Mastretta

This article is about the Mexican automaker. For the Mexican writer, see Ángeles Mastretta. For the Spanish musician, see Mastretta_(musician).

Mastretta

Type	private
Industry	Design Automotive
Founded	1987
Headquarters	Mexico City, Mexico
Key people	Daniel Mastretta Carlos Mastretta
Products	Various designs Automobiles Kit-cars Buses and trucks
Subsidiaries	Tecnoidea Unidiseño (1998)
Website	Mastretta Cars

Mastrettadesign Tecnoidea SA de CV (or simply Mastretta) is a Mexican car maker and design studio established by Mexican industrial designer Daniel Mastretta in Mexico City in 1987. Mastretta under Tecnoidea and Unidiseño brands has previously developed a small number of kit cars, but the 2010 MXT is the first fully self developed car . It often incorrectly claimed to be the first ever mass-production sports car completely designed and produced by Mexican engineers and designers, but Mexican automotive companies Dina and VAM had developed cars indigenously decades before. It is only the third Mexican high performance sports car ever; it was designed as a market competitor for the Lotus Elise.

History

Mastretta MXT driven by the Mastretta Brothers

During the 1990s, Mastretta focused on microbus (Mexico City metropolitan minibuses) body chassis and engineering as well as urban buses. This would lead to the construction of their first kit-car in 1998, the Unidiseño Mastretta MXA. The Unidiseño Mastretta was built over a Volkswagen Sedán (Mexican VW Type 1) chassis and platform; also, the VW Boxer inline-4 was used for the prototype but with 44 bhp (33 kW; 45 PS), the car reached a top speed of 127 km/h (79 mph). The few hand-made units were exported to Germany, Japan and the United States, where the kit-car marketing was attractive for many collectors at the time. Around two remain in Mexico but they're owned by Mastretta. A variation of the same model, the MXB was built. It featured different headlights and other minor modifications.

Automóvil Panamericano car magazine's February 1998 annual edition of Modelos (Models, a special catalogue with information about every commercial model on Earth and since that year, a few pages dedicated to kit-car makers) featured a paragraph on the Unidiseño Mastretta, and since then it hadn't been heard of it Nine years later, in their #149 issue for June 2007, the magazine would announce the production of Mastretta's third car, the MXT and now along Daniel Mastretta's company under the name of Tecnoidea. According to the magazine's article, the MXT is currently on its final stage for pre-production, which will start in early 2008. Also, it will mount a 200 bhp (149 kW; 203 PS) 2.3i engine which would allow the lightweight coupé to reach 230 km/h (143 mph) on top speed. Mastretta will open its first factory in late 2007 with a capacity of 150 cars per year.

Mastretta MXT

Main article: Mastretta MXT

Logo

Mastretta's logo features a non-sharped shield with the Mexican flag colours green, white and red and a diagonal black and white race strip in representation of the Mexican coat of arms, and to avoid confusion with the Italian flag. "Mastretta" appears on the top.

See also

• DINA S.A.
• Cars in Mexico

References

External links

• Mastretta Cars Manufacturer website