Touring Superleggera Part 2: Talent in Search of a Theme

We left our story of Carrozzeria Touring just as they released their newest creation, the Aston Martin DB4, in autumn of 1958.  The new car brought attention to the design talents of the coachbuilder, but only early Series 1 bodies were built in Milan.  Though all DB4s bore the script "Touring Superleggera" on their bonnets, most production cars were built by Aston Martin's Tickford arm.  When the Shah of Iran ordered something special on the new Maserati 5000GT chassis, Touring designed and built it...

…with somewhat mixed results.  The greenhouse seemed too small for the massive lower body, and the quad headlights floated uneasily in the too-large, too-complex grille opening, under odd raised eyebrows. Only the Maserati trident reminded us that this wasn't a tentative effort from some fledgling auto maker in Japan.  Only 3 examples of this Scia di Persia style were built. Touring had much better succes with their Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider, introduced a few months earlier in 1958.  Eventually, they built over 3,400 examples.

The new car shared its engine with the previous 1900 Super Sprint, of which hundreds of coupes, but only a few spiders, were built. To facilitate larger-scale production, Touring built the new design in steel...

The new car appeared longer than the previous Super Sprint, and exerior and interior detailing befitted Alfa's answer to the Lancia Aurelia.

  

The 2000 Spider was built from 1958 to 1961, and in 1962 Alfa introduced its new 2600 twin-cam aluminum inline six in sedan, coupe and spider form.  The 2600 Spider, shown on the left below, was still bodied by Touring, as a lightly restyled version of their 2000 Spider.  The coupe job went to Bertone.  Bouyed by the order and also by orders for the ill-fated Sunbeam Venezia*, shown between the Alfa and Lancia below, Touring committed to building a big new factory in Novo Milanese. 

Unlike with the DB4, Carrozzeria Touring would continue building bodies for the short-wheelbase DB4-GT, introduced the year after the DB4 in 1959.  This would only add up to 75 orders, however, during a period of 4 years.  The GT, shown below, was built according to true Superleggera principles, with alloy panels formed over a steel tubular framework.

They also introduced their design for the Lagonda* Rapide in 1961.  Like the Aston DB4 they'd designed for David Brown Ltd., the Lagonda was built to Superleggera patents by Tickford in England.  And they only built 55, ending production in 1964...

It appeared that if Carrozzeria Touring was going to obtain a big production contract like the ones that had propelled Pininfarina and Bertone into mass-producers of car bodies, it wasn't going to come from the British manufacturers.  The Sunbeam Venezia, the cash cow on which Touring had bet their expansion, was cancelled by Chrysler when it bought into Rootes Motors, after only around 200 examples had been bodied at Novo Milanese.  So the only Touring-bodied car to get well into 4 digit production numbers was the Alfa 2600 Spider shown below, with over 2,200 built. Note that side trim and hood scoops are simplified on the 2600 version, which was produced through 1965.

Touring was still producing bodies for Maserati's 3500 GT in the early Sixties, and proposed a new design for an upcoming Lucas fuel-injected version, the 3500GTI, in 1962. 

Unlike the 5000GT, the proportions of the lower body are in harmony with the roof.  But the rigid angularity of that roof is not in keeping with the rounded frontal aspect.  Maserati put the injected engine into their existing Touring-styled coupe instead, and when the time came for a new GT design, contracted with Frua to build their new Mistral fastback and spider models in 1964.

As prospects for a big production order dwindled, Anderloni took on the job of modifying Alfa's GTV, new in 1964, into a 4-seater convertible. The firm did this job with the careful detailing that characterized their Superleggera projects, but it was based upon the body that Giorgetto Giugiaro had designed for Bertone.  But the thousand  examples of the steel GTC that Touring finished were a help to the firm's bottom line during difficult times.

As 1963 segued into '64, it became apparent that fledgling GT maker Lamborghini was having trouble getting its 350 GTV prototype into production.  The Franco Scaglione-designed prototype, built by the obscure Sargiotto body works, had been an odd mixture of angles and curves, and had never been successfully turned into a driveable car.

So Touring masterminded a redesign, aimed at getting the car into production.  The famous Bizzarrini-designed Lambo V12 had not even fit under the steeply sloping hood of the show car, so Anderloni's team deleted the retractable headlights in favor of interesting oval units, rounded some of the sharp planes into a more harmonious overall form, and kept Scaglione's signature parabolic roof shape.  But they also proposed a tidy spider that was only built in 2 examples (above).  The 350GT versions (production coupe below) were built in alloy, while later 400GT 2+2 models received a bit more wheelbase and steel body panels. The styling was always controversial, but production of several hundred examples kept Carrozzeria Touring's workforce busy for a time...

