Italy and the world lost one of the most accomplished stylists of all time in early July, when Sergio Pininfarina died after a long illness. He was born Sergio Farina in 1926, the son of Battista “Pinin” Farina who founded the family’s body styling business on May 22, 1930.
Such was the impact of the company on Italian life that Battista’s nickname was allowed to be incorporated into the family name by a special decree of the then President of Italy Giovanni Gronchi in 1961. And from then on, the name Pininfarina simply became the pinnacle of automobile creativity, elegance and fine taste.
Sergio graduated in mechanical engineering from Turin Polytechnic in 1950 and joined his father in the business, which had stepped up from designing and building bodies for rich individuals to small production runs of its creations on the mechanicals of Alfa Romeos, Hispano-Suizas, Lancias and Fiats. In 1947, the company created the Cisitalia 202 coupé, a car of such elegance that it is now exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. But all that was just a beginning as the company began to work with the car manufacturers themselves at the end of the Fifties, starting with Peugeot before Alfa Romeo ordered a massive 27,000 Giulietta Spiders from them.
In 1961, Battista handed over control of his company to Sergio, and that kick-started one of the most illustrious careers in car design. In the Sixties, he conceived such motoring icons as the Alfa Romeo Spider “Duetto,” the Ferrari Dino 246, the Fiat 124 Sport Spider and the Ferrari Dino Spider. At the end of that decade, the company transferred to Grugliasco, in Piedmont, which Sergio turned into the heart of automobile innovation and technological research. There, he built a center for calculus and design and later Italy’s first full-size wind tunnel, from which came cars like the Ferrari Daytona, 308 GTB, 365, 400i and Lancia Beta Montecarlo.
No longer content to “simply” design and produce bodies for other people’s cars, Pininfarina started to build the whole vehicle, starting with the Fiat Campagnola and Alfa Romeo 33 Giardinetta.
But if for no other reason, Sergio Pininfarina will forever be revered for his Ferraris: cars like the Testarossa, GTO and F40 ordered by Enzo Ferrari himself to commemorate his company’s 40th anniversary, through to the more recent 575M Maranello, the Enzo and the one-off P4/5.
–Robert Newman
