The Vallelunga is a truly beautiful car, yet it was dropped after less than a year of serious production, its stylist is unknown and only a handful survive: how can it be so rare?

Other early mid-engined road cars were the product of world-class engineers – René Bonnet based his Djet design on race cars he’d been developing for decades at Le Mans; Colin Chapman’s experience that led to the Europa is well documented; and Lamborghini employed the best young designers Italy could offer to engineer his Miura.

De Tomaso, by contrast, was a wealthy young Argentinian who had left the family estancias to follow his love of Maserati race cars to Modena, raced OSCAs for a few years and started a small race-car building company in 1959. Yet three years later, beating all but Bonnet, he produced his Vallelunga prototype; after a season’s racing development, production started in 1964 – again beaten only by the Djet.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1928 to a farming family of Italian origin, Alejandro De Tomaso was from the start more interested in cars. Racing captured his imagination; at first he entered cars for others to race but in 1955 he was behind the wheel of a Maserati A6GCS, bringing it home seventh overall with Cesar Rejes.

That year, at the age of 27, he left the farm and headed to Italy. It’s been suggested that he fled after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Juan Peron, but Peron was overthrown in September that year and De Tomaso showed no inclination to return except to race. Besides, his ex-wife lived there and he had other interests elsewhere.

His 1954 World Sportscar Championship debut was mirrored in the USA by Coca-Cola heiress Isabel Haskell, who entered a Siata-Crosley in the Sebring 12 hours. Fate now lent its hand, as Maserati records show that 150S chassis 1653, in white with azure band, was supplied to Isabel Haskell on July 8, 1955; chassis 1660, in red, went to Alejandro De Tomaso on January 14, 1956.

In 1956, Isabel turned up in Buenos Aires for the 1000km, finishing seventh in her 150S with local boy Carlos Lostalo, while fourth (and class winners) were De Tomaso and Carlo Tomasi. De Tomaso wasted little time and for Sebring they shared his Maserati 150S. De Tomaso and Haskell often shared a car thereafter, especially once they started racing for OSCA. The PR benefit must have been significant – they were surely the only married couple to share cars and win in World Championship racing.

Their races together included the 1957 Buenos Aires 1000km, where they finished sixth overall and first in class in an OSCA MT4 1500; the same weekend De Tomaso had his first F1 drive in the Argentine Grand Prix, finishing 12th in a Scuderia Centro Sud Ferrari 500/625. In March they married at the Haskell family estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, the wedding coinciding with the Sebring 12hrs, which they failed to finish in the OSCA 750. They continued to compete together in OSCAs through 1958 and 1959, as far afield as Sweden, Buenos Aires, Sebring and the Nürburgring, winning the Index of Performance at both Sebring and Le Mans in 1958. Their attention was soon to be diverted by other commitments, however, as De Tomaso Automobili was established in Modena in 1959.

De Tomaso’s final race in December was the US Grand Prix, in which he drove the company’s first car, a rebodied Cooper-OSCA T43, but failed to finish.

From the end of 1959 both Alejandro and Isabel turned their attention fully to manufacture. Initially, his ambition was to build the racing cars that he couldn’t persuade the Maserati brothers to produce. Formula Junior cars were soon under development and went on sale in 1960 as the Isis, but in 1962 De Tomaso entered Formula One with a highly advanced car to his own design.

The F1 car’s flat-eight 1488cc engine was claimed to develop 170bhp and was mid-mounted in a multi-tube spaceframe. Like all his early cars, it suffered from a lack of development as his prolific mind jumped ahead to new projects, including Formula Three and even Indianapolis, not to mention road cars. Race car building would continue alongside road car production, highlights including poaching Giampaolo Dallara from Lamborghini in 1968 and persuading one Frank Williams to run the Formula One team cars in 1970.

In 1962, however, De Tomaso completed a road sports car with great track potential, adopting the evocative name of the Rome racetrack he often used for testing: Vallelunga. The revolutionary chassis used the mid-mounted in-line four-cylinder engine and five-speed gearbox as load-bearing members: indeed, the load-bearers for the back half of the car. Bolted solidly to the engine mountings was the rear end of an upturned U-shaped spine chassis, surprisingly narrow, which opened out at the front to carry the front suspension. The claimed resemblance to the Lotus Elan is actually not that great; besides, De Tomaso had used spine chassis before.

The engine chosen marked the start of a vital link for De Tomaso, a theme he would maintain throughout his road cars: it was from Ford. In this case, it was Ford of Britain: a Cortina 1500GT unit, with twin Webers installed to give 105bhp.

A 135bhp option was listed too; the engine drove through Hewland gears mounted in an upturned VW gearbox bolted to the back of the engine. Initially the car had just four forward gears, but this was soon upped to five. Bolted on top of the gearbox was a fabricated crossmember which carried the rear suspension top mounts and also the body; all suspension and body loadings went through the gearbox and engine block.

Road and Track wrote at the time, ‘the Vallelunga incorporates four-wheel independent suspension in the currently popular GP style’. How right they were. The front end used one of the few proprietary parts, Triumph Herald uprights (though some cars seem to have been built with fabricated items). These pivoted on unequal-length wishbones (the bottom almost twice the length of the top) with telescopic spring/damper units, anti-roll bar and rack-and-pinion steering. Disc brakes were fitted to all four wheels, with alloy calipers cast by Campagnolo. At the back, a single top link was triangulated by a long radius arm trailing from the back of the chassis, duplicated at the bottom where a reversed lower wishbone was used. Again, an anti-roll bar was fitted. Cast uprights were unique to De Tomaso, as were the Campagnolo cast magnesium wheels, and the whole set-up was rose-jointed. This plus the solid mounting of the engine meant the Vallelunga could never be a refined car, but made its handling incisive in a way no other road car of the time could match.

The car sported a pretty open two-seater aluminium body, which was to remain a one-off, even though the model was widely reported as being available for 15. The little car won races immediately and was shown at the Turin Show of 1963 with a rolling chassis on the wall behind.