The ‘Worst’ Exotic Italian Sports Car You Can Buy Is Basically A Cool Ford Mustang

In 2022 a movie called Amsterdam came out on the big screen and it had a star-studded cast. Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington came together with supporting cast members like Mike Myers, Chris Rock, and Taylor Swift. On paper, it had everything it needed to be a huge hit but as of this writing, it has a rotten 31% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

A similar story happened back in the late 1990s and early 2000s with a car now known as the Qvale Mangusta. It features a history that includes huge automotive names, it comes from Italy, and it leverages a big V8 under the hood for power. Despite all of that, no more than 284 examples ever left the factory. Today, they trade hands for less than a brand-new Chrysler Pacifica.

Before we dig too deeply into what the Qvale Mangusta is today, let’s roll back through time and take a look at how it came to be at all.

This car is partially the brainchild of Alejandro de Tomaso, that’s right, the same guy who brought us the de Tomaso Pantera. The same man who came to fame as a race car driver. That makes sense considering that he also built the original Mangusta back in 1966. It, on its own, was a laudable car that happened to have the bad fortune of coming out a few months after the Lamborghini Miura.

It leveraged a stock Ford Mustang 302 cubic inch V8 and made 230 horsepower which it sent to the rear wheels only. A five-speed manual transmitted power from source to street. The body design had a true artist behind it in Giorgetto Giugiaro, too. Still, de Tomaso only made and sold a little over 400 examples. Clearly, his company didn’t take off like that of Ferruccio Lamborghini’s.

Fast forward several decades to 1993, and we find de Tomaso the man in less than perfect health and wondering what to do with his car company. In talks with Maserati Chief Engineer Giordano Casarini, the two dreamt up a new Mangusta. It wouldn’t have that name though. Instead, they’d call it the Bigua, a medium-sized Cormorant found in all of the Americas.

Inspired by the TVR Griffith, Casarini developed the car as a FR layout two-door sports car. He went back to the Ford well for a modular V8, and just like back in the 60s, the company used the engine from the Mustang. Who would do the styling on this bold new car from de Tomaso though? None other than Marcello Gandini. Who better to make sure that the Bigua wouldn’t get upstaged by a Gandini design than the man himself? The same one who designed the Miura, the Countach, and the Diablo.

What the trio of men would come up with for its debut in 1996 was truly unique. That’s a nice way of saying that it wasn’t particularly gorgeous, in my view. What it did have were several interesting design decisions that make it stand out even today. The wing mirrors are in their typical position, but attached to the fenders. The nose features a tiny grille not too far afield from an Aston Martin. Large vents sit just behind the front wheels and a kink in the side skirt adds visual complexity.

The name Bigua only held on for the concept car shown in 1996 though. De Tomaso didn’t have the funds to actually produce the car, but in 1998, Kjell Qvale agreed to pick up the tab and the production version would get the name Mangusta. Qvale was a Norwegian-American businessman who became a car dealer in the 1940s. He had already partnered with de Tomaso in the past. Car and Driver describes their relationship as one that started off with mutual respect as both pursued joint and separate automotive goals. 

These two patriarchs go way back. Qvale was a Mangusta distributor in the 1960s and later imported Maserati Biturbos and Quattroportes during the dark years when de Tomaso owned the factory. Qvale also owned Jensen for a time and created the 1972-76 Jensen-Healey.

Ultimately though, de Tomaso and Qvale fell out of favor with one another, and the former removed his name from the project. Now, the car would go by the name Qvale Mangusta. Now that the funding was in place, the car would move forward toward production and the result was, according to journalists who drove it, a mixed bag.

The 4.6-liter V8 made 320 horsepower, the same as it did in the Mustang Cobra of the time. A Borg Warner five-speed gearbox sent power to the rear wheels, and Qvale borrowed a few other bits and pieces from Ford for the switchgear, the key, and the rest of the drivetrain.

Beyond that, the Mangusta was and is truly unique. The seats, dash, center console, and door cards all feature rich leather. Some of the trim was real metal and we haven’t even talked about the three-way top yet either. Yes, it looks like a hard top but it’s also a Targa top… and it’s a full-on convertible too!

Of course, like some of the other seemingly half-baked ideas here, the top follows that format. Should one desire to go from hard top to convertible they’ll need to complete a few steps. First, they have to get out and remove the main center panel of the roof.

Then, they’ll need to store it in the trunk. If they have stored anything else in the trunk it’ll need to go elsewhere because the top itself barely fits. At this stage, the driver can push a button in the cabin, and the remaining rear section of the top swivels down into the body to complete the transformation. Our pal Doug DeMuro goes into it all in the video below.

