Description I saw this super-rare Qvale Mangusta OUTSIDE OF THE SHOW AND SPECTATOR LOT. He was in a parking lot BY THE SHOW, BUT NOT IN IT. He parked it by the Bass Pro Shops. It is one of a very small number built. The owner let me take as many pics as I wanted, and even let me sit in it!
The only one that comes to mind is the Lancia Beta Montecarlo/scorpion which at first was meant to be a Fiat X1/20 the succesor of the 124 coupe but that one stayed within the same company. Further i can not imediatly recall any models which started they're life as brand "A" and got finaly commercialised as brand "B" like The Qvale but beware Qvale itself was not a brand before, it was a wealthy family of car importers in the US led by Kjell Qvale who was approached by de Alejandro Tomaso For Financial help, De Tomaso by that time was in financial and health problem's and had already sold Maserati to Fiat auto and De Tomaso itself was more dead than allive. About The Dacia, Dacia was already a brand on it's own in Romenia which was building old Renault models under licence, like Lada made old Fiat models in Russia. Today they (Dacia) are making they're own models admittedly with old Renault parts and with the help of Renault and using Renault's dealership network, in Europe, but they do not longer make old Renault models ,it is not some kind of rebadging, or building old Renault models under licence, altough Dacia is part of the Renault group.
That is very interesting indeed (sorry, just saw your comment now)! @imola_be, do you know of any other cars where one company took over what a different company started?
Thanks for the info imola_be! It's true that sports cars aren't cheap to build especially when the company doesn't have enough money, but I find it interesting how another company came along and stepped in to help.
To King_AM, its no coincidence that the qvale has the same name as the De Tomaso Mangusta because the car was an idea of Alejandro De Tomaso. it was shown at the Geneva motorshow in 1996 as the De Tomaso Bigua. But De Tomaso wasn't financialy strong enough to develop the car and failed to get financial help from the Italian goverment due to the declining health of Alejandro de Tomaso. Eventually, the company approached Kjell Qvale ,Maserati importer for north America, Qvale agreed to fund the development of the car with the agreement that the final product would be sold as the Qvale Mangusta.
Join our weekly update alert so you never miss out on pictures of the finest, most expensive, fastest, and most exciting exotic cars. You'll get alerted to...