Yes, you should buy this V8-engined Qvale Mangusta

Yes, the Mangusta was a De Tomaso in the late 1960s and the 1970s. And yes, the Qvale Mangusta was originally designed (by Marcello Gandini, no less) as the De Tomaso Biguá concept, which was first shown at the Geneva Motor Show in 1996…

It’s all a little bit confusing, but all you really need to know is that Alejandro de Tomaso was in financial trouble in the late 90s, so he enlisted the help of American Bruce Qvale to produce his comeback car. The Biguá was renamed Mangusta, but De Tomaso dropped out of the deal before the first cars were delivered, so the 284 completed examples were all badged as Qvales.

What you see above is Qvale Mangusta number 217 – a 2001 car that’s currently up for grabs at the online RM Sotheby’s Open Roads sale. It’s only estimated to fetch between $38,000 and $42,000 too, so it could be a bit of a bargain for such a rarity. What a spec, too. Green over tan never fails to look good.

The Qvale’s party piece is its roof, which could transform to make the Mangusta a hard-topped coupe, a full convertible or a targa. Nice. The chassis was a tubular frame designed by F1 engineer Henrique Scalabroni, and the body panels were made from a combination of fibreglass, Kevlar and other assorted composites.

The engine was a 4.6-litre V8 provided by Ford, which sent around 320bhp to the rear wheels through a five-speed manual gearbox. This particular example has 10,086 miles on the clock.

But wait, there’s one more Qvale Mangusta fact you should know before you head off to place a wholly unsensible bid – Qvale sold the Mangusta rights to MG in 2003, and it was this car that formed the base of the MG XPower SV and SVR. Now there’s a throwback for you.

Images: RM Sotheby’s