All of that complexity led to a heav-ish curb weight of 3,196 pounds (1,450 kg) and performance that wasn’t exactly up to the standard of other $85,000 cars of the age. Running from 0-60 mph took right about six seconds and top speed peaked around 155 mph.

Notably, the car did feature double-wishbones at every corner and a 50/50 weight distribution, but those assets didn’t benefit it enough to make it an excellent driver’s car; here is what some reviewers at Car and Driver said at the time.

BRAD NEVIN
Why would anyone pay $50,000 more than the price of an SVT Mustang for this Qvale? The answer is simple: exclusivity. Buy a Mangusta, and you will meet more people at gas stations and answer more questions than you would in almost any other car. But that’s about all you get. From the moment you sit in the driver’s seat to the second you get home from a 20-minute drive, you clearly feel that this is a repackaged Ford. The engine note, the transmission, the gauges, and the radio and climate controls all scream, “I’m a Mustang!” To which you have to ask: Is the funky styling worth it? For me, no. For $85,000, I’d buy a Porsche 911 over a Mangusta in a heartbeat.

FRANK MARKUS
A rose is a rose? This car looked ugly to me when it debuted as a show car named, perhaps aptly, Bigua. But the promise of open-air motoring and a sort-of retractable hardtop with bulletproof blue-oval V-8 power and the magic words “De Tomaso Mangusta” attached had a definite appeal. Who would care that the rear window is plastic, that everything squeaks, that it steers like a cop car, that parts drop off on every trip — mamma mia, that’s Italian! Foibles are what Italophiles kibitz about at car shows. But with a weird dragon badge and an unpronounceable Scandinavian name, it’s suddenly just a bad car. I guess a rose by any other name might smell like last season’s lutefisk.

LARRY WEBSTER
I’ll never say that every car has to make sense, but the Mangusta passes over my head. Maybe it has to do with the styling, which doesn’t match its exotic birthplace. Or perhaps the silly targa top that promises hardtop comfort and droptop pleasure but squeaks like a rusty door hinge and selfishly hogs the entire trunk when stowed. The $86,510 price is way north of the better Porsche Boxster S. And then there’s the thick driver’s door, which snagged my foot every time I tried to exit. Anything good? The seats are supportive and comfy, the ride is compliant, and the handling secure. But that’s not nearly enough to make me part with 85 grand.

That’s not exactly what de Tomaso, Qvale, MG (I’ll explain why I mention them in a second), or anyone else wants to hear about their creation. After all of the trials and tribulations that this car faced it just never truly caught on. Interestingly, Qvale basically pulled the plug as soon as it could. In 2000, it sold the assets that included the Mangusta to MG Rover.

The Grail

In essence, MG Rover skipped the development phase of building its own V8 sports car. It hired Peter Stevens to restyle the Mangusta, and at first, what came out was dubbed the X80. A far cry from the super-busy Mangusta design, the X80 was cleaner but still quite odd-looking. History wasn’t kind to this car, though, and it didn’t help that it launched on September 11, 2001.

Stevens went back to the drawing board (possibly quite literally) and revamped the design once more into something dubbed the MG XPower SV. In its final form, the car that started life as the Bigua finally seemed to tick all of the big boxes, even Jeremy Clarkson said it looked “fantastic.”

The design was bold and mostly cohesive, the running gear was still out of the Mustang but now it made 326 horsepower in base trim. MG would offer more power to those who wanted it, too.

An SV-R version made 385 horsepower and had a top speed of 175 mph. It replaced the plastic body panels with carbon fiber. It weighed less, was quicker, and looked better. Still, it wasn’t enough for sales to flourish.

By 2005, MG went into receivership and was subsequently snatched up by Chinese manufacturer Nanjing Automobile Group. The XPower SV didn’t continue in production.

Where We Are Now

Today, the Mangusta version regularly trades hands for under $40,000.

Interestingly, and perhaps due to the styling and power on offer, the MG XPower SV costs quite a lot more here in the USA. Only one has ever graced Bring A Trailer and it traded hands for $85,000 only a few months ago. Overseas they’re not as pricey, though, with one featured on Top Gear selling for just £16k two years ago. MG only built 42 of them, so that could have something to do with pricing as well.

All of this brings us right back to where we started… Amsterdam. The critics at Rotten Tomatoes could’ve also summed up the Mangusta with the same review of the film: “[It] has a bunch of big stars and a very busy plot, all of which amounts to painfully less than the sum of its dazzling parts.” Though I’ve never driven them, it’s clear the Mangusta and the XPower SV will go down in history as busy cars that just couldn’t live up to the hype surrounding them.