Body by Zagato Part 1: Ferrari and Maserati in the Fifties

Prior to leaving their namesake firm to found OSCA*in 1947, the Maserati brothers finished their design for the A6 1500, a car project they'd started before the war.  Most of the bodies built for just over 5 dozen of these first A6 models built were by Pinin Farina, but there was at least one Panoramica designed and built by Zagato* in the late Forties, in a form that set the themes for their trademark postwar style.  Curves formed in light alloy showed a concern for aerodynamics, and they were carried into the greenhouse, with windows curved in section. The low window sills and tall glazing were predictive of much later cars.  The integration of roof forms with the lower body was much smoother than on the Pinin Farina models.  

The front view emphasizes the low sills and tall greenhouse. Instead of a compound curved windshield, Zagato chose a 4-piece solution with flat glass.  A compound curve would have been better for visibility, but more difficult to form. The last of these 1.5 liter, single overhead cam six cylinder cars was built in 1950.

In 1949 Zagato released a lone Ferrari 166 Panoramica in the same style as the Maserati, including the curved plexiglas side windows and the artfully recessed bright metal side trim. The few differentiating features included a simpler two-piece windshield with a lower header, and the oval eggcrate Ferrari grille that would soon be nearly a standard feature.  The 2 liter V12 also rode on a shorter wheelbase than the 1.5 liter Maserati six, as evidenced by the rear wheel intrusion into the door space shown in the rear view.  This one-off design, chassis #0018M, was raced by driver Stagnoli, shown with the car in the rear view.

Zagato did not body any of the successor, 2 liter single-cam A6 Maseratis, but after building only 16 of those, Maserati moved on to the A6G2000, with twin overhead cams underlining sporting intent.  This series was also called the A6G54, for the year of its introduction. Zagato bodied 20 berlinettas in aluminum; 19 of these were in the fastback style shown below.  Note that the silver car below, an early example, has a continuous fender line from front to rear, and no hood scoops...

A later version has haunches formed into the rear fenders, and shares side glass subtly curved in section with the silver car.  The front view shows off the twin hood scoops,  and a different grille shape...

The car above, photographed at Pebble Beach in the late 1990s, looks like the same one that showed up at Lime Rock last summer, none the worse for wear...  

The interior manages to look purposeful without seeming stark.  Most knobs and switches are not labeled, a common omission on Italian cars of this era.  Fortunately, for the $10,000 asking price in 1955, you got an owner's manual.  No glove compartment, though...

The rear shows off Zagato's mastery of simple shapes and harmonious contours. This series of just over twenty cars, a big order for Zagato in the 1950s, did not lead the firm to any more series production orders from Maserati for nearly 3 decades.  The Orsi family, which controlled Maserati, had decided to make a real production car of their planned 3500GT, and would call on the larger facilities at Touring Superleggera and Vignale to build the bodies.

Zagato built only one open car on this chassis; the spider was released in 1955, but has the earliest chassis number (2101) in the Zagato A6G2000 series.  Note the different hood scoop and side vents in the fenders, and the more substantial bumpers.  

The spider uses the same hunched rear fender forms as the later coupes, but with a more complicated treatment of the tail lights, which are set above the arc of alloy that descends to the rear bumpers.  After its early life on the show circuit and in weekend road rallies, the car was purchased by a member of the American military in Europe, and he used it as a daily driver.  It seems a shame there was only one of these...

There was only one Berlinetta Speciale as well, in 1956.  This was a notchback coupe, and apparently the first Maserati to feature Zagato's trademark twin-hump roof, which had already appeared on some Fiat 8Vs.   Note the curved side windows, the lower,  smaller grille opening, and the hooded headlights.

This wasn't the end of the trail for Zagato Maseratis, and we're not referring to the BiTurbo Spyders made from 1984-94. Those were production cars, with over 3,000 made. The last Zagato-bodied Maserati to capture the attention of road racers was designed for the 1957 Le Mans by British aerodynamicist Frank Costin, and built by Zagato on the 450S chassis. Costin had already designed the Lotus Eleven and would soon become famous for his work with Peter Kirwan Taylor on the Lotus Elite coupe.  

