The Villa d’Este on the shores of Lake Como in Italy is a most beautiful
and exclusive place. Each year it hosts the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa
d'Este to celebrate the skills and craftsmanship of the motor industry’s
best "carrozzeria" - coachbuilders in English - and a mouth-watering
display of classic handmade motor cars is the result. BMW regularly
sponsors the event and shows off a vintage car from its collection. This
year, however, they pulled off something completely unexpected, a
spectacular brand new, one-off, handmade vehicle made in collaboration
with Milan’s Zagato workshop.
The BMW Zagato Coupe
The BMW Zagato Coupe is a brand new, one-off, handmade collaboration between BMW and Milan’s Zagato workshop
It’s quite unusual for a large volume car manufacturer to indulge in
this sort of "vanity" project. Indeed, 1978 was the last time BMW worked
with an Italian outside design house (the M1 supercar).
As can be deduced from the pictures, the base chassis comes from the BMW Z4 Coupé, but the body is completely new and hand-crafted. As we saw with the Aston Martin V12 Zagato, there are a number of design features that the Italian design house likes to use as its signature.
These include the bonnet vents and side strakes, the "double-bubble"
roof line (originally so that helmets could be worn when racing), the
way the rear glass and side glass "swap-over" at the C-pillar, the
muscular but sharpened rear haunches, and finally, the cut-off "Kamm"
tail - based on research from the 60s that shows it to be an effective
reducer of drag. On the BMW Zagato the rear panel that incorporates the
light clusters is all glass and can be seen through from the cockpit,
evoking Lamborghinis of the 70’s.
The front fascia is unmistakably BMW, yet a beautifully executed
aggressive interpretation of the present in-house style. A nice touch is
that the grill is made from little repeating Z’s. In fact the whole
design skilfully synthesizes both BMW and Zagato design language
elements and the car looks very coherent and "production ready." It’s
also fully functional, the classic straight-six motor producing a tested
400 bhp and the interior achieving the high standard one would expect.
There is absolutely no indication that the vehicle is ever intended for
production and it seems unlikely that more than one will ever be made.
Perhaps we should just be thankful that BMW seems to have got its design
"mojo" back and is confident enough to indulge in these cross-border
design exercises from time to time
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