Giallo

Giallo (pronounced jah-loh (often pronounced in English-speaking use as gee-ah-lo)

(1) The industry (and later the public) term for a series of Italian mystery, crime and suspense novels, first published by Mondadori in 1929 and so-dubbed because of the giallo (yellow) hue used for the covers.  They were known as Mistero giallo (yellow mystery) and collectively as the racconti gialli “yellow tales”.  The term “giallo” is a clipping of Il Giallo Mondadori (Mondadori Yellow).

(2) By extension, an unsolved mystery or scandal (historic Italian use).

(3) By later extension, a genre of Italian cinema mixing mystery and thriller with psychological elements and, increasingly, violence.

(4) A film in this genre.

(5) In Italian, yellow. 

1930s (in English use): From the Italian giallo (yellow (although now used also of amber traffic signals)), from the Old French jalne (a variant of jaune), from the Latin galbinus (greenish-yellow, yellowish, chartreuse; effeminate (of men)) of unknown origin but possibly from galbanum, from the Ancient Greek χαλβάνη (khalbánē) (galbanum) (the resinous juice produced by plants of the genus Ferula), from the Hebrew חֶלְבְּנָה (ḥelbənāh), from the root ח־ל־ב (ḥ-l-b) (related to milk), from the Proto-Semitic ḥalīb- (milk; fat).  Over time, the term evolved in Italian language, undergoing phonetic and semantic shifts to become giallo.  As an adjective the form is giallo (feminine gialla, masculine plural gialli, feminine plural gialle, diminutive giallìno or giallétto) and as a noun it refers also to a (1) “a sweet yellow flour roll with raisins” in the Veneto) and (2) “Naples yellow”; the augmentative is giallóne, the pejorative giallàccio and the derogatory giallùccio.  The derived adjectives are nuanced: giallastro (yellowish but used also (of the appearance of someone sickly) to mean sallow); giallognolo (of a yellowish hue) & giallorosa (romantic (of movies)).  The yellow-covered books of the 1930s produced giallista (crime writer which is masculine or feminine by sense (giallisti the masculine plural, gialliste the feminine plural).  The verb ingiallire means “to turn yellow).  Giallo is a noun; the noun plural is giallos or gialli (the latter listed as rare).

In print: A Mondadori Edition.

Arnoldo Mondadori Editore (the Mondadori publishing house, founded in 1907 and still extant) first published their mystery, crime and suspense novels in editions with distinctive yellow covers in 1929.  Few were of local origin and almost all were translations into Italian of works written originally in English by US and British authors and not all were all of recent origin, some having appeared in English decades earlier.  Produced in a cheap paperback format, the giallos were instantly successful (triggering a secondary industry of swap & exchange between readers) and other publishing houses emulated the idea, down even to the yellow covers.  Thus “giallo” entered the language as a synonym for “crime or mystery novel” and it spread to become slang meaning “unsolved mystery or scandal”.  The use as a literary genre has endured and it now casts a wide net, giallos encompassing mystery, crime (especially murders, gruesome and otherwise), thrillers with psychological elements and, increasingly, violence.

In film: The modern understanding of the giallo movie is something like "horror with a psychological theme" and, depending things like the director's intent or the  target market, one or other element may dominate.  Historically, among critics there was a "hierarchy of respectability" in the genre which the psychological thriller tending to be preferred but in recent decades the have been landmark "horror movies" which have made the genre not exactly fashionable but certainly more accepted. 

The paperbacks were often best-sellers and film adaptations quickly followed, the new techniques of cinema (with sound) ideally suited to the thriller genre and these films too came to be called “giallos”, a use which in the English-speaking world tends to be applied to thriller-horror films, especially if there’s some bizarre psychological twist.  The film purists (an obsessive lot) will point out (1) the authentic Italian productions are properly known as giallo all'italiana and (2) a giallo is not of necessity any crime or mystery film and there’s much overlap with other sub-genres (the ones built about action, car-chases and big explosions usually not giallos although a giallo can include these elements.

Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me (2007).  Neglected upon its release, IKWKM has since been re-evaluated as a modern giallo and has acquired a cult following, sometimes seen on the playbill of late-night screenings.

IKWKM may at times have been seriously weird but as a piece of film it was mild compared to the most notorious giallo: Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom) an Italian production directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) whose talents (and tastes) straddled many fields.  Often referred to as “Pasolini’s Salò”, it’s a film people relate to in the way they choose or the work imposes on them; at one level, it can be enjoyed as a “horror movie” and its depiction of violent sexual depravity is such that of the many strands of pornography which exist, Salò contains elements of most.  As a piece of art it’s polarizing with the “love it” faction praising it as a Pasolini’s piercing critique of consumerism and populist right-wing politics while the “hate it” group condemn it as two hours-odd of depictions of depravity so removed from any socio-political meaning as to be merely repetitiously gratuitous.