Details like the 4-piece windshield reflect the haste with which the body was fabricated in order to be ready for the 24-hour race.  It recalls the faceted windshield on Zagato's first Maserati, from a decade earlier.  There were other details, like cockpit ventilation, that were left unfinished, and Stirling Moss and Harry Schell managed 32 laps with the powerful 4-cam V8 before the rear axle gave up...

After its racing career was finished, the lone 450s coupe, unique among the ten 450S cars built, was adapted by Zagato for road use, and finally given a curved, one-piece panoramic windshield as well as side windows behind the doors. The front view shows off Costin's concern for minimal air resistance and low overall height. The rear is evidence of Zagato's skill at forming aluminum into smooth, compound curves.

Meanwhile, in 1956 Ferrari was planning to get into series production with their 250GT, but other than prototypes of the notchback Pinin Farina coupe design built by Boano, most of the 250GT cars that year, like the Scaglietti-built PF Tour de France berlinettas, featured special bodies with individual variations.  None of these was more special than the Zagato design commissioned by Camillo Luglio that year on chassis #0515GT...                                  

The low stance, tight contours, curved side glass and "double bubble" roofline reflect the coachbuilder's interest in reducing wind resistance.  As this car, like many Zagato designs, was intended for racing, efforts were made to reduce weight below that of the PF / Scaglietti cars.  

The form of the rear was predictive of Sixties designs, with a concave, recessed tail panel linking the tail lights, with an arrow-shaped "C" pillar that later appeared on other Zagato designs.  The way the convex deck housing for the license plate echoes the concavity in the roof is a deft detail, linking the deck and roof forms visually.  The competition success of this first car led the owner to order a second, lighter car to race.  This car had a smaller hood scoop, and larger front fender vents...

At the rear, the roof forms were the same, but the deck lid was simplified, without the raised center surface, and with a deeper opening for the trunk...

The competition success of this second car ultimately led to a total of 5 long-wheelbase Ferrari 250GT coupes being commissioned from Zagato.  There were no two cars alike.  On the last car, shown below, the roof form has been simplified to a single curve in section, without the trademark bubbles.  There are, however, transparent bubbles covering the headlights.  Bumpers, front and rear, have been reduced to horizontal nerf bars... 

At the rear, the "C" pillar is a simple angled support instead of the arrow shape on the earlier cars. This chassis, #1367GT, was not the last Ferrari to be bodied by Zagato, but it was the last to be built during the coachbuilder's golden era of undecorated, perfectly-proportioned contours.  The arrival of the wedge craze in the 1970s would bring new commissions and challenges, but that's a story for another day.

*Footnote:

OSCAs are featured in "The Etceterini Files Part 7: Almost Famous", from April 20, 2016. Abarth Zagatos are pictured in "The Etceterini Files Part 13" from Jan. 15, 2018.  Other cars bodied by Zagato are detailed in "Roadside Attraction:  Swiss Museum of Transport" from July 4, 2019, and in "Lime Rock Concours" from Sept. 17, 2019.

Photo Credits:

Top & 2nd from top:  wikimedia
3rd & 4th:  en.wheelsage.org

5th thru 7th:  the author

8th thru 10th:  Lt. Jonathan Asbury, USN

11th & 12th:  youtube.com
13th thru 15th:  Carrozzeria Zagato

16th:  pinterest.ca
17th:  gramho.com

18th:  the author
19th:  George Havelka

20th & bottom:  Carrozzeria Zagato

Roadside Attraction: Mille Miglia 2019

In these dark days when people are advised to avoid gatherings and to stay indoors except for essential trips, and the United States has overtaken Italy in the grim statistic of people attacked by a relentless, microscopic enemy, it was a reminder of better times to find these photos of crowds gathered on Italian streets to cheer on teams taking a decidedly non-essential trip. This was the Mille Miglia reenactment that took place on a thousand miles of Italy's most scenic roads and streets last May...

