Martin Buckley Backfire
‘Manzù made a great impression on Giacosa, who devotes many warm words to the young lad in his classic memoir’
Alongside the supercars in this issue a more approachable Italian debutant of 1971 was the Fiat 127, a multi-millionselling classic of the decade’s supermini genre. It easily pre-dated the likes of the Renault 5 and the VW Polo and, in certain far-flung outposts, lived on well into the ’90s. We get so misty-eyed about the Mini that it’s often forgotten how out of date the 12-year-old marvel looked compared to the 127. With a large boot and room for five ’70s-sized adults (they were skinnier), the transverse-engined 127 was even more ruthlessly packaged. The secret was Macpherson struts all round. Its ability to top 85mph and get to 60mph faster than an Avenger, on 903cc and 48bhp, spoke for itself.
Designed to slot in between the 850 and 128, it was the final automotive fling of Dante Giacosa, co-creator of the Topolino and father of the great post-war Fiats. But the 127 was also the legacy of young designer Pio Manzù, who didn’t live to see the launch of the vehicle that came to define his short but productive career.
Hastening along the Milan-turin autostrada in the early hours of 26 May ’69 (by coincidence, 52 years to the day that I sat down to write this), Manzù was tired after a long trip to Rome to see his father. Having swapped his company Dino for his wife’s Fiat 500 he was on the way, weary and anxious, to present his full-sized clay of the 127 to management at the Centro Stile in Turin.
It’s generally assumed that, near the Brandizzo exit, he fell asleep; another theory is that he got distracted opening the sunroof. Either way he was found lifeless in the upturned car, a prodigy of only just 30 yet already the author of two Fiat concepts (the City Taxi and the G31, a precursor to the X1/9) and what would become one of the most commercially successful Fiats ever.
Full of ideas and energy, Pio was the son of the sculptor Giacomo Manzù. In his thick-rimmed glasses he had the skinny, cerebral appearance of a young Woody Allen or, more pertinently given his untimely demise, Buddy Holly. After studying for a thesis on a ‘safety tractor’ at Ulm, Germany, Pio came to prominence when he won a competition in Revue Automobile in 1962. With fellow students Michael Conrad and Henner Werner, a proposal for a Healey 3000-based coupé called the Firrere was built into a working car by Pininfarina. This odd-looking machine convinced Giacosa that Manzù had a future at Fiat where, from ’68, he joined as a consultant with his own studio and clay modellers. In fact, having graduated in ’65, Pio had been working in the Fiat publicity department for some time.
Agnelli saw potential and keenly followed his progress. Manzù clearly made a great impression on Giacosa, who devotes many warm words to the young lad in his classic memoir Forty Years of Design With Fiat. Both had an austere attitude to car design, favouring ‘people’s cars’ over big, wasteful luxury machines. The pair first met in 1960 but Giacosa hesitated over offering Manzù a job, fearing he might be too sensitive a soul for the dour confines of the styling centre.
A year or so before his death there was a scurrilous rumour that Manzù, not Claus Luthe, was the author of the NSU Ro80. The evidence is thin and barely extends beyond the fact that Manzù studied in Germany and, while working on an NSU Tt-based sports car project (the Autonova), he would have been privy to the goings on in Luthe’s styling department. As others have pointed out, there is something too intuitive and emotional about the Ro80; Manzù saw himself as an all-purpose industrial designer who approached creating a car in the same way he would a kettle or the beautiful furniture also associated with his name.
Yet his famous Manzù chair looks more like something from a Miura than for watching TV. An original will cost far more than a 127, but you probably have a better chance of finding the chair.