Salò poster.

The title Salò is a reference to the film being set in 1944 in Republic di Salò (Republic of Salò (1943-1945)), the commonly used name for the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Italian Social Republic), a fascist enclave set-up in Nazi-occupied northern Italy under the nominal dictatorship of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) who Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had ordered rescued from imprisonment after being deposed as Fascist prime-minister.  As a piece of legal fiction befitting its self-imposed role as Italy’s “government in exile”, Mussolini’s hurriedly concocted state declared Rome its capital but the administration never ventured beyond the region where security was provided by the Wehrmacht (the German military forces, 1935-1945) and the de facto capital was Salò (small town on Lake Garda, near Brescia).

Salò poster.

Although not in the usual filmic sense an adaptation, Pasolini’s inspiration was Les 120 Journées de Sodome ou l'école du libertinage (The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinage), an unfinished novel by the libertine French aristocrat Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) although the director changed the time and location of the setting (shifting the critique from monarchical France to Fascist Italy) and structurally, arranged the work into four segments with intertitles (static text displays spliced between scenes to give the audience contextual information), following the model of Dante’s (Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321)) Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy (circa 1310-1321)).  In little more than a month in 1785, the marquis wrote the text during his imprisonment in the Bastille and while the introduction and first part are in a form recognizably close to what they may be been prior to editing, the remaining three parts exist only as fragmentary notes.  After the revolutionary mob in 1789 stormed the Bastille (and was disappointed to find the Ancien Régime had so few prisoners) it was thought the manuscript had been lost or destroyed but, without the author’s knowledge, it was secreted away, eventually (in severely redacted form) to be published in 1904.

Salò poster.

The work describes the antics of four rich French libertine men who spend 120 days in a remote castle where, attended by servants, they inflict on 20 victims (mostly adolescents and young women) 600 of their “passions”, enacted in an orgy of violence and sexual acts as depraved as the author could imagine; it’s not clear how much of what he documented came from his imagination or recollections (the documentary evidence of what he did as opposed to what he thought or wrote is vanishing sparse) .  Like Pasolini’s film, as a piece of literature it divides opinion on the same “love it” or “hate it” basis and when in the post-war years it began to appear in unexpurgated form (over the decades many jurisdictions would gradually would overturn their ban on its sale) it attained great notoriety, both as “forbidden fruit” and for its capacity genuinely to shock and appal.  The stated purpose of the 1904 publication by a German psychiatrist and sexologist was it was had a utility as a kind of “source document” for the profession, helping them to understand what might be in the minds of their more troubled (or troublesome) patients.  It’s value to clinicians was it constituted a roll-call of the worst of man’s unbridled sexual fantasies and impulses to inflict cruelty, allowing a “filling-in of the gaps” between what a patient admitted and what a psychiatrist suspected, a process something like Rebecca West’s (1892–1983) vivid impression of Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941) after observing him in the dock during the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946): “He looked as if his mind had no surface, as if every part of it had been blasted away except the depth where the nightmares live.”

Salò poster.

So for the profession it was a helpful document because uniquely (as far as is known), it documented the thoughts and desires which most repress or at least leave unstated although the awful implication of that was that wider publication may not be a good idea because it might “give men ideas and unleash the beast within”.  Certainly, it was one of literature’s purest expressions of a desire for a freedom to act unrestricted by notions such as morality or decency and while those possibilities would seduce some, most likely would agree with the very clever and deliciously wicked English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who in Leviathan (1651) described life in such a world being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  De Sade was reportedly most upset at the loss of the manuscript he’d hidden within the Bastille but resumed writing and political activism under the First Republic (1789–1799) and in Napoleonic France (1799–1815) but his pornographic novels attracted the attention of the authorities which again imprisoned him but, after sexually assaulting youthful inmates he was diagnosed with libertine dementia and confined to lunatic asylums where, until his death in 1814, he continued to write and even stage dramatic productions, some of which were attended by respectable parts of Parisian society.

Salò poster.

Passolini followed De Sade in having his four central characters represent the centres of authority (the Church, the law, finance and the state) in Italy (and, by extension, Western capitalist states generally) and Salò genuinely can be interpreted as a critique of modern consumerism, the exploitative nature of capitalism and right-wing populism.  In setting it in the rather squalid vassal state Hitler set up to try to maintain the illusion of an ally being retained, Passolini made fascism a particular focus of his attack but the allegorical nature of the film, politely noted by most critics and historians has always been secondary to the violence and depravity depicted.  For some amateur psychologists, Salò was there to reinforce their worst instincts about Pasolini, their suspicion being it was an enactment of his personal fantasies and imaginings, a record in cellulose acetate of what he’d have done had he “been able to get away with it”.  Whether or not that’s though fair will depend on one’s background and the extent to which one is prepared to separate art from artist; as an artist, Pasolini to this day had many admirers and defenders.

