Ercole Spada – Design by Design

Artists and artisans have called Italy home for millennia, with pursuit of the arts a natural activity for countless Italians inspired by the natural beauty all around them. One with such a destiny arrived on July 26, 1937 in the town of Busto Arsizio, northwest of Milan, a newborn son of the Spada family named Ercole.

After discovering his gift for drawing cars while studying industrial engineering at Milan’s Instituto Technica Feltrinelli, Spada realized he could merge his passions for art and automobiles through a career in Italy’s coachbuilding industry. Upon fulfilling his national military obligations, he went to the famed Milanese design house Carrozzeria Zagato early in 1960 to seek employment. There, Elio Zagato hired him on the spot after hearing affirmative answers to two questions: Could he make full-scale drawings, and did he have a degree?

In a classic win-win scenario, Ercole Spada’s arrival commenced one of the most prolific periods in Zagato history. During the next decade he would create nearly 30 unique automobiles, most of them for Italian manufacturers like Alfa Romeo, Abarth, Maserati, Lancia, Ferrari and Fiat, but also for overseas companies such as Aston Martin, Rover and Volvo.

His first assignment for Zagato was the Aston Martin DB4 GTZ, a car commissioned as the result of AM boss David Brown’s desire to have a front rank contender ready for the burgeoning interest in Grand Touring automobiles that would mark the early ’60s. Spada shortened, lightened and smoothed the standard DB4 into one of the most beautiful examples of the marque ever created. Powered by AM’s triple-Weber-carbureted dohc six-cylinder engine, rated at more than 300 hp, the DB4 GTZ clocked zero to 60 mph in 6.0 seconds and topped out at 154 mph, both impressive figures for the day.

The DB4 GTZ debuted to an admiring public at the 1960 London Motor Show, but was only the first of three Spada designs destined to captivate audiences that year. The Turin Auto Show later displayed his OSCA 1600 GTZ concept car for the world, while his Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ debuted at the Geneva Motorshow that March.

His update of the existing SZ—for Sprint Zagato—was Spada’s initial design for Alfa Romeo, and the first car to feature the “cut tail” concept originally defined by Swiss aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm that would become a characteristic of many Spada designs—along with those of other designers. In addition to the truncated tailpiece, the new SZ was lower, sleeker, had its headlights enclosed behind Plexiglas fairings, and with its standard 1290-cc dohc 4-cylinder pumping 100 bhp through its 5-speed gearbox, top speed rose beyond 120 mph. Consequently, even though only 200 were produced, the car known as “Zagato’s Little Jewel” formed the heart of Alfa’s formidable race and rally programs of the early 1960s.

A limited run of two-door “sport” versions of Lancia’s Flavia, a medium-sized luxury sedan, garnered Spada further notice, but then his attention returned to Alfa Romeo, where in 1962 he created the SZ’s successor by cloaking Giuseppe Busso’s small-diameter steel tube chassis in gloriously sleek aluminum alloy bodywork to produce the Giulia Tubolare Zagato (TZ). With independent suspension and disc brakes all around, the TZ’s 160-hp, 1600-cc four could carry the sleek 650-kg coupe up to 135 mph. Seeing the Kamm-tailed TZ as the perfect vehicle to return the marque to competition, Alfa chairman Giuseppe Luraghi set up an in-house racing department called Autodelta under the direction of Carlo Chiti and Lodovico Chizzola, to assemble the cars and handle the company’s racing program.

Continuing development of the TZ through competition ultimately led to the TZ2, the prototype of which retained the same chassis but carried a Spada-restyled alloy body. Subsequent examples had bodies crafted of fiberglass, however, a departure for Zagato, where aluminum had long been the favored medium for coachwork. Beyond its even sleeker shape, among the other improvements Spada and Autodelta incorporated into the TZ2 were a 65-pound weight reduction, 13-inch wheels and a dry sump lubrication system for the 170 horsepower, 1600-cc engine that helped lower the car’s center of gravity and reduce its frontal area. Although the car’s competition debut at the 1965 24 Hours of Le Mans ended with all three entries failing to finish, when they returned to the tracks for the following season they won the 1.6-liter GT class wherever they ran. Only a dozen were built, however, with victory on the racetrack apparently not sufficient to save the model as Autodelta’s attention shifted to the new GTA sedans and Tipo 33 prototypes.

Another Lancia was next for Spada, as he gave the existing Flaminia Sport a Kamm tail and teardrop headlight openings, as well as the classic Zagato “double bubble” roofline, to create the Super Sport. Yet, another Lancia to benefit from Spada’s talents was the front-wheel-drive Fulvia Sport, for which he designed a significantly sleeker aluminum monocoque body that led many to believe it was a concept car. Happily, Lancia’s 1300-cc, 87 horsepower V4 engine provided performance to match its avant-garde looks.

Spada next undertook a redesign of Lamborghini’s 350GT, producing the 3500GT with a body shape similar to his Alfa TZ2 on a chassis shortened 10-cm from standard. This car drew mixed reviews and only two were ever built, so it is generally considered to be a concept car. Another Spada concept, the Rover 2000 TCZ, first appeared at the 1967 Turin Motor Show, but was never seriously considered for production, perhaps because it looked a bit too Italian for the staid British automaker. The same basic shape did indeed reappear shortly thereafter as the Lancia Flavia Super Sport Zagato, two prototypes of which were built in 1968.