This Mille Miglia Storica is a "regularity race" (or rally) commemorating the original flat-out road race, run from 1927 through 1938 and again in 1940, and after WWII from 1947 through 1957. These reenactments began in 1977, and were limited to cars which were eligible to compete in the races from from 1927 to the end in 1957. That last actual road race was plagued by fatal accidents, which coming so soon after the catastrophic 1955 Le Mans, prompted Italian authorities to abandon the event.  Examples of eligible cars include the mid-1950s Mercedes Benz 300SL above, and the 1955 Lancia* Aurelia Spider America below.   Alberto Ascari won the 1954 MM in his Lancia D24 Spider, and Stirling Moss with Denis Jenkinson took perhaps the most famous victory in 1955 in a Mercedes 300SLR.  In both cases, the cars were complex, single-purpose road racers rather than the road-going sports cars pictured here. 

Also in the category of "dual purpose sports car" (a phrase which popped up frequently in the Road & Track mags this writer long ago devoured when avoiding homework) was the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint which appeared in 1954, and put Alfa Romeo on map, especially in the USA, as a maker of affordable cars with advanced engineering. The Sprint coupe, below, was designed by Franco Scaglione* and bodied by Bertone, and it launched their expansion into the area of large scale series production, a market also occupied by Pinin Farina, which built the Giulietta Spiders...

...in a style related to that of their bodies for the Lancia Aurelia.  PF built both the Aurelia B20 coupes and the B24 Spider Americas.  The blue #375 below is a twin to the black #367 above, but you can't have too many Aurelia Spiders, so here it is.  Lancia built 240 of this B24 Spider America with side curtains and GM Motorama-style wraparound windshield. After that, they switched to a Farina design with wind-up side windows and less wrap to the windshield, much like PF's Giulietta Spider.

The crowd-pleasing Lancia Lambda Torpedo, built from 1922 through 1931, was a real pioneer. Low-slung when most cars still looked like carriages in search of a horse, it was the first production car with a load-bearing unitized body, the first one with a V4 engine design, and one of the first with independent front suspension.  For a relatively costly car, it was also a popular one; over 13,000 were built in 9 series, with Lancia engineers constantly making detail improvements to engine, gearboxes (4 speeds by 1925) and body designs. This obsession with detail made for great cars, but small profit margins... 

Below, an OSCA* from the late 1940s swings past the crowd, its "actual size" occupants providing a sense of scale; these early 1,100cc four-cylinder products of the Maserati brothers were tiny. Early cars like this cycle-fendered example had single overhead-cam engines, while later ones ran twin-cams, and a few cars were built near the end of the run with desmodromic valves.  Sir Stirling Moss has one of those...

A Cisitalia* 202 Spider Nuvolari is a rare sight.  Named in honor of veteran GP pilot Tazio Nuvolari's 2nd place finish in the 1947 Mille Miglia.  He led the race in his 1100cc spider until a rainstorm, then finished 2nd to an Alfa Romeo 8C-2900B, finishing ahead of many cars with twice the power.  This made Cisitalia's reputation, but most road cars (over 100) were the famous Pinin Farina closed coupe, an example of which can be seen at MOMA in New York. The roughly dozen and a half Nuvolari Spiders and 2 related CMM competition coupes were designed by Giovanni Savonuzzi,  and featured tail fins that were predictive of American designs from a decade later. The 2020 edition of the Mille Miglia Storica will begin in Brescia on October 22, and finish there on October 25...

Footnotes:

This escapist fare is provided as a distraction for those wisely sheltering in place during the current pandemic.  For international medical aid, including aid to Italy, we've made a donation to Médecins Sans Frontieres:


www.msf.org


Organizations providing aid to those recently unemployed as a result of the pandemic-related business and institutional closures include the following:

Center for Disaster Philanthropy (disasterphilanthropy.org)

CDC Foundation. (cdcfoundation.org)

Feeding America. (feedingamerica.org)

Meals on Wheels. (mealsonwheelsamerica.org)