Salò poster.

Three weeks before Salò’s predictably controversial premiere, at the age of 53, Pasolini was murdered, his brutally beaten body found on a beach; a 17 year old rent-boy (one of many who had passed through Passolini’s life) confessed to being the killer but decades later would retract that statement.  The truth behind the murder still isn’t known and there are several theories, some sordid and some revolving around the right-wing terrorism which in Italy claimed many lives during the 1970s.  What the director’s death did mean was he never had a chance to make a film more explicit than Salò and in may be that in the Giallo genre such a thing would not have been possible because the only thing more shocking would have been actual “snuff” scenes in which people really did die, such productions legends of the darkest corners of the Dark Web although there seems no evidence any have ever been seen.  What Pasolini would have done had he lived can’t be known but he may not have returned to Giallo because, in the vein, after Salò, there was really nowhere to go.

Yellow as a color

Lamborghinis in Giallo Fly, clockwise from top left: 1969 Miura P400 S, 1973 Jarama 400 GT, 1988 Jalpa and 1976 Countach LP400 Periscopio,  A solid yellow color first offered by Lamborghini on the Miura in 1968, Giallo Fly translates literally as "yellow fly" but is best understood in English as “Fly Yellow” with the “fly” element used not as a noun (ie the annoying insect) but in the way Italians use the English adjective “fly” with the sense of “flashy, stylish, eye-catching”.  That sentiment must have been in the mind of the Jalpa owner who had the wheels also finished in Giallo Fly, the factory never that committed to monochromaticity. 

Publicity shot for Lamborghini LP500 Countach, 1971.

The Lamborghini LP500 Countach prototype which, on debut, made such an impact at the 1971 Geneva Show Salon, is sometimes listed as being painted in Giallo Fly but it was really a different mix, listed in the factory archives as Giallo Fly Speciale.  The lines are now essentially "supercar orthodoxy" but in 1971, although not wholly novel, they seemed other-worldly.  In 1974, the car was destroyed in a crash test at England’s MIRA (Motor Industry Research Association) facility but in 2021 an almost exact replica was built by Polo Storico (the factory’s historical centre), the paint exactly re-created.  Despite the impression which lingered into the 1980s, giallo was never the “official” color of Lamborghini, but variations of the shade have become much associated with the brand and in the public imagination, the factory’s Giallo Orion probably has become something of a signature shade.  When Lamborghini first started making cars in the early 1960s (it was a manufacturer of tractors!) no official color was designated but the decision was taken to use bold, striking colors (yellow, orange, and a strikingly lurid green) to differentiate them from Ferraris which then were almost twice as likely than today to be some shade of red.

Lamborghini factory yellows, 2024.

Over the years, the factory’s palette would change but the emphasis on bright “energetic” hues remained.  Customers are no longer limited to what’s in the brochure and, for a fee, one’s Lamborghini can be finished in any preferred shade, a service offered also by many manufacturers although Ferrari apparently refuse to “do pink”.  An industry legend is that according to Enzo Ferrari’s (1898-1988) mistress (Fiamma Breschi (1934-2015)), when the original Ferrari 275 GTB (1964-1968) appeared in a bright yellow, it was to be called Fiamma Giallo (Flame Yellow) but Commendatore Ferrari himself renamed it to Giallo Fly (used in the sense of “flying”) which he thought would be easier to market and he wasted to keep a word starting with “F”.  Both Ferrari and Lamborghini at times have had Giallo Fly in their color charts.

Ferrari Enzo (Tipo F140, named after the company's founder: Commendatore Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988)) in Giallo Modena.

Not everybody is fond of yellow cars but there are those who either overlook or like the hue because in January 2026 a 2003 Ferrari Enzo in Giallo Modena realized at auction almost US$18 Million, making it the most expensive Enzo ever across the block.  Record-setting prices for Ferraris are far from unusual but this Enzo nearly tripled the model’s previous mark of US$6.26 million set in 2023.  The sale was achieved at the Mecum Kissimmee event and although observers noted the thing “ticked every box” on the collector car clipboard, the price exceeded all expectations.  Among the many boxes ticked were:

Low mileage (649 miles (1044 km).
Matching numbers: (Serial # 135262; Engine # 79700; Gearbox # 280; Body # 108).
1 of 400 built (2002-2004), 127 of which were delivered in the US.
1 of 36 finished Giallo Modena (paint code DS 4305) 11 of which were delivered in the US.
Factory custom Rosso and Giallo “Daytona style” seats in leather with stitched Enzo Ferrari signature.
Schedoni luggage set.
Ferrari Classiche certified with Red Book.
A number of unique features installed by the factory including polished engine bay braces and body-color lower trim & rear diffuser panel (rather than the usual black).

