The incredible story of two Montreals

It’s tough being an artist in the car world. Whereas traditional artists have the freedom to take their brushes and produce whatever they like on their canvas, the artist/car designer has to try and find ways of avoiding, or getting round, various constraints that may be imposed on him — constraints deriving from the technological requirements of the car he has been asked to “create”, the various laws and regulations in force, various marketing considerations, and, no less important, the tastes of the client company’s management. While this situation is just about acceptable for a regular designer, for a true artist like Marcello Gandini it can be a source of real frustration. We need only recall his memorable rejoinder to Chrysler president and CEO Lee Iacocca after the latter, having taken over Lamborghini and found Gandini’s Diablo, an innovative creative masterpiece, practically complete, decided he wanted the Chrysler style center to put its stamp on the car.

The definitive prototype of the Montreal ready to be shipped to the 1967 Montreal Car Show

The result was the magnificent model we all know so well — magnificent because it stemmed from Gandini’s basic idea —, but it was actually far less innovative than the version originally designed. When the car was ready to go on the market, Iacocca asked Gandini to put his name to it: “Of course", he replied “you can have half my name”. Clearly, this is how much of the car he still felt he “owned”. A similarly incredible incident came in 1967 when Gandini was chief designer at Bertone. He had designed an Alfa Romeo for the Montreal Car Show. The model was in fact called the Montreal.  “We had prepared two specimens” Gandini recounts, with a smile that nevertheless fails to conceal a trace of bitterness even now, more than forty years on. “Everyone loved that car. It was wide and low. Its only defect was the four-cylinder engine, which didn’t really match the expectations it generated”.