*Cisitalias were featured in "The Etceterini Files, Part 11: Fiats as Fine Art", posted on April 22, 2017. Lancias have been featured in several posts you can find in the Archives, including "Hi-Fi: Racing Red Elephants from Lancia" from October 3, 2016, "Prancing Elephants: Lancia's D Series in the Heroic Days of Road Racing" from Oct. 8, 2016, and "Lost Cause Lancias" from Feb. 15, 2018. Lancias and Alfa Romeos were both featured in "Concorso Italiano 2018 Review" from August 31, 2018 and in "Max Hoffman, an Eye for Cars and the Studebaker Porsche" from May 1, 2016.  Historic Alfa Romeos have been featured more times than I can place in a single footnote, but some rare ones appear on posts for 12-20-17 (designs by Franco Scaglione), 11-28-17 (Alfas by Virgilio Conrero), and on 9-7-15, where the three Bertone Alfa BATs, also designed by Scaglione, are pictured in "One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars."

Photo Credit: 

All photos were supplied by Lt. Jonathan Asbusy, USN.  We want to thank him for his sharp eye for significant old cars, and his careful attention to detail, on land & at sea...

Speeding Into Darkness: The Cars of Film Noir

It's night on a highway somewhere.  In the opening sequence of "Kiss Me Deadly" we see a shadowy figure desperately trying to flag down a rapidly approaching car...

...which turns out to be a 1951 Jaguar XK120 roadster piloted by detective Mike Hammer. The lighting, the low angle of this shot, and even the shape of the car seem a reference to the brooding, ominous tone of 1940s film noir.  But it's 1955, and our cynical protagonist always seems to be looking out for himself first as he tries to unravel a web of mystery and violence tied to an elusive black box, the Great Whatsit.  

Director Robert Aldrich films inside the car to put us in the place of his characters, who are as uneasy with each other as we are uneasy with the looming darkness around them. Hammer is played by Ralph Meeker; Christina, the raincoat-clad fugitive, is played by Cloris Leachman in her first film role.  We're somehow not surprised when thugs in a Cadillac attack Christina and  push Hammer and his car off a cliff...

…though of course we wonder why. Hammer survives, while Christina, skeptical of Hammer's motives and values from the first moments of their brief time together, does not.  Hammer gets another car, this time a Corvette, and the trail of destruction continues when thugs kill his mechanic by dropping a car onto him.  The film ends on a beach with a nuclear blast as the Great Whatsit explodes, fulfilling its function as the hinge of a Cold War story of greed, cynicism and ruthlessness.  As "The End" scrolls above the glowing, irradiated wreckage on the beach, we sense a climax to an era of stark, dark storytelling that began in another era of tension...

It's intriguing that while directors responded to the privations of the Great Depression by making screwball comedies like "It Happened One Night" and "Bringing Up Baby", the themes and mood of their work changed as clouds of another war settled over Europe.  In England, Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first to signal the shift, with "Secret Agent" and "Sabotage" in 1936.  In 1940, Hitchcock made his first Hollywood production, "Rebecca", not quite a film noir, but a suspenseful tale of secrets and deceptions, played out at a shadowy mansion.  As he arrives in pouring rain in a 1937 MG SA with the top down, we sense things may not turn out well for our protagonist. Perhaps this scene reflected the frustration of dealing with the complexity of the MG's convertible top; the dim lighting seems to ask nothing of the car's Lucas headlights.  The movie won an Oscar for Best Picture...

In 1941, John Huston directed Humphrey Bogart as detective Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon", and the lights on screen seemed to dim to match the world outside, while tense, slangy repartee replaced the snappy chatter of the Thirties comedies. The car in the scene below is a 1940 Buick Super.

                             

Howard Hawks directed Bogart and Lauren Bacall in "The Big Sleep" in 1946, with Bogart playing Philip Marlowe. The plot intricacies may have been hard to navigate, but the sharp, cynical dialogue conveyed the mood as well as the cinematography, which was by Sidney Hickox. The fate of the Packard Super 8 below is a reminder of what can happen when the plot gets dark on a rainy night...