All original paperwork including window sticker, bBooks, manuals & tools along with a binder of photographs, supplementary documentation and a car cover.

1962 Ferrari 250 GTO in Bianco Speciale.

Only time will tell whether the Enzo's sale price will be an outlier or prove part of what’s claimed to be “a trend” in which was part of a larger trend in which the rarest and most desirable of the later model “analog” Ferraris are beginning to rival the historical dominance of the pre-modern (pre 1973) cars.  It can be hard to pick a “trend” from “a phase the market is going through” and was interesting was the sale at the same auction for US$38.5 million of the most analog of all Ferraris: a 1962 250 GTO.  The GTO was notable for being the only one of the three-dozen odd made (there a different ways of calculating the build but most NRS (normally reliable sources) quote 36) finished in Bianco Speciale and thus “the only white 250 GTO”; while US$38.5 million is a lot of money, expectation had been it may be bid well over US$50 million.  The car had a solid but not exceptional period history and it was thought the genuine uniqueness of the paint may nudge things quite high (a 250 GTO has sold for over US$70 million) but as well as the vagaries of the supply & demand, factors influencing the result were thought to be (1) the non-original engine and (2) it being RHD (right-hand drive).  Still, it’s a 250 GTO and at that price may yet prove a bargain.

1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spider (Chassis #09437) in Giallo Solare (left), Lady Gaga (the stage-name of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (b 1986)) in Rodarte dress at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party, Los Angeles, March 2022 (centre) and 2010 Ferrari 599 SA Aperta (chassis #181257) in Giallo Lady Gaga (right).

Factory paint tag: Giallo Lady Gaga.

Ferrari over the decades have offered many shades of yellow including Ardilla Amarillo, Ardilla Amarillo Opaco, Giallo Dino, Giallo Fly, Giallo Kuramochi, Giallo Lady Gaga, Giallo Libano, Giallo Modena, Giallo Montecarlo, Giallo Montecarlo Opaco, Giallo My Swallow, Giallo Nancy, Giallo Senape, Giallo Solare, Giallo Triplo Strato & Yellow Olive Magno Opaco and one suspects the job of mixing the shades might be easier than coming up with an appropriately evocative name.  One color upon which the factory seems never to have commented is Giallo Lady Gaga which seems to have been a genuine one-off, applied to a 599 SA Aperta, one of 80 built in 2010.  The car is seen usually in Gstaad, Switzerland and the consensus is it was a special order from someone although quite how Lady Gaga inspired the shade isn’t known.  As a color, it looks very close to Giallo Solare, the shade the factory applied to the 275 GTB/4 NART Spider used in the Hollywood film The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) which was re-painted in burgundy because the darker shade worked better for the cinematographer.  The car had come second in class in the 1967 Sebring 12 Hours (with two female drivers) and was one of only two of the ten NART Spiders will aluminium coachwork.

Coat of arms of the municipality of Modena in the in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy (left), cloisonné shield on 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Berlinetta in Giallo Dino (centre) (the band of silver paint across the nose appears on the early-build Daytonas fitted with the revised frontal styling (the acrylic headlight glass covers used between 1968-1970 were banned by US regulations) and stick-on badge on 1975 Dino 308 GT4 in Rosso Corsa (right).  Not all approve of the stickers (unless applied by the factory) and although they seem to be dying off, there are pedants who insist they should never appear on Dinos made between 1967-1975 (which were never badged as Ferraris).

Lindsay Lohan in a yellow piece from Stella McCartney's (b 1971) Spring 2025, the New York Post's Alexa magazine, 5 December, 2024.  The closest match to this color on Lamborghini's chart would be Giallo Spica.

