Mastretta

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Mastretta
Type	Anonymous society (private)
Founded	1987
Headquarters	Alta Tensión 98, Alvaro Obregón, Mexico
Key people	Daniel Mastretta, owner and founder Carlos Mastretta
Industry	Design Automotive
Products	Various designs Automobiles Kit-cars Buses and trucks Street furniture
Employees	?
Subsidiaries	Tecnoidea Unidiseño (1998)
Website	Mastrettadesign

Mastrettadesign - Tecnoidea SA de CV (or simply Mastretta) is a Mexican car maker and design studio established by Mexican engineer and designer Daniel Mastretta in Mexico City in 1987. Mastretta under Tecnoidea and Unidiseño have previously developed a small number of kit cars, the MXT is their latest product. Considered to be the first ever serial-production car completely designed and produced by Mexican engineers and designers under a Mexican car maker (of which there are very few), and only the third Mexican sports car ever, it is designed as a direct rival for the Lotus Elise.

1 History
2 Logo
3 See also
4 Notes
5 Links

[edit] History

During the 1990s, Mastretta focused on peseros (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 (Spanish for Onedesign). 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), disappointing for its aggressive coupé body^[1]. The few units almost hand-made were exported to Germany 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.

To date, Mastretta Design has been responsible for the creation of various city buses for different enterprises in Mexico as well as bottling for several products and replica models (a 1955 Porsche Speedster and a 1958 Chevrolet Corvette).

[edit] Logo

Mastretta's logo development date is unknown but as shown in the Mastretta MXT, it features a non-sharped shield with the Mexican flag colours green, white and red and a diagonal black and white race strip maybe representing the eagle coat of arms, possibly to avoid confusion with the Italian flag. "Mastretta" appears on the top with silver letters.