The Italian Line: Ghia Part 1, International Style

Turin's Carrozzeria Ghia was founded by Giacinto Ghia and his partner, a Sr. Cariglio, as World War I raged, in 1916.  Ghia gained fame making lightweight, alloy-bodied racers like tha Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 that won the 1929 Mille Miglia.  Giacinto died in 1944, and the company was bought by Mario Boano and a partner, Giorgio Alberti.  They faced the task of rebuilding the factory demolished by aerial bombardment, and two of Boano designs for the reconstituted firm expressed a kind of futurist optimism.  The Alfa 6C 2500 Sport Cabriolet below won the grand prize at the 1948 Monte Carlo concours.  The Delahaye 135 MS coupe that appeared the next year appears below it, and shares the same fully skirted wheels with hinged covers, and similar flowing fender forms to avoid the slab-sided look of early envelope bodies.  Ghia built similar bodies on Fiat and Talbot chassis. As with some prewar bodies by Figoni and Falaschi, the cars appear to float above the road, in a way that denies the visual importance of wheels.

That wasn't the case with a Ghia Alfa that appeared next. Giovanni Savonuzzi was also designing for Ghia during this period, and his concept for the Alfa Romeo 2500 SS coupe went in another direction from Boano's designs on the Alfa and Delahaye for Ghia.  Perhaps less influenced by futurist science fiction and prewar show cars from France or America, Michelotti offered a tightly-contoured, almost undecorated take on the Italian line that would predict its direction in the Fifties; this in 1949...

By 1950 Ghia had revised the nose with a new version of Alfa's traditional grille flanked by horizontal air intakes, and echoed these in the fender vents on the smooth flanks as well as adding door vent windows.  The '49 version's rounded  rear fenders were squared up for vertical tail lights, and the divided windshield was replaced by a smooth single-curved unit.  The name changed to Supergioiella, meaning "super jewel."

1950 was a busy year for Ghia, with new work bodying Lancias as well as Alfas.  Ghia built some of the last special bodies for the Lancia Aprilia, which would go out of production after 1949. These coupes and spiders cleverly integrate the traditional Lancia shield grille into the new aerodynamic envelope form, and the curving posts for the flat windshield might have inspired the one that would appear on the Austin Healey in a couple years...

Also in 1950, Ghia bodied a series of Ferraris, on the 2.3 liter 195 chassis that overlapped the 2 liter 166.  The design echoes some of the themes from competitor Pinin Farina's Cisitalia 202, with similar modeling of the rear fender forms and the low hood nested between the fenders. The grille design, with its raised center section, predicted later Aston Martins, and lost out to the simple oval with  eggcrate mesh that had appeared at Vignale and soon became a Ferrari trademark.

By 1951, Ferrari had enlarged their V12 to 2.6 liters with the 212 series, and Ghia made minor revisions to the body details, simplifying the grille to the familiar Ferrari oval shown below, and adding a notchback option to the fastback coupes and cabriolets they'd offered.  The body design was also adapted to a 340 fastback coupe that was raced in North America.

By this time Ghia had experience with coachwork on other large modern cars, and its collaboration with Chrysler, and Virgil Exner at Chrysler Styling, had led to a series of show cars beginning in 1950, including the Plymouth XX-500, the Chrysler K-310 and D'Elegance, and the DeSoto Adventurer. These projects led to the Chrysler Special shown below, of which six were produced for Chrysler, and another dozen built by Ghia for sale in Europe.  

Ghia  showed the Ferrari 212 below at the 1952 Paris Show.  It remained a one-off, but roof and fender forms showed up later on other Ghia efforts.  The car made its way to Argentina, where it was owned by President Juan Peron.

The fender lines of Ghia's 1953 Alfa Romeo 1900SS coupe reflected the fender forms of that Ferrari from the previous year, including the upward notch at the rear fender line. Similar profiles appeared on Pininfarina's Nash Healey in 1952. The roof line, however, seems a reference to the Supergioiello. Mario Boano left Ghia in 1953, and Luigi Segre took over as the firm's involvement with big industry players like Chrysler, Fiat and Volkswagen deepened.

The first of Giovanni Savonuzzi's Supersonic coupe bodies for Ghia appeared in the 1953 Mille Miglia on a Alfa 1900-powered Conrero racer which crashed.  The design attracted the attention of FIat, which had Ghia body 15 of their new 8V two-seaters; one of these is shown below.  While the futuristic Supersonic never went into serious production, it influenced the De Soto Adventurer II show car built for Chrysler, and one-off versions of the Supersonic design were mounted on Jaguar and Aston Martin chassis...

