BMC 1800 Berlina Aerodynamica
BMC 1800 Berlina Aerodinamica
By the time of the 1967 Turin Auto Show where the young Pininfarina stylist Leonardo Fioravanti presented this car, BMC was in a state of mid-leyland-merger flux. Its relationship with Pininfarina had soured. Design work on the 1800 had been taken back into British hands after BMC top brass reckoned it looked too much like an 1100, but Longbridge’s reinterpretation was a lumpen mess. Pininfarina wouldn’t style another Austin-morris again.
However, Fioravanti was keen to see his Milan Polytechnic design thesis take shape, applying Dr Wunibald Kamm’s aerodynamic theories to a practical four-door family saloon. When the BMC relationship broke down, Pininfarina also reckoned an 1800-based concept car might also win back contracts with the new Jaguarmerged BLMC organisation. Ultimately, to the irritation of Sir Alec shortened wheelbase – signalled by the hunched rear wing line aft of the doors – make the car more compact than other, heftier 250s, it also minimized overhangs front and rear. On paper, the 250SWB could look cartoonish and steroidal in the manner of a Shelby Cobra 427 in attempting to squeeze 3.0-litre V12 racer innards into a small sports car. However, Sergio Pininfarina’s eternal dedication to simplicity of line, Issigonis, BLMC boss Sir George Harriman turned down both the 1800 Aerodinamica, and a smaller version based on the 1100.
No manufacturer took up Pininfarina’s design specifically, but its influences are obvious. Its first reappearance came in 1970 with the Citroën GS and Fioravanti’s five-door Kamm-tail theories prevailed, continuing to surface in designs throughout the Seventies. Next came the Alfasud, Citroën CX and, most audaciously of all, BL’S 1976 Rover SD1, for which its designer David Bache vocally referenced Fioravanti’s work. In turn, the Daytona-alike nose was acknowledged as an influence by Kenneth Grange when he penned the Intercity 125 locomotive.
BMC’S own replacement for the 1800 – the Harris Mann-designed, wedge-shaped Princess – was just as radical in its own way, but it prompted nothing like the wide-ranging copycattery of Fioravanti’s 1800 Aerodinamica, a car that never even entered production. a partial byproduct of the weight-saving thought behind this Ferrari, makes it seem almost petite – both in pictures and in the metal. Only its 1690mm width betrays the muscle beneath, hidden within the main body silhouette rather than expressed with bulging wheelarch extensions.
The idea of a roadgoing Ferrari with an almost Lotus-like focus on weight- and overhang-reduction, taking coupé-only numberplated-racer form, has regularly resurfaced in the GTO and F-series Ferraris. But the 250SWB was the first of the breed. The Lusso roadgoing specification could be ditched in favour of a version that looked identical yet put out 293bhp rather than 240 and weighed 110kg less thanks to a combination of
aluminium body panels and deleted cockpit luxuries.