Just as yellow came to be associated with Lamborghini, red is synonymous with Ferraris and in 2024, some 40% are built in some shade of red, a rate about half of what was prevalent during the 1960s.  The most famous of Ferrari’s many reds remains Rosso Corsa (racing red) and that’s a legacy from the early days of motor sport when countries were allocated colors (thus “Italian Racing Red”, “British Racing Green” etc) and yellow was designated for Belgium and Brazil.  On the road and the circuits, there have been many yellow Ferraris, the first believed to been one run in 1951 by Chico Landi (1907-1989) a Brazilian privateer who won a number of events in his home country and the Belgium teams Ecurie Nationale Belge and Ecurie Francorchamps both used yellow Ferraris on a number of occasions.  If anything, yellow is at least “an” official Ferrari color because it has for decades been the usual background on the Ferrari shield and that was chosen because it is an official color of Modena, the closest city to the Ferrari factory, hence the existence of Giallo Modena.

Monochrome

Monochrome (pronounced mon-uh-krohm)

(1) A painting or other object in a single color (or different shades of a single color) (now rare).

(2) The art or technique of producing such a painting or drawing.

(3) A “black-and-white” photograph or transparency (an image reproduced in tones of gray).

(4) By analogy, something devoid of any distinctive or stimulating characteristics; bland or colourless.

(5) In ceramics, a ceramic glaze of a single colour; an object so glazed.

1655-1665: From the Medieval Latin monochrōma (painting or drawing done in different tints of a single color) from the Ancient Greek μονόχρωμος (monókhrōmos or monokhrōmatos) (of the one colour), the construct being μόνος (mónos) (one; single; alone), from the primitive Indo-European root men- (small, isolated) + χρῶμα (khrôma) (genitive khrōmatos) (colour; complexion, skin).  In Classical Latin, the most-used form was monochromos (literally “having one color”).  The sense it’s understood in photography dates from 1940 when (presumably almost instantly), the verbal shorthand became “mono”, exactly the same pattern of use when the need arose to distinguish between color printers and those using only black consumables.  The word was used as an adjective after 1849 although monochromatic (of one color, consisting of light of one wavelength and probably based either on the French monochromatique or the Ancient Greek monokhrōmatos) had been used thus since at least 1807 (presumably it pre-dated this because the adverb monochromatically is documented since 1784.  The alternative forms are both self-explanatory: unicolour used usually single solids and monotint, rare and used mostly as a technical term in art-production where, properly, it describes a reproduction of a multi-color image using just shades of a single color.  Monochrome is a noun & adjective, monochromat, monochromacy, monochromaticity, monochromaticity, monochromator, monochromy & monochromist are nouns, monochromic is an adjective and monochromatically is an adverb; the noun plural is monochromes.

Monochromic images of Lindsay Lohan smoking.

The classic mono laser printer of the late twentieth century: Hewlett-Packard LaserJet III (1990) in the HP Museum.

In the narrow technical sense, a monochromic image is composed of one colour or values of one colour (technically also called a monotint).  In modern use, a linguistic paradox exists because an image consisting of just one colour (eg red, yellow, blue etc) is not usually described as monochrome yet most images rendered in multiple gradations of gray-scale (just about any image described as black & white) almost always are.  For most purposes, in casual use, monochrome versus colour is a binary describing both the devices used in the production process and the output.  There’s also a scientific quirk.  Monochromatic light is electromagnetic radiation of a single frequency but, no source of this exists because that would demand a wave of infinite duration which the laws of physics don’t permit.

In fashion, the monochromatic is a place on the continuum of tonality, the effect at its most dramatic when tied to a model’s skin-tone, hair and eye-color.  In truth, what matters most is sometimes less how she appears in the flesh than how well the effect translates to photographs, something complicated by certain combinations suffering under natural light and suited only to artificial environments.  For that reason, when the most uncompromising monochrome ensembles are seen, there’s always the suspicion filters and post-production have played a part.

Lindsay Lohan at the Christian Siriano Fall 2023 show, New York Fashion Week, February 2023.

Slurring effortlessly into the auburn hair, the satin two-piece used shades of copper, burnt orange and peach, the spectrum not disturbed by anything intrusive, a shimmering peach-infused copper eye shadow with flared lashes blended by chocolate eye pencil, a luminescent focus achieved with satin glossed lips while apricot blush and bronzer was applied with an austerity which many should emulate; all part of the monochromatic moment.

Lamborghinis in Giallo Fly, clockwise from top left: 1969 Miura P400 S, 1973 Jarama 400 GT, 1988 Jalpa and 1976 Countach LP400 Periscopio,  A solid yellow color first offered by Lamborghini on the Miura in 1968, Giallo Fly translates literally as "yellow fly" but is best understood in English as “Fly Yellow” with the “fly” element used not as a noun (ie the annoying insect) but in the way Italians use the English adjective “fly” with the sense of “flashy, stylish, eye-catching”.  That sentiment must have been in the mind of the Jalpa owner who had the wheels also finished in Giallo Fly, the factory never that committed to monochromaticity.

