Before the term “supercar” was coined (a portmanteau of “super sports car”) in the middle of the 20th century to describe the Lamborghini Miura, those cars that were truly fast were considered just to be high end sports cars. For these cars, which were often also ridiculously expensive for the time, you could buy them one of two ways. The first was buying them as designed by the original manufacturer, which led to some amazingly beautiful Bugatti‘s and Alfa Romeo‘s, among others. The other way was to have the chassis, engine, and suspension all set up by the manufacturer, but the body was a custom coachbuilt design.
An example of what a coachbuilder would do on a cars such as this Bentley Blower. The first thing they would do is construct a wooden frame that would form the basis of the look of the car for the metal shaping to be done against. Image via Wikimedia Commons
Coachbuilding may not be the most common of terms, but it is a term that survived from the 19th century to describe a customized body for a passenger carrying vehicle. In Victorian England, it quite literally meant building the horse-drawn coaches that the elite rode around in. Take away the horses, add an internal combustion engine, and it’s pretty much the same.
