes them a little more interesting to look at rather than just the regular housing.
Copper script, set off-center on the car’s rear, spells out the name. I know the P72 is based on a prototype race car, but I kind of wanted a cool name here. The rest of De Tomaso’s well-known cars (Pantera, Mangusta, Longchamp) had cool names. You remember a car with a good name, and a good name looks twice as good when written out in copper cursive. Alas, we can’t win them all.
Copper, center-mounted gas cap! What class. I just hope it doesn’t get too hot to the touch after a sunny day.
And, oh man, the retro-styled mirrors, look. Extending out on two elegant stalks, they remind me of the mirrors on a Pagani Huayra. Hopefully those are motorized so you don’t have to run around your car to adjust your mirrors like some kind of old-fashioned pleb.
And the top-exit exhaust hasn’t escaped my notice, either. What’s even better is that it appears to have a ring of copper encircling the hole cut in the body. It could have been anything else—black plastic, carbon fiber—but no, it’s copper.
Inside, it just gets even better. What good is having all those pretty accents if you can’t enjoy them while you’re driving the car? Fortunately, in the P72, you never have to choose. The shifter and exposed linkages, gauge housing and door accepts are all made from the pretty stuff. And those quilted seats are out of this world. I think what I’m trying to tell you is that I’d like a handbag made from quilted leather and with rose gold accents.
This is a very special car. The details make it absolutely so, but the whole package is just breathtaking.