On film, images of American cities from this period seem influenced by painters like Edward Hopper (rather than the other way around), with rounded, streamlined forms of cars slipping down rain-slicked streets past dimly-lit cigar stores, and men in hats behind the wheel. Below, a Lincoln V12 in "A Street With No Name", from 1948...

The 1941 Lincoln Continental was another vehicle for Bogart, like the film in which it appears, "Dead Reckoning" from 1947.  More rain at night, more dark streamlined shapes, and more plot twists than we might be able to follow on the first viewing.

In director Jules Dassin's immortal heist flick "Rififi", the car of choice for the jewel thieves is a Traction Avant Citroen 11. The significance may be that it was a car favored by gangsters as well as the gendarmerie, and by 1954, when filming began, the low-slung, front-wheel drive sedan designed over two decades earlier was as much a part of Parisian street scenes as, well, sidewalk cafés...

Dassin refused to film on sunny days, insisting on the gray tone that prevails, and he disagreed with composer Georges Auric, who wanted music in the stunning half-hour burglary scene filmed in real time; the result of using only ambient sound and dialog made this scene as tense as the getaway on slick Paris streets, filmed in the dim light of early morning.

The plot, like those streets, takes an unexpected turn with the kidnapping of a burglar's small son by rival hoods. The deftly composed scene below sets up a showdown at their hideout. The two cars are French Fords with flathead V8s, like the Citroen Traction, favorites of gangsters...but unlike the Citroen, not favorites of the police.

In a way, the French New Wave took over when and where American Film Noir left off.  For stark depictions of human folly conveyed with economy and irony but delivered in English, Americans could turn on their TV sets for Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" from 1959 to 1964. In "A Thing About Machines", the mean-spirited,  mechanophobic central character, Bartlett Finchley, has to continually call upon repairmen to fix the machines he constantly abuses, in what seems in retrospect a precursor to today's "battered computer syndrome."

Finally his 1939 Lagonda LG6 has had enough.  In a climax shot in dusky black and white, and oddly predictive of today's mishaps with self-driving cars, it starts up and shoves him into the pool, drowning him...

The scene below is another from "Dead Reckoning", in which Bogart and Lizabeth Scott escape after a shooting and fire at a nightclub. We'll leave you here on this lonesome, deserted highway to figure out the plot resolution for yourself. Make sure your headlights work, and your wipers too. And take your trench coat; you may need it...

Postscript:

There was also a vintage car that functioned as a critical plot device in a classic film noir, and, in a way, played a character.  This was Gloria Swanson's 1929 Isotta Fraschini 8A in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard."  This was enough of a landmark film event that we devoted the better part of a post to it back on September 4, 2016.  It was part of the Forgotten Classic series, and subtitled "Sunset for a Dream"...

Post-Postscript:

Taking Unknown's suggestion in the Comments below, I watched Jean-Luc Godard's "A Bout de Souffle" ("Breathless",1960) for the first time in at least a decade and can confirm that the central character, Michel, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, steals a 1956 Oldsmobile, borrows or steals a Facel-bodied Simca convertible, then steals a 1955 Thunderbird, a Peugeot 403 sedan, and a 1954 Cadillac ragtop in the pursuit of cash and the mysterious Patricia, played by Jean Seberg. This film, and its cars, is probably worth an essay on its own...

Footnote:

This escapist fare is provided as a distraction for those wisely sheltering in place during the current pandemic.  Organizations providing aid to those recently unemployed as a result of the pandemic-related business and institutional closures include the following:

Center for Disaster Philanthropy (disasterphilanthropy.org)

CDC Foundation. (cdcfoundation.org)

Feeding America. (feedingamerica.org)

Meals on Wheels. (mealsonwheelsamerica.org)

For international medical aid during the crisis, there's Médecins Sans Frontieres:

www.msf.org

Photo credits:
Top:  United Artists, posted on criterionconfessions.com
2nd thru 5th:  United Artists, posted on imcdb.org (Internet Movie Car Database)
6th:    Selznick International Pictures, posted on simanaitissays.files.wordpress.com
7th:    imcdb.org

