De Tomaso P72

Jowyn Wong drew the P72, and he had already drawn the Apollo Intensa Emozione for the same owner, which is why two cars from unrelated marques share an eye. The reference is the 1965 De Tomaso P70, and the borrowings are specific: the long teardrop cabin set well back, the full-width tail, the shallow nose and the exposed sills of a mid-1960s Le Mans prototype. What keeps it from being fancy dress is the detailing. The exhaust exits through the top of the rear deck. The interior uses 179 individually milled aluminium components, hand-brushed and polished, with rose gold as the signature finish instead of chrome. Instruments are circular analogue dials in the period idiom. The shifter is a suspended piece of polished metal with its linkage left on show, theatre that only works because the gearbox underneath it is genuinely manual. There is no screen anywhere and no digital cluster hiding behind a retro face. A discreet phone holder is the single concession. Very few modern cars commit this hard to a period idea without breaking it somewhere.

The P72 has no competition record and De Tomaso runs no racing programme behind it. That is worth explaining, because the car is styled as a racing prototype. The 1965 P70 it references was a real race car, built by Alejandro de Tomaso with Carroll Shelby, bodied by Medardo Fantuzzi and with Peter Brock among those who worked on it. Fifty were planned for the USRRC and the coming Can-Am series. One was finished. Shelby walked away, and that single car eventually started one race, the 1966 Mugello Grand Prix, round eight of the World Sportscar Championship, where Roberto Bussinello retired it on the opening lap. The P72's inheritance in motorsport amounts to one lap. The modern company has said nothing about racing this car, and the brief argues against it anyway: a grand tourer with a manual gearbox, hand-set dampers and no electronic aids is not a competitive package in any current series. The Coyote V8 has a racing history of its own through Ford and Roush, though not in this specification.

The P72's fame is almost entirely an internet phenomenon and it arrived fully formed. The Goodwood reveal in July 2019 produced one of the most widely circulated car images of that year, and for the six years that followed the car existed mainly as a wallpaper and as an argument about whether it would ever be built. Every delay started that argument again. De Tomaso leaned into the digital audience rather than the traditional one. In December 2021 the company announced a collaboration with Ash Thorp, the digital artist best known for his Batmobile work, on a design initiative aimed squarely at that following. The car reached games before it reached customers. It is drivable in Asphalt 9 and in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, where it appeared as a Season 5 reward. When the first customer car was filmed moving through Monaco in July 2026, a month after delivery, the clip travelled further than most new hypercar launches manage. A car that spent seven years as an image finally became a thing that moves.

Ownership data barely exists. One customer car has been delivered, in June 2026, and no independent owner has yet run a P72 far enough to know what it looks like at 20,000 miles. Buying early means accepting that. What can be said is where the risk sits. The powertrain is the least of it. A Ford Coyote V8 with Roush supercharging is a known quantity with a global parts supply behind it, and the dry-sump and blower hardware is the only unusual part of the package. The unknowns are everything De Tomaso made itself, which is most of the car. A single-piece carbon monocoque is enormously strong and not repairable outside a specialist shop. The exposed shift linkage and the 179 milled interior components are beautiful and bespoke, which is another way of saying each one is a special order. Then there is the company, young, newly public and building its first product. Early cars in any 72-car run collect the teething, and the compensation is a direct line to the people who built them.