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January 8, 2025 — At a glance, the Maserati Kyalami and the De Tomaso Longchamp could pass for badge-engineered twins: the same steel coupe body, the same Modena production years, and the same man — Alejandro de Tomaso — pulling strings at both marques. Look closer, though, and you find two genuinely different grand tourers. The Longchamp was conceived around a hearty American V8; the Kyalami was re-engineered around Maserati's sophisticated four-cam motor. They share a silhouette, but not a soul.
One factory, two badges
The story opens with a corporate rescue. Citroën absorbed Maserati in 1968, but the 1970s oil crisis and heavy losses broke the French parent's finances. After Citroën collapsed, Maserati passed through state hands before Alejandro de Tomaso — the Argentinian-born entrepreneur already building the Pantera — took the reins in 1976. The Kyalami, unveiled at the Geneva motor show in March of that year, was one of the first Maseratis of the de Tomaso era.
The twist is that the Kyalami stood on the same floorpan as the Longchamp, a De Tomaso model on sale since 1972. With one man running both companies, sharing sheetmetal made obvious financial sense. Yet the kinship is mostly skin-deep. The cars share a body originally drawn by Tom Tjaarda, the Italian-American designer behind the Deauville, but the Maserati version speaks a different visual language. The most obvious tell is the face: the Kyalami wears a quartet of round headlamps set into a tauter grille, while the Longchamp keeps a low, rectangular-lamp arrangement. Same shell, different stare.
Under the bonnet: Ford, then a Trident
The Longchamp was never intended to be shy. Early North American cars carried Ford's 351 Cleveland V8, a pushrod 5.8-litre engine that delivered torque in the relaxed, elastic American idiom. European deliveries increasingly used the 5.7-litre Ford Windsor, and a five-speed manual appeared later in the catalogue. In every version, the Longchamp's temperament stayed closer to a well-dressed muscle car than to a hard-edged Italian exotic. Its finest role was as a long-distance automatic cruiser.
The Kyalami changed the plot entirely. Under its bonnet sat Maserati's own quad-camshaft V8 in 4.2- or 4.9-litre form — the engine family that powered the company's Indy and Khamsin. The 4.9-litre version produced roughly 280 bhp in European tune and gave the Kyalami a factory-stated top speed in the region of 150 mph. More tellingly, it transformed the character of the car. Where the Ford grumbled, the Maserati unit revved freely and sang through its exhausts with a Latin urgency unknown to the De Tomaso. The V8's eagerness to spin changed the entire driving experience, and a ZF five-speed manual completed the transformation. With that gearbox, the Kyalami began to feel like a genuine super-GT; the Longchamp, by contrast, was happiest when left alone to cruise.
Two names, two messages
The naming alone reveals how differently each car was pitched. Longchamp calls up the famous Paris racecourse — leisure, elegance, a place to be seen. Kyalami borrows its name from the South African grand prix circuit, which sounds like a promise of lap times. A Maserati named after a race track had to behave like a thoroughbred, and that promise lived in the engine bay rather than the styling.
Small numbers, big personalities
Neither model sold in volume. The Longchamp ran from 1972 to 1989 with total production in the region of 430 units. The Kyalami's run lasted only until 1983, with roughly 190 examples built — rare by any measure. Its timing is significant. After 1982, Maserati's future belonged to the Biturbo and its many derivatives; the Kyalami was the company's last old-school flagship, a hand-built big-V8 coupe closing out an era. The Longchamp, by contrast, quietly outlived it, lingering into the final years of the 1980s as a stubbornly analogue V8 grand tourer.
How the market sorts them out
Collectors behave as though the two cars belong to different worlds. Kyalami buyers are Maserati people, often chasing the final model powered by the traditional four-cam V8; the 4.9-litre versions attract the strongest attention and the heftiest prices. Longchamp buyers come from another corner — drawn to De Tomaso's racy Pantera lineage and to the practicality of a Ford V8 served by a parts network that still works today. Auction records consistently place a good Kyalami above an equivalent Longchamp, and long-term valuation guides from the likes of Hagerty reinforce that ordering, even though neither car has entered the speculative stratosphere of the great 1970s Italian legends.
The right choice depends on what you want
Practical advice is refreshingly clear. The Longchamp is the sensible end of the pair: tractable, fixable, deeply torquey, and happy to be maintained by an American V8 specialist. It makes a superb entry into Italian-styled 1970s GTs without the full Italian maintenance bill.
The Kyalami is the emotional one. Buy it for the motor, the badge and the rarity, and prepare for the consequences: a quad-cam Maserati V8 needs an expert hand, and parts are scarcer than Ford items. When it is right, though, the reward is one of the great sounds of the decade — a broad-shouldered V8 that climbs the rev range with a hard edge no pushrod engine can mimic.
The verdict
None of this denies the bond between the two cars. They are genuinely kin — same drafting office, same company town, same boss, same fundamental shell. But a shared silhouette does not make a shared character. The Longchamp is a sporty luxury coupe that happened to be built in Italy; the Kyalami is a Maserati that happens to share its outline with a De Tomaso. For owners and collectors, that distinction means everything. The two may have emerged from the same stable, but under the bonnet — and behind the wheel — they pull in different directions. Same body, different hearts.