8th:    Columbia Pictures, posted on imcdb.org 
9th:    i.pinimg.com
10th thru 14th:  imcdb.org
15th:  Columbia Pictures, from video posted on dailymotion.com
Bottom:  Paramount Pictures (Isotta Fraschini in "Sunset Boulevard")

The French Line Part 4: Jacques Saoutchik----A Talent for Overstatement

Jacques Saoutchik got a head start on most of France's automotive coachbuilders, even though he spent the first 19 years of his life in Kiev, in what is now Ukraine.  He migrated to France to escape a pogrom just as the 19th century was closing, and started his firm in 1906 after apprenticing as a cabinet maker. His first assignment, an Isotta Fraschini completed in 1907, was firmly in the tall horseless carriage format, but by the time he got around to bodying a series of a dozen Mercedes Benz 680S roadsters in 1927, he had begun to develop his own ideas on automotive style. This involved emphasis on the wheels and the long engine hoods as separate elements, with chrome trim to outline the sweep of fenders.  By the time he got to the 1928 model below, he'd lowered the windshield, and carried the slanting line of the windshield frame down towards the fenders, using a contrasting color to lend a sense of forward motion... 

Also in 1928, Saoutchik received what must have seemed a dream commission; to clothe the chassis of the Bucciali TAV6 which had caused a sensation at that year's Paris Auto Salon.  A front-wheel drive chassis conceived by brothers Paul-Albert and Angelo Bucciali six years before Citroen's Traction Avant, the car was powered by a side-valve Continental six not unlike those in American taxi cabs, but stunned onlookers with its Sensaud de Lavaud automatic transmission and four-wheel independent suspension.  Saoutchik came up with a design that repeated themes on his earlier Mercedes, this time with the fenders  exposing huge cast alloy wheels, the fender tops level with the top of the car's hood.  Paul-Albert was more a conceptualizer and tinkerer than a businessman, however, and the brothers sold few cars while he was thinking of refinements, including an 8 cylinder version and also a TAV-16 with two parallel straight eights.  When it came time for what turned out to be his final masterpiece, he gave Saoutchik a call...

The TAV8-32 was exhibited at the 1932 Paris Salon, where it stunned the crowd.  As with TAV6, the fender tops were level with the hood line, but this time that hood enclosed a sleeve-valve V12 4.9 liter engine from Avions Voisin, another French automotive pioneer whose interest in aviation matched Paul-Albert's own. The chrome stork decoration on the engine bay was a reference to Bucciali's French Air Corps experience in WWI; he'd also been a stunt pilot at air shows.  The low-mounted Grebel headlights kept visual focus (as well as illumination) close to the road. The 4-speed transmission was still mounted transversely in front of the engine, and the lack of a drive shaft gave Jacques Saoutchik even more license to lower the car, which he cheerfully did. He named it "Fleche d"Or", or "Golden Arrow"...

The long wheelbase, short overhangs, and low windows enhance the rakish stance, as does the detail where the rear fender tops intersect the window sill lines. The huge double spare tires in their chromed casings will obstruct the view out of the rear window, but the lines are better for it...

Presented with the more conventional chassis and proportions of the 1935 Mercedes 500K shown below, Saoutchik fiddled with details rather than making grand gestures.  The odd spare tire fairings are a distraction, and their silver color accents, like those on the fenders, fragment the overall form, rather than underline it as on the earlier Mercedes 680S.

Saoutchik was on a better footing with his design for the Hispano-Suiza* J12 from 1934.  The confident forms and careful proportions conceal the great size; the picture would need a human figure to convey the car's true scale.  The Type 68 V12 engine ranged in size from 9.4 to 11.3 liters (this car has the larger one) and the wheelbase is 146 inches.

The Delage* D8-120S cabriolet, designed and built by Saoutchik in 1939, shows a similar confidence and mastery of simple forms.  Some design  themes and details repeat from earlier Saoutchik designs, including teardrop fenders and parallel-hinged doors...

