Photography by David Gooley
L’Arte dell’Automobile
February 4, 2003
The other carrozzerias focused on other domestic marques like Maserati, Alfa Romeo and Lancia. And unlike the earlier era in America and Europe, high fashion also made its way to fairly ordinary transportation. Open a book on the subject of carrozzerias and you will see just as many cars like Fiats suiting middle-class families as Ferraris destined for the superrich. The Fiats might not have had the sex appeal of the Ferraris, but they benefited from many of the same design principles. It is a pleasing note of egalitarianism in the midst of luxury goods. How often did coachbuilder James Young cast its glance away from Rolls-Royce to, say, Rover?
The carrozzerias also cast their nets into international waters. Touring, Bertone and Zagato all designed bodies for Aston Martin DBs, each with its own aesthetic approach. The Zagato berlinetta bears a strong resemblance to Pininfarina’s Ferraris of the same period, but maintains the Zagato trait of a strongly rounded nose; Plexiglas covers for recessed headlights aid in its uninterrupted line. The Bertone, by contrast, features protruding headlights mounted at the leading edge of each fender, and Touring’s version splits the difference. Despite these variations, each car can be clearly identified as an Aston Martin.
Italian design additionally found its way onto random one-off coachwork. Some of the less successful attempts by Frua, Ghia and Pininfarina involved Rolls-Royce. Perhaps because the proportions of the Rolls-Royce chassis did not mirror those of a Maserati or Ferrari, these bodies often came off as awkward. The monumental grille does not lend itself to graceful curves, and the rear three-
quarters views of these cars often appear strangely hunched. This might presage the general failure of Pininfarina’s design for the Rolls-Royce Camargue later in the ’70s; beauty being in the eye of the beholder, many can’t find it in the slab-sided Camargue.
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