Lone Stars

Automotive design milestones are often one-offs. Lorenzo Ramaciotti guides us through a remarkable story.

Throughout the history of the automobile, there have been numerous lone stars which, when you take a look at them today, continue to shine with their own light. None of them were created to become production cars, but rather to send out a message that was uninhibited by industrial and marketing constraints, signed by designers and the manufacturers themselves.

On the following pages, we have published several extracts from a conversation with Lorenzo Ramaciotti, using images to tell a different story about the evolution of style and trends over time. For the sake of simplicity, we have divided them into seven decades from the 1940s to the 2000s, although it goes without saying that the end of any decade does not automatically herald the introduction of a new approach to car design. But it helps keep things orderly. For those with a curious mind, you’ll be pleased to hear that the main characters of this story go beyond the images and short accompanying texts: in fact, most of these cars exist and make collecting even more attractive thanks to their uniqueness. We start this series on the Lone Stars with the 1940s - and will publish another decade at a time in the coming weeks, up to the first decade of the new millennium.

40s

A difficult decade, with the war in Europe and general reconstruction. In those years, the USA, where the conflict did not arrive, continued to churn out projects, while Europe was forced to stop. For Ramaciotti, the theme of that decade is the transition to fully integrated volumes and pontoon styling, forever replacing separate wings in what was a veritable revolution of shapes.

The car taken as a symbol of this period is the Buick Streamliner. In addition to surprising with its beauty and the way it represented the period, is also interesting as it was designed by an outsider, Norman Timbs. One car that Ramaciotti remembers is the Maserati A6 1500 Prototype by Pininfarina that was presented at the Geneva Motor Show in 1947. It is the almost unknown manifesto of Cisitalia, the Lancia Aurelia B20 and, more generally, the success of Italian style. Faced with these proposals, an increasingly broader audience came round to the idea that it was really possible to own a car: a dream ready to come true.

Buick Streamliner

1940

The Maserati A6 1500 Prototype: “After taking over the company from the Maserati brothers in the early 1940s, the Orsi family immediately laid out plans for a road-legal Maserati. This prototype, named A6 1500 and built by Pininfarina in 1947, illustrates the future creative line of the Turin coachbuilder.

The Maserati A6 1500 Prototype

1946

The Auto Avio Costruzioni 815: “Enzo Ferrari’s first car, the one that did not bear his name due to the legal constraints following his exit from Alfa Romeo, the Auto Avio Costruzioni 815, was built in 1940 from a design penned by Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni from Touring. Of the two cars produced, one remains in the Righini collection”.

The Auto Avio Costruzioni 815

1947

The Panhard Dynavia: “The originality of French cars was clearly illustrated with the small Panhard Dynavia from 1948. Designed with a 610 cc air-cooled two-cylinder boxer engine, the car was very light and designed for maximum aerodynamic efficiency, never reaching the market but paving the way for the unforgettable Dyna Z.”

The Panhard Dynavia

1948

The Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Competizione: “Intended for competition and created without drawings from the pure skill of famous Italian panel beaters, this car demonstrates how a model created in the pre-war period and continuously developed could clearly break away from the style of the past. The year was 1946, and the car went on to compete in the 1000 Miglia of 1948.”

The Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Competizione