Mongoose

Mongoose (pronounced mong-goos or mon-goos)

(1) Slender, ferret-like carnivores, any small predatory viverrine mammal of the genus Herpestes edwardsi and related genera, occurring in Africa and from southern Europe to South-East Asia, typically having a long tail and brindled coat; feeds on rodents, birds, and eggs, noted especially for its ability to kill cobras and other venomous snakes; known in Italian as the mangusta.

(2) Any of several other animals of this genus or related genera.

(3) Any species of the Malagasy mongoos; only distantly related to the Herpestidae, these are members of the family Eupleridae; they resemble mongooses in appearance and habits, but have larger ears and ringed tails.

1698: From the Portuguese mangusto, from the Marathi मुंगूस (muṅgūs), from the Old Marathi muṁgusa, from the Telugu ముంగిస (muṅgisa).  The Portuguese mangusto was concocted to refer to the "snake-killing ichneumon of India, from an Indic language (of which the Mahrathi variations are the best known), probably ultimately from Dravidian.  Other Indian forms documented during the Raj were the Telugu mangisu, the Kanarese mungisi and the Tamil mangus.  The English form is mongoose but in most languages where the word exists, it’s as a variation of the Portuguese mangusto (mangusta the spelling in Italian, Polish and Lithuanian).  In the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries, the spelling in English was mungoose, derived from the names used in India including the Hindi muṅgūs (maṅgūs in the classical Hindi), the Marathi muṅgūs, the Telugu mungisa and the Kannada munguli, mungi & mungisi, the form displacing the native Old English nǣderbita (literally “snake biter”). The spelling mungoose emerged in 1698, the “-goose” part adopted by virtue of folk etymology with goose and the noun plural is mongooses, not the occasionally seen mongeese, the mistake an understandable by-product of the example of "goose" and an example of why English must sometimes seem strange to those learning the language. There is no accepted collective noun, suggestions including troop, committee and delegation.  The correct plural is mongooses because of the origin in India; the plural thus built in the regular English way.  Goose is different and one of only seven common nouns (all of which can be traced back to the Old English) in which changing a vowel in the middle is involved in the construction of a plural.  Three are beasts (louse/lice; mouse/mice & goose/geese) two are body parts (foot/feet & tooth/teeth) and two are humans (man/men & woman/women).  The woman/women this is unique in that the first vowel also changes sound, even though the “o” stays in place.

The mongoose is a small terrestrial carnivorous mammal of the family Herpestidae, split into two subfamilies, the Herpestinae and the Mungotinae; in the former there are some two-dozen species native to southern Europe, Africa and Asia while the later exists in half that number, all native to Africa.  A famously efficient hunter of snakes, in the 1870s, mongooses were introduced to the Caribbean colony of St Lucia as a control measure against the deadly fer-de-lance (from either the French or Créole and translated variously as “iron of the lance”, “iron spear point”, “lancehead” or “spearhead”), the local name for the Terciopelo (Bothrops asper), a species of pit viper.  The voracious little killers proved more effective than the Governor's bounty of sixpence per fer-de-lance which had yielded a disappointing 1200 victims in seven months.

Mongooses enjoying morning tea, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda: The interaction between the mongoose and the usually disagreeable common warthog (Phacochoerus africanus; an un-domesticated member of the pig family (Suidae) endemic in the savanna & forests of sub-Saharan Africa) is an example of symbiosis in nature.  In what behavioral zoologists call a "mutualistic partnership" (which they distinguish from true symbiosis), a resting warthog will allow mongooses to gather and perform some grooming, snacking on the annoying biting ticks which infest their coats.  

The De Tomaso Mangusta

Dance of death: Cobra and Mongoose.

Argentine-born Alejandro de Tomaso (1928-2003) in 1955 fled to his father’s native Italy after being linked to a plot to overthrow President Juan Perón (1895–1974; Argentine president 1946-1955 & 1973-1974).  In Latin America, that wasn’t something at the time unusual, young, middle-class men having long been attracted to scheming against left-wing rulers to the point where in some families, it was a calling.  In Italy, he married a rich heiress, spending her money to go racing (without notable success) and, (rather more productively), building fast cars.

Shelby American Cobra: Fiftieth Anniversary 427 SC Continuation (2014, 50 of which were built, allocated serial #CSX4500-CSX4599).

