The Best Odds: 2000-01 Qvale MangustaIllustration by Alexis Marcou - Car and DriverFrom the July/August 2026 issue of Car and Driver.If you corralled all the car designers who stuffed small-block Ford V-8s into their low-volume specialty cars, you might want to rent Madison Square Garden. Maybe hire Vince McMahon for the high-decibel introductions.Carroll Shelby's AC Cobra and Mustang GT350 are obvious examples. There were others: the Sunbeam Tiger, the Bricklin SV-1, 22 million Cobra replicas, the first Ford GT40s, the Intermeccanica Italia. Even Alejandro de Tomaso—the Argentine agitator, the car world's answer to Rasputin—specified Ford V-8s for his Mangusta and Pantera.AdvertisementAdvertisementAlthough it drove like a Dodge Aries, the original De Tomaso Mangusta was penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro and remains the most timelessly stylish car ever fashioned by mortal hands. So say I, although I'm now in my dotage, feeling like the dead parrot nailed to his perch in that Monty Python sketch.History, of course, stutters. Which is why, from 1999 to 2001, we celebrated the debuts of the Panoz Esperante, the 11th-gen Thunderbird, and the Qvale Mangusta, all Ford V-8–powered two-seaters. A trifecta for the Three Musketeers.This Mangusta's styling was sketched by Marcello Gandini—notice his signature canted rear wheel arches—with the car first appearing in 1996 as the Bigua concept. It ignited a Mediterranean stew pot of fierce love-it/hate-it reactions.Standing in the thumbs-up camp was San Francisco megadealer Kjell Qvale (shell kah-VAH-lee), who so lustily ached to sell the car stateside that he invested almost $30 million. No slapdash Sunday-afternoon lark, this.AdvertisementAdvertisementPredictably, Qvale and the florid de Tomaso fell into divorce-quality bickering, for which the eccentric Mr. D of T was infamous. You could ask Lee Iacocca. In Milan, I recall sharing dinner with de Tomaso as he proudly lifted a leg onto our table to display a pistol strapped above his ankle. After which, he launched a food fight with best friend and jeweler to the stars Nicola Bulgari, who in turn enlisted our waitress. She was the cousin of someone famous but nonetheless was nominated to mop up the splatter.That's how we wound up with Qvale ahead of Mangusta instead of another De Tomaso Mangusta. Exactly no one cared.Qvale and son Bruce personally delivered Car and Driver's test car. The lovable 320-hp double-overhead-cam 4.6-liter Mustang Cobra powerplant, bone stock, produced an alluring rumble. Bulletproof, easily sourced, cheap repairs. Ditto the five-speed manual, even with its too-tall gearing. No way you could resist the triple-stitched Connolly leather, brushed-aluminum console, snooty chrome bezels, and billet shift knob. Okay, so maybe there were a few too many plebeian Mustang parts, including the steering column, instrumentpanel, door handles, and switchgear. But they helped contain costs.I gravitated to the new Mangusta from its battle-scarred inception, lumpy Gandini fanny and all. The nose looked like it was saying, "Does this color make my ass look fat?" Alas, no other C/D staffers were as smitten as I. They complained it was a repackaged Mustang with a kit-car countenance or, as another put it, an "Italian TVR" riddled with all of that genre's squeaks and rattles. In truth, the principal offender was the ill-fitting targa top. I maybe could have fixed it at home.AdvertisementAdvertisementQvale's Mangusta at least met its mission: compliant ride, light steering, nearly balanced handling, and 5.5 seconds to 60. The initial price was over $80K, about the same as the Esperante. Not chump change but a 50 percent discount over other Italian exotica. This second-gen Mangusta was less a sports car than a "personal coupe," a natty grand tourer in the mold of, say, an Aston Martin. Well, an Aston with a guarded pedigree and a name no one could pronounce.Before Qvale squeezed all the green out of his ATM, only 284 Mangustas nosed their way out of the Modena factory. Turns out, exclusivity is the car's plumpest allure.I located a pristine low-mileage QM at auction and was tempted to slap $35K on the Formica barrelhead. Then my wife pointed at our stalled bathroom renovation. Moreover, the owner said: "Nobody knows what this car is. One guy thought it was Russian. I've got enough problems with my own identity."You Might Also LikeGift Guide: Best Ride-On Electric Cars for KidsFuture Cars Worth Waiting For: 2025–2029