Tis the season of ESC calibrations on ice and throwing snowflake roostertails, otherwise known as winter testing. Audi likes to throw walls of white in northern Sweden, as it’s doing now with the 2023 E-Tron electric crossover. De Tomaso Automobili seems to prefer Switzerland, having taken its coming P72 coupe to an alpine valley for wintertime exercises. The best thing about what is essentially another snowy drifting video is the sound of the engine. The P72’s curves drove straight out of 1965 and some enthusiasts might not harbor any nostalgia for them. The rumble from the mid-mounted, supercharged Ford 5.0-liter Coyote V8 that De Tomaso and Roush Performance further tuned into something vintage and cantankerous, well, that should get near-unanimous approval.
De Tomaso said the supercar and hypercar trend of massive engine output is “irrelevant to the ethos of this project and what we are trying to achieve.” It’s clear that the noise is very relevant. You wouldn’t suspect the Coyote breathed through a Roots-type supercharger, but such is the case. Roush tweaked the blower for faster operation, better airflow and thermal efficiency, and less noise and vibration, that latter bit in order to stress an “old-school American V8 soundtrack” and the naturally aspirated spirit of the Sixties. Assuming the A/V crew didn’t play with the supercharger sound levels when editing the vid, the P72 has become a lot more attractive having learned it will bellow some old-school commotion through its top-mounted exhaust. We’ve been told final output will coast somewhere north of 700 horsepower and 608 pound-feet of torque, the planned redline beyond 7,500 rpm.
The P in the coupe’s alphanumeric name represents Prototipo in the name of the original De Tomaso race car from the 1960s, the 72 representing how many of these will be made. They were priced at 700,000 euros apiece ($763,000 U.S.) last year, but many things have happened since then, so that might be revised upward. Not that the target demo will care much.
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