GT4 in the making

I discovered this photo of a 1:1 scale maquette of the Dino GT4 in a book recently, and was quite excited, as I had never seen this photo before.  It's interesting to note the more flamboyant treatments of the air intakes and outlets when compared to the more restrained final design.  Gandini also did well by adding the additional character line along the flank of the final car to break up the vertical mass of the body. That line is absent on this early study. The elegant and subtle hood creases on the final car are also not yet defined on the unadorned nose area.

The production rear end treatment and bumpers are also far more delightful and nuanced than this maquette, meaning, I would assume, that this is one of the earliest full scale models made. Note that the maquette is described as a clay model, but I believe that Bertone and the other Italian design houses worked primarily in plaster models at the time, with clay being more prevalent in Detroit.

Friday Moment of Zen

The carrozzerie of the 60s and 70s had a certain formula for publicity photos.  Usually the car was parked in a gravel quarry or in front of a modernist building and a chick in an outlandish outfit is draped over the car. Here is an example par excellence submitted by our friend Off Camber.

The car is the 1969 Ferrari 512S Berlinetta Speciale by Pininfarina.

Streamlining at its best

I love this 1952 Salt Flat racer featured on KarzNShit recently. It combines the very best of Auto Union's prewar aero ideas with the best of 1950s hot rodding for one super sexy, super sleek speed form. Wow.

Click over to see a whole bunch more amazing photos...

PS, just wanted to point out--look at how much nicer the graphics and numbers look on the restored car than how they actually looked in period! Talk about taking creative liberty in the name of aesthetic improvement!

38 years on, the Khamsin is sexier than ever.

Marcello Gandini's Maserati Khamsin is, in my opinion, possibly the most beautiful car Italy produced in the 1970s.  Part of the reason I bought my Dino GT4 is that it shares many of the same themes in terms of surface treatment and design detailing, yet at a more attainable pricepoint and with better performance. Click the photos below to see the entire original sales catalogue in all its retro-fantastic glory.

For your consideration: Bertone Rainbow Prototype

The same year my Dino's body was built in the Bertone factory, Marcello Gandini and his team were creating this wedge-like design study also based on the Ferrari 308 mechanicals.  Clearly, these themes never made it into any production Ferrari. But you can see many elements here that would find their way into several small sports cars of the 80s, particularly from Japan.  At this time, Japanese automakers had yet to emerge, butterfly-like from their mimetic, unimaginative cocoons.  But collaborations between Italian styling houses and Japanese automakers began to bear fruit. Radical Italian ideas of the mid 70s became the new Japanese look of the 80s, and the wedge went from avante garde to mainstream.