By the time the limited-production Chrysler Specials appreared, both Chrysler and Ghia were exploring something smaller and sportier that might form the basis of a production car.  The first Dodge FIrearrows appeared in 1953, and by 1954 there would be 4 cars, including two roadsters, the convertible below, and a coupe.  Chevy's Corvette had also appeared in '53, the Nash Healey had changed to Pinin Farina bodies the year earlier, and Ford's Thunderbird was on the horizon.

Virgil Exner's design reflected the clean contours and horizontality of the Ghia Supersonic, and like that Fiat, there was a V8 under the hood, but twice as big.  Exner was not able to persuade conservative Chrysler brass to authorize tooling up for full production, but limited production was launched in 1956 by Dual Motors of Detroit.  Ghia's Detroit liason, Paul Farrago, added bumpers and  a more user-friendly convertible top to the car, which was briefly renamed Firebomb.  By the time deliveries of the eventual 117 cars began, the team had wisely changed the name to Dual-Ghia*.

In 1955 Ghia exhibited the unique body below on the new Ferrari 375 chassis. This powerful coupe reflected the horizontality of the Firearrow / Firebomb twins, along with the nascent fins and big fender vents that would show up on the production model of those twins, the Dual- Ghia.  Ghia, already more successful in attracting Chrysler's attention than that of Ferrari or Maserati, was about to attract a commission from the maker of a much more modest product.  But it would be a large order...

Also in 1955, VW presented its new Karmann Ghia, a two-seater on the Type 1 (Beetle). chassis. Ghia had begun design work in 1953.  Owing to Ghia's small manufacturing capacity, production would be a collaboration with Karmann in Germany. The graceful styling was a collaboration by Luigi Segre, head of Ghia, and Mario Boano, Giovanni Savonuzzi, and Sergio Coggiola, none of whom would agree on who would get full credit.  By 1958 there was a cabriolet, but it lacked the charm of the harmonious greenhouse with its curves in plan and section.

That roof line, and especially the form of the rear fender which curves around the rear wheel and the continues as a raised surface across the door and front fender, replicates the shapes which appeared first on the Chrysler D'Elegance show car, designed by Virgil Exner and built by Ghia, which appeared in 1953, the year Ghia's team began work on the Karmann Ghia.  Paul Farrago, Ghia's ambassador to Detroit, later confirmed that Ghia's designers had lifted these themes intact from Exner's show car...

By 1964 the Karmann Ghia was such a success in the USA that VW was getting a bit cheeky in some of its ads.  There was the famous one with racing numbers stencilled on the car over the simple caption "You'd lose."  Another said it was so pretty you could tell the body wasn't built by VW.  By the end of production of the original Ghia design in 1974, over 445,000 had been built.  This humble VW established the Ghia name in America, prompted Volkswagen AG to commission an entirely new Ghia based on its new Type 3 chassis, and attracted the attention of some other big players on the international scene.  The story of what happened in the Swinging Sixties and beyond will be told in our next chapter…

Errata & Addenda:  We left out the caption for Juan Peron's Ferrari 212 at post time, and accidentally substituted text from another piece.  We fixed this early after posting, then added a photo showing how the Karmann Ghia's roof and fender lines were adapted from a much bigger Chrysler show car.  Apologies for an example of cut-and-paste gone astray...

*Footnote:  The Dual-Ghia saga is featured in our post from August 29, 2015: "What Defines a Production Car, and Why Would Anybody Pay $3 Million for One?"

Color Photo Credits:  
Alfa Supergioiello:  italiaspeed.com

Dodge Firearrow:  George Havelka

All other color photos are by the author.

Monochrome Photo Credits:   

Delahaye 135 MS:  en.wheelsage.org

Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 coupe:  italiaspeed.com
Lancia Aprilia spider:  carsfromitaly.net

Chrysler Special:  Chrysler Corporation

Ferrari 212 coupe:  Revs Institute, Rodolfo Mailander Collection

Fiat 8V Supersonic:  woiweb.com

Dual Ghia Firebomb prototype:  Dual Motors, Inc. 

Ferrari 375 coupe:  Ghia
VW Karmann Ghia:  Volkswagen AG
Karmann Ghia ad:  Volkswagen of America, Inc.

All other monochrome images are from Carrozzeria Ghia.