In 1965, Jensen was planning a new line of cars around the Chrysler V8, and went to Anderloni at Touring for design studies.  The rendering below by Federico Formenti convinced Jensen to purchase the Touring design.  Unfortunately for cash-starved Carrozzeria Touring, Jensen went to Vignale for production of the original steel bodies for their Interceptor and FF models.

Comparing the Vignale construction drawings below with the rendering above shows how closely Vignale followed the original design by Touring.  In the elevation drawings below, the longer-wheelbase all-wheel drive FF model is on top, the Interceptor below.  Both models reached production.

David Brown selected a William Towns design for the DBS, but commissioned Anderloni and his team to design a short wheelbase version, somewhat like they'd done with the DB4 GT.  In 1966, Touring came up with a convincing GT on a shortened DB6 chassis that displayed a lot more character than Aston's production DBS, which went into production the next year.  It wasn't enough to convince David Brown to authorize production, though, and time was running out.  The drawings and renderings shown in this review were narrowly saved from a bonfire after Touring Superleggera closed its doors at the end of January, 1967...

Also around this time, Touring proposed a four-door sedan on a stretched Lamborghini 400 chassis. Federico Formenti's design, with its strong horizontal break line above the wheels and its glassy greenhouse, was not accepted for production, but it would influence at least two upcoming projects. 

One of these was the spectacular Flying Star II, built on a Lamborghini GT chassis in using the Superleggera technique.  In 1966, the glassy, trapezoidal roofline predicted the coming breed of GT sports wagons, something no car maker except MG, with the then-new B-GT, had yet offered…

Sharply creased flanks led to a sloping nose with covered headlights.  The angled plane that outlines the trailing edge of the front wheel arch and curves into the rocker panels is a modernized version of Touring's earlier details on Alfas and Pegasos, and is an outgrowth of the construction technique of alloy panels over steel tubes.

Sadly, Flying Star II, with its hopeful name recalling Anderloni and Touring's first masterpiece, did not persuade Lamborghini to start production, and Touring Superleggera collapsed.  Felice Bianchi Anderloni rescued drawings, including those in this essay, from a bonfire started by new owners of the plant at Novo Milanese.  Within a couple years Carrozzeria Marazzi, staffed by former employees at Carrozzeria Touring, would be building the Lamborghini Islero, a replacement for the 400GT that Touring had built. 

The strong horizontal plane break in the Islero's flanks echoes the Formenti rendering of the stillborn Lambo 4-door, and the glassy greenhouse and chamfered rear window shape also relate to the earlier Formenti design.

The Lamborghini Flying Star II turned out to be the last car built by Carrozzeria Touring.  At the end, the talented team at the old firm seemed to have rediscovered their early skill at finding inspiration in visual form, but was still in search of a client ready to translate their new themes into metal.

*Footnote:   We reviewed  the earlier history of Touring Superleggera, from the Flying Star of the early Thirties through the Maseratis and Aston Martins of the late Fifties, in "Touring Superleggera: The Italian Line Travels Light", in our previous post from September 30, 2020. The Lagonda Rapide history is reviewed in "Forgotten Classic: Lagonda", in these posts for 9/9/20. The Aston Martin DB4 and DBS prototype are further discussed in "Rescued from Obscurity", from 5/11/20.  And we shed a bit of light on the obscure Sunbeam Venezia in "Rootes in Foreign Soil", posted on 3/31/18.

Color Photo Credits:  
All color photos are by the author, except for the Lamborghini 350GT, which is by Paul Anderson.

Monochrome Photo Credits:  
Maserati 5000GT and 350GTI prototype, Touring Superleggera Ad, Lamborghini GTS, Jensen Rendering, Aston Martin DBS prototype, Lamborghini 4-door Berlina, front and side images of Flying Star II:  Touring Superleggera

Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider:  en.wheelsage.org
Lagonda Rapide:  Aston Martin Lagonda

Alfa Romeo 2600 Spider:  imcdb.org
Vignale Jensen drawings:  jensenmuseum.org
Rear 3/4 view of Flying Star II:  oldconceptcars.com