Photography by David Gooley
L’Arte dell’Automobile
February 4, 2003
Importantly, because of the carrozzerias’ facilities and abilities, it was still possible at the coachbuilders’ zenith for a customer to have just about anything he wanted. Today some of the most dramatic customization happens under the watch of tuners, who significantly alter engines, suspensions and bodywork. But imagine sitting down with a designer and specifying a car from the ground up. Most customers at that time did not do that; rather, they selected from the limited production designs a carrozzeria might offer. But, it was entirely possible. Say you loved the Lamborghini Murciélago’s engine but wanted yours in a voluptuous convertible. In the 1950s it was yours for the asking. One client asked Frua to design a two-door convertible on a Rolls-Royce Phantom VI chassis. Frua happily obliged, even though most Phantom VI buyers requested the body the chassis was designed for: a limousine with three rows of seats.
Commissioning a car from one of the carrozzerias would have put you in illustrious company. These cars were not inexpensive, and client lists had a decided jet-set quality—the Aga Khan, King Leopold III of Belgium, Generalissimo Franco and a motley assortment of movie stars and rock singers represented a cross section of these cars’ buyers. Rather like what everyone hopes for in a family tree, it is hard to dig too far through such a car’s provenance without bumping into a royal title. Some of these models enjoy an exclusivity rivaled only by the Rolls-Royce Phantom IV, which in theory was sold only to heads of state or a member of a royal family.
Pininfarina cozied up to Ferrari during the 1950s and ’60s, supplanting the flashier Vignale—and its usual designer Giovanni Michelotti—from its former dominance there. As noted above, Pininfarina’s reign did not exclude other carrozzerias from executing designs on Ferrari’s chassis, but most of Ferrari’s clientele asked for Pininfarina. Over the course of these decades, this meant a plethora of limited runs, from an extensive variety of 250GTs to the Superamericas to multiple variants on the 365.
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