Note that the Delage above features a handle oddly mounted in the center of the door.  This is to facilitate another of Saoutchik's favorite details, a wide outrigger door that opened parallel to the sides of the car, saving space and allowing easy access.  Based on a patent by Britain's James Young Coachworks, the door was also featured on the American Graham "shark nose" cabriolet Saoutchik bodied in 1938, shown below. 

Here Saoutchik's work was concentrated aft of the front fenders to transform a standard Graham sedan (designed by Amos Northrup) into a cabriolet.  The dip in the window sill reduces the visual height of the car, and the dorsal fin on the deck lid, appropriate to a car called "shark nose", appeared in other Saoutchik designs of the late 1930s and 40s. 

This particular car served with the Free French forces in North Africa under Charles de Gaulle after its civilian life was interrupted.  The door closeup below shows a detail of the parallel hinge mechanism.  It added weight and complexity, and the resulting expense kept it from catching on with other car builders.

The door system was also a signature feature on Andre Dubonnet's Hispano-Suiza Xenia*, designed by Jean Andreau with details and construction by Saoutchik in 1938, a busy year for the designer. If overstatement was one of his themes, here we see an exuberant embrace of aerodynamics and technology…the panoramic windshield and side windows wrapped into the roof, and the smoothly integrated teardrop fenders covered a new chassis design with Dubonnet's patented independent front suspension, which he licensed to GM and Alfa Romeo.  The sheer optimism of the Xenia is almost touching today; Dubonnet used it to pubicize his automotive inventions and drove it as his personal car in the less than two years that elapsed before the Nazi invasion of France...

The Bugatti* Type 57 shown below was built the year after the Xenia.  Note the way chrome accents are employed to integrate details like the deck hinges and tail lights into the overall form, and to underline the teardrop shapes of the fenders.  Barely visible is another deft detail: there's a clock in the hub of the steering wheel.

War closed the car business and changed it for the peace that followed. French economy  cars from Citroen and Renault put the country on wheels.  Luxury cars were taxed heavily, and sales steadily fell.  French cars were designated by taxable horsepower, which was in turn related to engine size. The Saoutchik-bodied '49 Talbot Lago Grand Sport below, at 26cv, had 13 times the taxable horsepower of the smallest Citroen. Talbot's 4.5 liter inline hemi-head six with twin lateral cams developed 190 hp (210 in later versions). This came at a price; American hostellier Louis Ritter paid $17,500 for the blue and white cabriolet.

Saoutchik's design for the Delahaye* 175S below is even more full of theatrical flourishes. Note the full wheel enclosures which make the car seem to float above the road on hidden, and probably overloaded, tires.  Heavier than the Talbot and also a 4.5 liter car, it marked another high point in overchromed exuberance... 

But not quite the summit of overchromed exuberance. Saoutchik bodied two Cadillac Series 62s in the chubby, almost comically voluptuous form shown below in 1948 to '49. A near twin to the car below, though without the faux cane pattern on the door, and in a more restrained dark blue and violet color scheme, was driven from coast to coast across the USA by its new owner and his wife, along with the Talbot Lago convertible shown above. They reported that the Cadillac handled better in icy conditions.

During the same period, Saoutchik bodied around half a dozen Talbot Lago Grand Sport coupes with slimmer proportions in a style that was more sporting and less decorated, but still exuberant in use of color.

The tapered deck recalls Buicks of the period; here the Saoutchik GS is parked next to prewar Talbot Lagos by Pourtout (center) and Figoni (far left).  The simpler, but somehow chubbier, Grand Sport coupe shown below has a similar tail, and also a Saoutchik-specific door pillar set forward of the trailing edge of the window, apparently to make the proportions of the windows more pleasing with the door closed.  

Grilles varied from the vertical one shown above to modified ovals as on the red and black coupe below, a Grand Sport from 1951.  Note how the color swage emphasizes the fender form...

Talbot and Delahaye were struggling, along with the other French luxury makes, by the time Saoutchik designed one of the first Delahaye 235s.  As Delahaye had done with the chassis and engine, the body restates themes developed in the late 1930s, including the sweeping fender forms and the subtle fin centered on the deck lid.

