Central to the whole project was an innovative production system called Univis. Former Lancia marketing chief Rossignolo has long harboured ambitions to use this patented system of aluminium component forming technology to manufacturer a range of cars with a spaceframe chassis. Dubbed Univis, this method only requires about 30 dies to build a vehicle. Univis technology was first used by Rayton-Fissore in the design of the Magnum SUV which debuted at the Turin Motor Show in 1985. That vehicle, which became the Laforza before going on sale in the U.S., was produced in small numbers up the early part of the last decade. The Laforza was based on an Iveco military jeep and used the Univis system to create a new tubular frame, which also added strength, fixed to the chassis via more than a dozen rubber mountings.

Originally Rossignolo had hoped to join forces with Bertone's stalled contract manufacturing division to produce a range of cars assembled using Univis. However the Turin court which was managing the liquidation of the failed design and engineering company quickly dismissed these plans.

Rossignolo (who in the meantime bought the idled De Tomaso name) then turned to another failing Turinese design company, Pininfarina, and acquired its contract manufacturing unit in Grugliasco, as well as handing over responsibility to the studio for the design of its first car, a large crossover. The Grugliasco buildings were quickly adorned with De Tomaso logos, but very little else happened to the large decaying complex before Rossignolo was evicted in the summer for nonpayment of the rent, according to Quattroruote magazine.

The 5.08 m long Deauville, when it appeared in public at the Geneva Motor Show in the spring, provoked a very mixed reaction, particularly as the entire interior appeared to had been lifted straight from the Cadillac SRX crossover, which led to suspicions that the showcar was just a rather bland reskin of this vehicle. De Tomaso promised a 300 hp/400 Nm 2.8 litre engine under the bonnet, 4x4, weight of 1850 kg and with a top speed of 250 km/h and a 0-100 km/h time of 6.7 seconds. Trying to bring this vehicle, with very little to visually distinguish it from the established pack, to the market and find a stream buyers (De Tomaso was targeting 3,000 units per year) would have been an optimistic task to achieve.

At the end of September the Wall Street Journal claimed that Rossignolo had found an Indian entrepreneur willing to pump 100 million euros into the project, but nothing further materialised of this news. Now Quattroruote reports that the design rights to the Deauville have been sold to an unnamed Chinese company for 12 million euros, which would at least provide some useful income to De Tomaso's empty coffers.

"The sale of the production license of the platform Deauville," Quattroruote quotes Gianluca Rossignolo as saying this week, "is proof that De Tomaso has developed a winning technology and the basis on which the entire business plan is practical. This is the first real agreement allowing De Tomaso to have cash assets and the premise is to give a future to the workers who believed in this project."

However the magazine also says that the workers will continue to be laid off through 2012 with the scheme possibly renewed in 2013. It adds that Rossignolo's next task will be to try resolve the dispute over the rent of the Grugliasco premises.