The Alfa Romeo Junior Z, however, became the car with which Spada realized his latest concept on a car that actually reached the production line. The wedge-shaped hatchback with superb visibility and truncated tail first appeared at the Turin Auto Show in 1969, visually different from anything else at that time and set to satisfy a marketing niche for an original sporty compact GT. The steel-bodied coupe was based on Alfa’s Giulia 105 series, sharing the same platform and running gear as the Spider and powered by Alfa’s standard dohc 4-cylinder. It went into series production as the result of a conversation on the show floor between Alfa CEO Luraghi and the Zagato brothers, Elio and Gianni, with some 1510 examples being built, their power plants split about three to one in favor of the 1300 over the 1600. This was the car that lifted Zagato onto equal footing with Bertone and Pininfarina among Alfa’s contract coachbuilders.

A further variation of Spada’s basic wedgy fastback shape appeared in 1969 as the Volvo GTZ 2000, a concept car based on the Swedish automaker’s 142 sedan. Despite being well received, it never moved beyond the concept stage.

As the ’60s were ending, Spada decided to leave his position with Zagato to strike out on his own as a freelance designer. During his time with the famed design studio he had risen from a fresh-off-the-street newcomer to become the firm’s chief designer, with soft, streamlined shapes and smooth lines characterizing his work.

His first solo commission (though still a collaboration with Zagato) was a radical redesign of the Fiat 500, transforming the economy sedan into a topless, buggy-style sports car called the Zanzara—Italian for mosquito. Spada’s next challenge took him to Ford, as the American giant acquired the Italian design houses of Ghia, Vignale and de Tomaso. He remained chief designer there until 1976, when he briefly worked with Audi before moving to BMW, where as chief stylist he turned his talents toward all-new versions of the German company’s 5 and 7 series sedans.

Upon leaving BMW in 1983, Spada joined the five-year-old I.DE.A Institute, an automotive design and engineering group in Turin. There he tackled a number of interesting projects, including:

• The Fiat Tipo, a roomy five-door hatchback family car on an all-new platform that appeared in 1988 with body panels galvanized to preclude rusting, that was selected as European Car of the Year in 1989:

• That same year, the Institute was commissioned to create a unique Pace Car for Indycar series sponsor PPG, based on a Ferrari Mondial, that cost $1 million and became a showcase for PPG’s paint products;

• The Lancia Dedra, a 1989 four-door sedan built on the Fiat Tipo floorplan that helped relaunch Lancia in the compact executive car segment and boasted a remarkable drag coefficient of just 0.29;

• The Fiat Tempra, another four-door sedan, introduced at the 1990 Geneva Auto Salon and intended to be an affordable and dependable family car that, like the Fiat Tipo, featured galvanized body panels;

• The Alfa Romeo 155, a compact, front-wheel-drive executive car with a slick 0.29 coefficient of aerodynamic drag that was launched in 1992 as the replacement for Alfa’s previous 75 sedan, even though the switch to front-wheel-drive was not very well-received;

• A second-generation Lancia Delta, also known as the Nuova, appeared in 1993, another small family car based on the Fiat Tipo platform;

• The Lancia Kappa was built on the same platform as Alfa Romeo’s 166, and introduced as the carmaker’s flagship executive car in 1994;

• The Daihatsu Move appeared late in 1995, designed to meet the requirements of Japanese regulations for lightweight cars, vans and pickup trucks, otherwise known as kei cars. It was a tall-bodied, minivan-style vehicle based on the company’s Cuore chassis that turned out to be a sales success.

Those projects helped keep Spada busy through 1992 when he returned to Zagato for a two-year stint as Design Director before leaving again to open his own studio. His return was celebrated by the company with an ambitious project to give the fabulous Ferrari Testarossa a makeover, the project assigned the name of FZ93 (Formula Zagato 1993) and intended as a styling exercise that embodied the latest deveopments in automotive technology. As a nod to then current Formula One technology it featured a raised nose section that proved unattractive to many observers, but which was designed to serve as a bumper that could absorb low-speed impacts without passing damage on to the surrounding bodywork. It also incorporated Zagato’s trademark “double bubble” roof design. A subsequent redesign, the ES1, both honored Spada and made for a more pleasing appearance, and is credited with influencing the look of the Ferrari Enzo supercar that followed a decade later.

These days Spada oversees the work of Spada Concepts & Design, in Milan, the same town from which he began his career more than 50 years ago. Working with his son, Paulo, they are establishing a new family tradition, adding Paulo’s own experience working for Smart and Honda’s Advanced Design Studio to that his father has acquired over the years. Their combined expertise gives them the capability to handle a broad array of projects while developing prototypes from conception to creation.

In 2008, the Spadas also launched their own supercar, the Spada TS Codatronca, a natural evolution of the design philosophies that have characterized Ercole’s entire career. The limited-production Codatronca had its premier showing at that year’s Top Marques Monaco, a luxury and supercar show, where it was chosen as the most beautiful car of the exhibition by the New York Times. It is a characteristically sleek and slippery GT coupe powered by a seven-liter aluminum V8, mounted in the front and driving through a close-ratio 6-speed transmission.

So it is that the tradition of family artisans passing along their knowledge to their sons continues as Paulo absorbs the lessons of his father’s experience, expanding and extending the family’s legacy just as Italians have done for centuries.