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The age-old art of custom coachbuilding has not been widely seen since its decline in the late 1950s, but lately there is a lot of interest in one-off, bespoke body designs. Coachbuilding, not to be confused with mere modification, is the creation of a car that is truly, utterly bespoke. Based on well-liked and exclusive sports cars – often Ferraris – that have, in their owners’ minds reached a point of near-ubiquity, these pièces-unique would never be mistaken for anything but completely exclusive. Collectors are willing to spend millions of dollars to have their Ferrari look unlike any other seen before.
One man who has been a key player in the resurgence of coachbuilding is American filmmaker James Glickenhaus, whose recent customization of his prized Ferrari Enzo created a stir at the recent 2006 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California. The Pininfarina P4/5 was met with much applause when it was revealed and, at an estimated cost of US$4 million above the price of the donor car, so it should. Another man with a similar collection of iconic Ferraris is Yoshiyuki Hayashi, who also recently commissioned, for an undisclosed amount, his very own coachbuilt Ferrari, the 575 GTZ from Zagato.
What was it that drove these men to transform these already magnificent machines? In the case of Mr Hayashi, Zagato wanted a fitting tribute to the 50-year old 250 GTZ that is one of the most valuable cars around. The two entities agreed that a modern reinterpretation of this icon would make a lovely addition to the well-known Japanese collector's prized garage of famous Ferraris. The Italian design-house behind many a special Ferrari or Aston Martin was keen to showcase, once again, its fine talents.
In the case of Mr Glickenhaus, Pininfarina, the other famous Italian design firm behind so many gorgeous Ferraris past and present, was interested in making a bespoke, Enzo-based supercar, and the wealthy Glickenhaus agreed to the project. He had just purchased the last Enzo bound for America and was not particularly satisfied with its looks. He already owned a fabulous looking 1960s P330 racecar, and wanted his bespoke Enzo to reflect the racecar's purposeful styling. The result is something that has far exceeded everybody's imagination.
In the early days of the automobile, and like the horse-drawn carriages that preceded them for hundreds of years, cars were built on a chassis that was separate from the body that was affixed to it. This was true of even the mass-produced cars of the age, like the ubiquitous Ford Model T. However, it was not until from the 1920s on that automobiles became truly beautiful, coach-built machines borne of the minds of stylistic geniuses.
The 1920s was a time of renewed interest in industrial design. Art Deco themes in architecture – as embodied by New York City’s Chrysler Building – were soon followed by a similar stylistic movement in the car world. Car manufacturers, especially high-end marques like Bugatti and Delahaye of the 1930s, and Cadillac with their 1940s V16 series, often built naked chasses complete with running gear that were then clothed in sensuous, personalized sheet metal by a dedicated auto body shop. Each carrozziere, or coachbuilder as these design houses were otherwise known, offered their own unique styles that customers could customize before it would be attached to a chassis.
Coachbuilders were not always small, boutique firms. Some companies with the requisite skill were retained on contract by the mainstream carmakers to create bodies in bulk for their mass-produced vehicles, such as Fisher Body whose affiliation with General Motors spawned hundreds of thousands of bodies.
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Likewise, the Park Ward and Mulliner coachworks formed very close partnerships with Rolls Royce and Bentley Motors. But in special cases, some of the more dedicated – and more exclusive – coachbuilders, such as Gangloff (who worked on many a Bugatti), Figoni et Falaschi (who created the iconic “teardrop” shape for Talbot), and Saoutchik, would custom design coachwork for their clients who often had specific ideas of what they wanted from their new automobile. The Bugatti Type 57, for example, was built in many different guises by many different carrosseries (to use the French term; karrosserie in German) to suit many different tastes over its 700-or-so run; the most famous of which is the “Atlantic” body shape that adorned the lower, sportier 57S chassis. Of the three Atlantics built, all were different, but the most famous, black-painted model is now part of the Ralph Lauren collection, and is probably priceless.
The heyday of the coach-built motorcar peaked in the mid-1930s, and unfortunately saw a sharp decline in the late 1950s. Since those early days, car companies have moved much of their bodyworks in-house, making the role of the specialist carrozziere more or less obsolete. In the case of luxury carmakers like Rolls-Royce and Jaguar, this was effected by integrating their longtime coachbuilders – Park Ward, Mulliner, and Vanden Plas to name a few – into their company. Since roughly the 1970s, and for reasons of weight, structural rigidity, and cost, the unibody construction method has more or less been adopted across the board, further negating the need for expensive custom coachbuilders. Legislation on crash safety has also done its part, unwittingly encouraging homogeneous designs that are becoming increasingly bulbous and amorphous in the interests of safety.
Which has all but left the coach-building industry, in its truest form, dead. Recently, however, there has been a resurgence in interest in design companies doing one-off custom coachwork for customers who want something truly, utterly bespoke.
We take a look at some of the latest and greatest examples of this resurrected craft.
Next page: Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina
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