For a long time, Fiat's 8V* (Otto Vu) was a mostly-forgotten detour on the company's road to the kind of mass market success that eventually led to their takeover of Chrysler. Called Otto Vu because Fiat mistakenly thought Ford had copyrighted "V8", the two seater was introduced in 1952 as an offshoot of engineer Dante Giacosa's project for a two-liter luxury sedan. After some success in road racing and hill climbs, the Fiat 8V coupes, bodied by coachbuilders like Zagato (below), Ghia and Vignale, languished in obscurity, and could be bought for a song from the pages of Hemmings Motor News, along with their sister car, the Siata 208S. That is, when you saw them for sale at all; parts availability was not helped by the fact that only 114 Otto Vu Fiats were built over 3 years...
Zagato's 8V Fiats were among the lightest and the most successful in road racing. There were two basic types, the ultimate version shown above being a shapely coupe with soon-to-be-trademark twin-hump roof topping a glassy cabin with side windows curved in section over a continuous arc of fender with a shallow indent linking the wheels. It was tidy, unified and expensive, about the same price as a Lancia Aurelia.
Zagato's earlier design, like the gray car shown here, was an attempt to update Fabio Luigi Rapi's original design for the Otto Vu. Zagato kept Rapi's doors and the fender forms with their separate arcs, but cleaned up the grille from Rapi's fussy Art Deco scheme*, and adopted a glassy cabin with flat side glass topped by the double bubble roof. This car was called the Elaborata, as it was a variation on Fiat's in-house design. But it, like the other 8Vs and their Siata sisters, was largely forgotten until the late 20th century classic sports car boom ignited by vintage racing and possibly by the computer-generated sameness of modern cars...
But the 8V wasn't ever as thoroughly forgotten as the unfortunate Diatto brand. Beginning with licensed production of French Clément-Bayard cars in 1905, its 70th year, the Italian carriage company was ready to introduce cars of its own design by 1909. Diatto also built chassis frames for early Bugattis, and was a pioneer in offering 4-wheel brakes and 4-speed transmissions. Successful race cars were engineered under the guidance of Alfieri Maserati, but Maserati* left in 1926. Three years later, Diatto closed its doors.
At the 2007 Geneva Show, however, Zagato showed something called the Diatto Otto Vu, recalling their special Fifties Fiats, and for anyone who hadn't somehow missed the auto show circuit in 1921, an early try at an aerodynamic body they'd built on a Diatto chassis. The idea was to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Diatto as a carmaker, but the production team apparently missed by two years. No matter, the finished cars were lookers...
Did you notice the plural there? Yes, apparently there were at least two Diatto enthusiasts left in the world by 2007, and they commissioned Zagato to design and build the green example above as well as the blue specimen below. Note the different treatments of grille and air intakes. The green car's convex oval opening with bright metal grillwork recalls some Fifties cars, while the blue example contents itself with a simple central air intake flanked by two smaller ones, and at the expense of a little character, integrates all openings a bit better into the overall form.
The view below shows off the careful massing and the way the rounded roof form nestles between the deftly rounded fenders. Unlike many modern cars, the lights fore and aft are simple shapes that harmonize with, rather than compete with, the overall form. The shaping of the side windows and the horizontal blisters over the wheel arches recalls another 8V Fiat, but by one of Zagato's competitors…the Supersonic* coupe by Ghia. Bodies on the Diatto revival cars were formed in aluminum, and the power plant announced by Zagato was a 4.6 liter Ford unit, a V8 of course.
Back in 2007, there was discussion of plans to produce this tasty design in a larger series, but a recession followed the release of these first two examples, and while the talk was revived again a few years later, it seems that this duo of curvy coupes is the only revival Diatto is ever going to get.
Footnote: Fiat's 8V and Siata's sister car, the 208S, can be found in our blog archives for November 13, 2016 under the title "The Etceterini Files Part 10: Siata 208S & Fiat 8V." This piece includes photos of the Ghia Supersonic, as well as bodies by Pinin Farina, Vignale and Zagato. The saga of the Maserati brothers is summarized in the essay from April 20, 2016 entitled "The Etceterini Files Part 7—Almost Famous: OSCA."
Photo Credits:
Top: the author
2nd: bonhams.com
3rd: wikimedia
4th thru 7th: Zagato Gallery
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