In 1964, he met Le Mans winner, Carroll Shelby (1923–2012), famous also for his Anglo-American hot-rod, the AC Shelby Cobra.  They entered into an agreement to build racing cars for the up-coming Can-Am series but squabbles between the two ensued, the arrangement ending in acrimony.  De Tomaso continued to develop the vehicle, this time as a road car which, in revenge, he named Mangusta (mongoose), a beast renowned for its skill in hunting and killing snakes including Cobras.  Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro (b 1938) of Ghia, between 1967-1971 some four-hundred Mangustas were produced and although the details are contested, the 150-odd are said to have been powered by the same highly-tuned 289 cubic-inch (4.7 litre) Ford (Windsor) V8 as the most numerous of Shelby’s Cobras, the remainder using a milder 302 (4.9 litre) Windsor for the lucrative US market, the 302 compliant with their more onerous emission regulations.

1969 De Tomaso Mangusta (289).

Achingly lovely though it was, adapting a race car for the road necessitates compromises and the Mangusta had not a few.  A 32/68% front/rear weight distribution delights racing-car drivers but induces characteristics likely to frighten everybody else and the interior was cramped, something tolerated in competition vehicles but not endearing to buyers looking for something with which to impress the bourgeoisie.  However, it sold well enough to encourage de Tomaso to pursue the concept and the better designed (if less beautiful) replacement, the Pantera (Italian for "panther"), lasted from 1971 to 1993, over seven-thousand being sold, some with the Australian-built Ford 351 (5.8 litre) V8 (which continued usually to be referred to as the "Cleveland" (a reference to the Ohio plant where the US versions were first built) even though most of the blocks were cast in the foundry attached to Ford Australia's manufacturing facility in Geelong, Victoria.  The idea of a "351 Geelong" never caught on but a footnote in Ford's V8 history is the Australians also concocted a unique "302 Cleveland" (all other pre-modern 302s using the earlier "Windsor" block).

1970 De Tomaso Mangusta (289).

As a road car, the Mangusta was fundamentally so flawed it really couldn’t be fixed; seen first in 1966, it came from those innocent times before Ralph Nader (b 1934) got politicians interested drawing up rules, some of which admittedly were both desirable and overdue.  However, even had it been possible to re-engineer the thing into something well-behaved enough for real people safely to drive (and what Porsche's engineers achieved with the 911 proved such things could be done), there was no way it could have been adapted to conform to the laws which began with severity to be imposed in the 1970s.  The solution was the Pantera, designed with a copy of the regulations in one hand and a cheque from the Ford Motor Company in the other, FoMoCo interested in having in their showrooms a competitor for Chevrolet’s Corvette.  Discarding the Mangusta’s steel backbone chassis for a steel unibody, with a 44/56% front/rear weight distribution, inherently the Pantera was safer in non-expert hands and contemporary testers praised the handling characteristics.  Its sales volumes never challenged those of the Corvette but in the four years it was available in the US through Ford's Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, well over 5000 were sold although Ford was required to inject significant resources to ensure quality control was maintained (infamously, the US singer Elvis Presley (1935-1977) one morning shot his when it refused to start).  

1972 De Tomaso Pantera.

This time, De Tomaso used the 351 cubic inch version of Ford's new 335 series (Cleveland) V8, which, although somewhat bigger and heavier than the earlier Windsor, did offer some advantages in that it was designed with emission controls in mind and used a more efficient cylinder head.  None of that much helped in the market conditions which prevailed in the recession induced after the first oil shock in 1973 and sales declined to the point where Ford concluded any continuing investment was no longer viable; in 1975 the arrangement with De Tomaso was terminated.  After the withdrawal from the US market, De Tomaso maintained production on a smaller scale, the majority sold in Europe and it enjoyed a long Indian summer, the final examples not leaving the factory until 1993 by which time output had slowed to a trickle; the final count when production ended after 19 years was 7260.  After 1988, there was a switch to the Windsor V8 because Ford Australia (Cleveland V8 production moved to the Geelong foundry after 1974), reacting to both the second oil shock in 1979 and changing customer behavior, in 1983 closed the line (they would later realize that had been a mistake and in 1991 began importing US built V8s which would remain available until the Australian operation was closed in 2016).  De Tomaso accordingly warehoused Australian 351s which powered the Panteras until the stockpile was exhausted.

1985 De Tomaso Pantera GTS.

Disappointingly, despite on paper appearing to possess a promising specification, there was never a stellar career in competition although factory support was offered and private teams ran regular campaigns.  Conspiracy theorists have long attributed the paucity of success to the more established players like Ferrari and Porsche having undue influence on the regulatory bodies (such as the habitually dopey Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation)), nudging them always in directions favouring their machines.  It had been done before.  Doubts had always been expressed about the suitability of the Cleveland engine for competition because the lubrication system lacked the passages which made the Windsor so robust but there were work-arounds for that and the factory arranged small runs of Panteras which conformed to the FIA's Group 3 and Group 4 racing regulations (some of which owners later converted to Group 5 specifications) but consistent success proved elusive.  De Tomaso however knew his market.  Even if he couldn’t often beat the Porsches and Ferraris on the track, as the years went by the Panteras adopted increasingly wild styling and they certainly looked the part although it'll always be remembered as a car for the boulevard rather than the track, one in 1972 memorably awarded to Playboy's playmate of the year (PotY), finished in the magazine's then traditional pink.