Ironically, when Jacques Saoutchik got a free hand to explore new design themes, it was on an actual old chassis, not just an old-fashioned one. The 1932 Type 50 Bugatti shown below was re-bodied for its owner as a kind of honeymoon present to his bride.  Everything from the roof form, which echoes contemporary Italian designs, to the blade-like fenders, looks ahead to future European designs, and even Elwood Engel's 1961 Continental.  The large alloy wheels would be comfortable on a 1990s concept car, but they are actually the original Bugatti wheels from 1932. This car was re-bodied 20 years later in 1952; as with the 1934 Hispano, deft control of proportions conceals vast size.

Also in 1952, Saoutchik built the sleek fastback below, a "Coach Panoramique" on another Delahaye 235 chassis.  Here 1950s themes, including the glassy fastback and turned-up rear fenders echoing the Bugatti above, meld with swooping fenders from the most advanced designs of the late 1930s.

The flattened oval grille lends the design a modern, horizontal feel.  The Coach Panoramique is shown below at the 1952 Paris Salon, parked between Saoutchik's personal Delahaye and, on the turntable, one of the first Pegaso* Z102s for which the French designer received a contract to build several dozen.  The Thirties-style swooping fenders didn't translate well to the short-wheelbase Pegaso chassis, as can be seen by comparing it to the Delahaye coupe...

Saoutchik worked with his son Pierre to produce a better design for their Series II Pegaso coupes. These had a higher fender line dipping just aft of the doors, a lower roof profile, and front and rear fenders extended past the hood and deck surfaces to reduce visual height and create a sense of motion. By now Saoutchik was competing with Italian coachbulding house Superleggera Touring, which had also begun to produce designs for Pegaso, and the father and son team needed the work, as Delahaye and Delage built their last passenger cars in 1954, and Talbot Lago was moving toward less-costly cars in a futile attempt to survive.

The red and black Z-102B shows off those very Fifties hooded head and tail lights, as well as the 4 cam alloy V8 that made Pegasos so expensive.  Chassis price alone was around $9,000, and cars bodied in Milan or Paris started around $15,000.  This resulted in low sales; only around 7 dozen Pegasos of all styles were built; at least 18 of those were bodied by Saoutchik. 

The last one bodied by Saoutchik, and the last car of any description styled by the firm, was shown on their stand at the 1954 Paris show.  Note that the fender extensions and hooded headlights have been dropped for gently contoured fenders and simple lighting echoing the era's Italian designs. The two-tone color scheme is the only sign of French exuberance. Jacques Saoutchik died in 1955, and his son Pierre closed the great coachbuilding house later that year.

*Footnote:  Some makes of car pictured in this piece are featured in the archives of  this blog.  Additional notes and pictures, often of work by other coachbuilders, are contained in the following:
"Authenticity vs. Originality: A Tale of Four Bugattis", June 11, 2017
"Delage: A Car for the Ages", May 20, 2018
"Golden Days of Delahayes", June 30, 2018
"Hispano Suiza: Swiss Precision, Spanish Drama, French Style", Sept. 25, 2017
Hispano Suiza Xenia---"One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars," Sept. 7, 2015
"Forgotten Classic: Pegaso, Spain's Flying Horse", June 21, 2019

Photo Credits:
1st: revivaler.com 
2rd: flickr.com
3rd & 4th: auta5p.eu
5th & 7th: enwheelsage.org
6th: drivetribe.com
8th thru 10th:  rmsothebys.com, featured at hemmings.com
11th:  George Havelka
12th:  flickr.com
13th:  rmshothebys.com
14th:  enwheelsage.com
15th:  wikimedia
16th & 17th:  George Havelka
18th & 19th:  the author
20th: barrett-jackson.com
21th: wikimedia.com 
22nd: pinterest.com 
23rd: carsthatnevermadeitetc.com  ('52 Bugatti T50 rebody)
24th & 25th:  the author
26th: classiccarcatalogue.com
27th thru 29th:  George Havelka
30th: coachbuild.com forum