Collectors & Aficionados
Inside the World’s Greatest Classic Car Collections – Part 18: Corrado Lopresto
Dust, decades, and discoveries – five cars that trace Italian automotive history through the eyes of its most rigorous collector.
Collectors are plentiful. Collectors who discover, restore, and document the history of their own cars are rare. And if, among those few, there is one who does not chase established jewels but instead unearths rare examples with unique and extraordinary stories, you can be certain that person is Corrado Lopresto. Universally recognised as the most important Italian collector, he set aside his career as an architect to devote himself entirely to a collection built piece by piece – one that has made him a serial winner of Best of Show awards and honours of every kind. Here are five of his many cars, each one an answer unto itself.
1931 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 GS Spider Aprile – named after the coachbuilder who created it – is a remarkable spider built in 1938 on the basis of a 1931 Zagato spider of the same model. Working from a design by Mario Revelli de Beaumont, Giuseppe Aprile of Savona completely rebodied the car in 1938, producing a vehicle that defies every convention, startling in its audacity and genuinely aerodynamically purposeful. Among its many honours: the Coppa d’Oro at the Concorso d’Eleganza di Villa d’Este in 2014.