1991 De Tomaso Pantera 90 Si in Giallo Cromo (chrome yellow) over Nero (black) leather.

For its final run, the bodywork was updated by Bertone’s Marcello Gandini (1938–2024) and given the designation Pantera 90 Si, 41 of which would be built; two were sacrificed to crash-testing, one (chassis #9641) was allocated to the de Tomaso museum and 38 were offered for general sale.  The touches of Gandini (noted for his work on Lamborghini’s Miura (1966-1973) & Countach (1974-1990, first displayed in 1971), the Lancia Stratos HF (1973-1978) and Alfa Romeo Carabo (1968)) were more subtle than previous revisions to the design.  The 90 Si (it was sold in the UK market as the Pantera 90) used the Windsor 302 (Type 99E) although it was much updated from the unit which had powered the US bound Mangustas two decades earlier, fitted with electronic fuel injection, revised cylinder heads, camshafts, pistons valves and intake manifolds.  The underpinnings were also modernized with revised suspension geometry and the addition of ventilated and cross-drilled disc brakes, the four-piston Brembo calipers familiar from the appearance on the Ferrari F40 (1987-1992).

1991 De Tomaso Pantera 90 Si in Rosso Corsa (racing red) over Beige leather.

Based on the GT5S, beneath the skin was used a modified version of the original steel unibody, now featuring a tubular rear subframe for the engine, transaxle and suspension, the new design both lighter and more rigid.  The wheels were 17 inch Fondmetal cast in magnesium wheels (the front 9 inches wide, the rear 12) which replaced the various Campagnolo units used since 1971; originally they were shod with Michelin MXX tyres (235/45ZR/17 front, 335/35/ZR/17 rear).  Supplied from the US in the form fitted to the Ford Mustang (with a 9.0:1 compression ratio (CR) and rated at 225 hp at 4200 rpm), de Tomaso’s modifications included lifting the CR to 11.0 and the factory claimed 305 hp at 5800 rpm, a number more plausible than the 306 hp Shelby American allocated (somewhat arbitrarily) to the original 289 Cobras.  The 90 Si continued to use the 5-speed ZF transaxle but two (chassis # 9637 & 9639) were fitted with Getrag 6-speed units.

1991 De Tomaso Pantera 90 Si in Rosso Corsa (racing red) over Beige leather.

With air-conditioning, electric windows, a CD player, wood veneer inserts on the dash, centre console and door panels and much leather, the 90 Si was the most lavishly appointed Pantera ever.  The mechanical modifications made it also the best behaved and most civilized but although the design brief had included making it suitable to be certified for sale in the US, none were exported there and the recession of the early 1990s saw demand for such machines collapse and sales never approached the optimistic expectation of 75 a year justified its conception and development.  Production ceased late in 1993.  One was even made in RHD (right-hand-drive) and in the UK the importer (Emilia Concessionaires) offered the option of twin turbochargers, advertising it as the Pantera 200 (an allusion to the claimed top speed of 200 mph (322 km/h) although it seems not certain that was ever verified.

1993 1991 De Tomaso Pantera 90 Si Targa by Carrozzeria Ernesto Pavesi in Stratos Blu (blue) over Beige Leather.  This is chassis #9637, one of two with a Getrag 6-speed transaxle.

Between 1993-1994, four of the 38 90Si Panteras (chassis #9636, 9637, 9638 & 9639) were converted to targas by Carrozzeria Ernesto Pavesi (1929-2012), a coach-building house with a decades-long association with Alejandro de Tomaso, the company having produced the 14 Longchamp spyders (and reputedly also the two convertible Maserati Kyalamis which were Longchamp-based).  The quality of Pavesi's work attracted the attention of some Longchamp owners who had their cars converted to spyders.   Founded in Milan by Ernesto Pavesi (1901-1974) in 1929, Carrozzeria Ernesto Pavesi (1929-2012) proved adaptable to a changing environment and survived the Great Depression, World War II (1939-1945) and the post-war decline of coach-building but succumbed finally to the effects of the GFC (global financial crisis, 2008-2012).  Pavesi completed the last of the four Pantera Targas in 1994, demand further hampered by it being some 50% more expensive than the coupé.