Berlinetta ’50s: Rare Italian Coupés of the Fifties

XAVIER DE NOMBEL & CHRISTIAN DESCOMBES, Dalton Watson, £69, ISBN 979 10 90267 28 2

There has been a spate of lavish books majoring on what critics perceive as Italian styling’s most fruitful era, and this is another variation. But that’s not to belittle the achievement here of writer Christian Descombes (late of French magazine Automobiles Classiques) and photographer Xavier de Nombel. The bulk of the book is divided into five slightly nebulous themes, such as ‘Escaping Uniformity’ and ‘In Praise of Lightness’. Into these are coaxed a brief scene-setting page followed by detailed photo-essays on several cars – maybe five, maybe ten, always coupés – with a strong aesthetic story to tell. The photography is close to salivation-inducing at its best, with full-page detail shots and full-spread statics, often in unusual settings. That of the Ferrari-like 1955 Fiat 8V Speciale by Pininfarina, with a red-herring BMW 328 peering out of the adjacent garage, is one example. Children running in a blur around a 1954 Alfa 1900 SS Zagato is another.

Some of the usual suspects are here: the Bertone BAT cars, Ghia’s Fiat 8V Supersonic, Pininfarina’s Cisitalia 202 SC. Others are a delight to discover, such as Vignale’s bubble-roofed Nardi Raggio Azzurro, from 1955 but with a 1960s crispness, and finished of course in two-tone metallic blue.

As a picture-fest this is a delight. As a work of historical commentary and analysis it’s not quite so successful, despite a worthy foreword by Lorenzo Ramaciotti, who until 2015 was the head of design for Fiat Chrysler. The company-by-company guide to all the 1950s carrozzerie is useful, though, and the translucent-paper prints of renderings and blueprints within the foreword are pleasing touches. So is the revelation, by a sleek Michelotti sketch, that sometimes the sketch was all the metal-shapers had to go on, interpreting it as they saw fit.