Even the most dedicated car enthusiasts may have forgotten (or never seen) the small fleet of Nissan prototypes designed and bodied by Italy's famed Carrozzeria Zagato in the late 80s and early 90s. The first of these was the the Autech Nissan Stelvio from 1988-89, commissioned by special products arm Autech (which was to NIssan a bit like AMG to Mercedes) and outfitted with outlandish deep tunnels atop the front fenders which do nothing more than house rear-view mirrors.
At the rear, visual disruption is provided by a deep ledge which runs around the car. This view shows that the mirror tunnels look no better from the rear than from the front. With 320 horses from Nissan's twin-turbo V6, the Stelvio was, if not a wolf in sheep's clothing, perhaps a wolf in a clown suit. It was a finalist in our Worst Car Designs post from 8-11-16.
Anyone who took a good look at the Stelvio likely wondered what the team of Nissan and Zagato would think up next. When the new car broke cover in 1992, it turned out to be the comparatively soothing Seta, whose gently rounded surfaces and vaguely chubby but persuasive proportions recalled Zagato's Aston Martin DB4 GTZ from thirty years earlier. A shot of that green Aston is provided below the silver Seta for an easy comparison. The Seta's rear view shows a tasteful suppression of visual distraction absent from the zany Stelvio. Note the small tail lights recalling 60s design...
The front 3/4 view shows the deft articulation of the rear fender fender form which flows into the car's flanks just aft of the door. This formal device, along with the glassy greenhouse and the way the fender vents relieve the surface aft of the front wheels, also recalls the Zagato Aston pictured below it. The Seta is less dramatic at the front, owing to the fashionable (but tiny) projector headlamps and the anonymous blandness of the air intakes (none of that on the old Aston).
The next product of the Nissan-Zagato collaboration was the 1993 Bambu, which returned to the wedge theme shown on Zagato's Alfa Romeo ES-30* from the same period (featured in our post of 8-11-16). The Bambu is less slab-sided than that Alfa, and features a subtle (maybe too subtle) version of the trademark twin-hump roof, plus a raised hood surface running from the windshield to the front air intake. Here however, there's no visual payoff as the shape of the air intake fails to follow the shape of the raised panel which points to it...
The Bambu design was least successful when viewed from the rear, where like the Alfa ES-30, it seemed as high as it was wide, and there was the impression that a nicely crafted piece of automotive art had been rear-ended by some kind of earth-mover...
Also in 1993, Zagato showed the Gavia, intended as a replacement for the hideous Stelvio, which (amazingly) was the only Zagato design to go into series production. Unsurprisingly, out of a planned production of 200 cars, only 104 Stelvios found buyers. And by the time the rounded, somewhat bland contours of the Gavia appeared, the Japanese economy was showing signs of a slowdown...
And there may have been no need of it, as Nissan had already been producing the Z32 version of its 300ZX for 3 years. This car, which combined the smoothly rounded contours and good proportions of the best Zagato designs without any of their odd details, was a product of its own design studios. The Nissan studios had also released a successful series of four retro-themed "boutique cars" on the small Nissan Micra chassis, but these are a story for another day...
*Footnote: As reported in our post of 8-11-16, the styling of the Alfa ES-30 was by Robert Opron, who then worked at Fiat's styling studio. Details and interior styling have been credited to Antonio Castellana.
Photo credits:
Top: autoblog.nl
2nd: carthrottle.com
3rd & 4th: Zagato Studios
5th: Wikimedia
6th thru 8th: Zagato Studios
9th: allcarcentral.com
10th: conceptnissan.com
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