9 Cars From Italdesign's Archive: From The Sublime To The Ridiculous

Italdesign might be upping its game now it’s owned by Volkswagen, selling ridiculously-priced re-bodied Audi R8s to people with more money than sense, but it has an amazingly diverse history of design work.

Despite designing almost nothing since 2010, when it was bought by Lamborghini (which is owned by Audi, which is owned by VW), Italdesign has some of the most memorable and historically important designs ever penned in its archive. We’ll save our favourites for the list, but the Alfa Romeo Brera, Maserati Bora and the Bugatti EB112 were all from the house of Italdesign Giugiaro.

Sit back as we take a left down memory lane and rediscover some of the best – and worst – designs ever to come from the famous designer.

1971 Maserati Bora

We open with a all-time classic 1970s supercar shape. Just look at the bonnet, at the delicately pointed nose and the hunched tailgate. This is as devastatingly pretty as the decade’s supercars got, and naturally it’s blessed with pop-up headlights. It’s a rare sight today, and we’re all the worse off for that. Italdesign also drew the gorgeous Merak, the slightly iffy 1976 Quattroporte and, more recently, the Enzo-engined MC12.

1972 Lotus Esprit

Not quite as pretty as the Bora but huge for the British car industry, the early Esprit eventually gained global fame as the submersible car in James Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me. The 1972 concept was a Giugiaro design, a wedge-shape angular sports car with pop-ups and a pretty damn straight waist line. Lotus also had the firm design the oh-so-’80s Etna concept, but thankfully it was never put into production.

1978 Audi 80

It’s not a supercar, it’s not exotic and it’s not complicated, but the second-generation 80 was a pivotal car in Audi’s history. It took the first version, model code B1, and erased all echoes of post-War communist influence. The redesign and the shift to rectangular headlights was far more in keeping with the times, and all of a sudden Audi emerged as a maker of attractive, desirable cars. Not Italdesign’s most exciting hour, but a job done exceptionally well nonetheless.

1979 Lancia Delta

The car that eventually became the HF Integrale and dominated the World Rally Championship was a legend; one of many that Italdesign can look back on with pride. It originally had off-square headlights before they were switched to the iconic dual-circular modules, and the wheel arches of the young Delta had yet to flare menacingly, but the vast majority of the hard work on what is now a legendary product had been done by Italdesign.

2005 Alfa Romeo 159

Italdesign was especially popular with Italian brands, and over the years it did plenty of work for Alfa. The 159 is probably the prettiest Alfa Romeo built this century, especially the minor 2009 facelift (pictured) with a nose displaying the perfect amount of confidence and aggression, the split headlights making men weak at the knees and impossibly beautiful proportions that will make it a classic in years to come.

1997 Volkswagen W12 Syncro concept

The company designed its fair share of concepts, too. Believe it or not, back in 1997 Volkswagen was toying with the idea of building a W12-engined racecar for the road. Giugiaro was asked to draw the styling. It was a spectacular 414bhp supercar with four-wheel drive, and although the car never got off the ground in that form, Syncro four-wheel drive became Volkswagen’s 4Motion trademark.

The W12 engine eventually saw service in Bentleys and the Volkswagens Touareg and Phaeton. The Bugatti W16 is descended from this project, too.

2005 Fiat Croma

Onto the bad stuff, now. The Croma was one of the most dismal-looking, characterless cars Fiat has ever turned out. Not even good photography can completely spare its blushes. How Italdesign managed to put this design down on paper without going to sleep face-down on the desk and dribbling all over the page we don’t know. It’s an unutterably boring and faceless failure that deserved what it got – mass public rejection.

2001 SsangYong Rexton

Ubelievably, the people who designed the Merak, the Alfa 159 and the Lotus Esprit also managed to excrete the first SsangYong Rexton. It wasn’t pretty. From the odd, vertical headlights to the frumpy shape and itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny wheels beneath the arches, it was an outstanding exercise in how to design a car that somehow has less than no desirability.

1993 Bugatti EB112 concept

Look at the headlights and you’ll see the clear origins of Veyron styling, but since the one-time world’s fastest car was no oil painting, this is not praise. Its shape almost looks like a modern Maserati Quattroporte if they’d built it as a shooting brake, but by the old gods and the new, this car is ugly.

For a start, it looks like it’s wearing wheel trims, but worst of all is the droopy, sad bodywork that looks like they left the clay model too close to the fire. It’s absolutely hideous. Even if it did ultimately spawn the Veyron, we didn’t need to see this.