Of all the phrases used to summon the erogenous zones of travel, Gran Touring is for me one of the most evocative. It’s also now one of the most debased. If you see “GT” appended to the badge of a marque of car these days it’s because some guy in marketing has decided that those two letters are the equivalent of Viagra to a certain kind of buyer. Do I hear the roar of James Bond’s Aston Martin navigating the Corniche? Cut to a close-up of the firm grip of 007’s hand on the leather-crowned shift. Press the red button to repel pursuers with an RPG.
But all this nonsense had a more noble past.
Gran Touring once meant just that—an epicurean journey on the more challenging roads of Europe, in a vehicle designed to take the hairpins without losing its composure—under the hood a low growl but for the driver and companion the soft embrace of the finest leathers, graced by burnished wood detailing and, most important, there would be a trunk just large enough for a couple of valises of the kind that hotel doormen recognize as quiet class. In a discreet compartment there would be a silver flask filled with a rare Cognac, and two pewter goblets for its consumption as driver and companion sat parked atop an Alpine pass gazing down at the sweep of the Dolomites.
These were not muscle cars. They were the most graceful beasts ever crafted for using roads for what only certain roads can deliver—the way through the pass, the twisting path into the woodlands, the track down to the hidden beach.
The heyday of such special machines began before World War II, was
resumed after the war, in the late 1940s, and came to its most
exquisite level of craft, involving the perfect marriage of power and
eye, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The Leonardo of the craft was a shy but obsessive perfectionist called Elio Zagato. He came to head the small Italian family firm of that name that produced a string of Gran Turismo models. There were more famous names working in Italian car companies but none with the kind of minimalist self-control to produce designs of such breath-snatching spareness and beauty. It was as though Elio took all the instinctive spatial grasp and control of line that marks great Italian industrial design and wrapped it around four wheels in a way that was uniquely pure. Observed from any angle, there was no excess. The sum of every curve was erotic but controlled.
His masterpiece, designed with Ercole Spada, was the Aston Martin DB4GTZ, the sexiest car ever created, which today stands with the original Queen Mary ocean liner and the Lockheed Constellation piston-age airliner in a trinity of traveling machines that married form and function in such a way as to become works of art. A salute today, then, to Elio Zagato, whose death has only recently been acknowledged. Elio Zagato, born 27 February 1921; died 14 September 2009.
Related links
"He embodied the Dolce Vita spirit as a GT driver and designer." The UK Guardian pays tribute to Elio Zagato
An obit from the New York Times Wheels blog
The Leonardo of the craft was a shy but obsessive perfectionist called Elio Zagato. He came to head the small Italian family firm of that name that produced a string of Gran Turismo models. There were more famous names working in Italian car companies but none with the kind of minimalist self-control to produce designs of such breath-snatching spareness and beauty. It was as though Elio took all the instinctive spatial grasp and control of line that marks great Italian industrial design and wrapped it around four wheels in a way that was uniquely pure. Observed from any angle, there was no excess. The sum of every curve was erotic but controlled.
His masterpiece, designed with Ercole Spada, was the Aston Martin DB4GTZ, the sexiest car ever created, which today stands with the original Queen Mary ocean liner and the Lockheed Constellation piston-age airliner in a trinity of traveling machines that married form and function in such a way as to become works of art. A salute today, then, to Elio Zagato, whose death has only recently been acknowledged. Elio Zagato, born 27 February 1921; died 14 September 2009.
Related links
"He embodied the Dolce Vita spirit as a GT driver and designer." The UK Guardian pays tribute to Elio Zagato
An obit from the New York Times Wheels blog
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