TOURING ARESE RH95

Touring Superleggera’s latest stunner re-wraps the guts of an undisclosed ‘wellknown, mid-engined exotic’. Dale Drinnon discovers that the result is even more exotic

First drive in legendary coachbuilder’s latest

Poke the throttle and the most delicious whoop imaginable swells up behind your shoulders, the kind that starts a chill rippling upwards from your spine until it brings the tiny hairs on your neck to trembling attention. Somebody please, please tell me why Italian V8s, no matter where they’re mounted, and I mean going clear back to the Otto Vu, sound so different from the good old home-grown versions of my native USA. And skip all the dry, empirical engineering reasons; I know about those already, at least a little. Just give me the lovely romance.

OK, yes, maybe not literally each and every Italian V8; I do remember a particular Maser that sounded so 289 Ford HiPo that my eyes got misty for a sec. But somehow the two varieties wind up provoking the same kind of ultimate anatomical excitement (ahem), while taking completely different routes in getting there.

Which is all by way of saying that the new Arese RH95 by Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera, the latest in its AERO series of aerodynamic designs, is a stirring, thrilling, and stunningly fast automobile that lost not a single step between the acclaimed mid-engined supercar donating the mechanicals and its re-birth as a coachbuilt example of stunningly fast luxury automotive sculpture. The phrase ‘rolling work of art’ is dreadfully hackneyed, and Lord knows I’ve done my share of the hackneying, but there it is, and like all of Touring’s AERO family, the purple prose richly applies. However, like the two flavours of V8, the Arese RH95 took a quite different route from its kinfolk in getting there.

Of course, aerodynamic design has an illustrious history at Touring, with its longstanding philosophy of ‘shaped by the wind’ resulting in the industry’s first serious wind tunnel studies, as well as my candidate for the most beautiful racing cars humanly possible, the 1938 Alfa 8C Spiders that dominated the final pre-war open-road Mille Miglia. Touring, in fact, considers that period the beginning of a whole Streamline genre for the carrozzeria; the AERO sub-set, meanwhile, came after Touring’s 1966 to 2006 hiatus (not ‘bankruptcy’; the founding Anderloni family stopped trading, but eventually paid every bill, in full) and subsequent restructuring under new ownership.

Head of design Louis de Fabribeckers specifically dates the modern AERO family from his delectable 2012 Disco Volante Coupé, and each evolution has carried forward shared details, or elaborated on common themes, to maintain a continuity of design, while always introducing innovative ideas and treatments to keep the results fresh and engaging. In a clever turn of servicing both those objectives simultaneously, de Fabribeckers also drew inspiration for new creations from Touring’s landmark machines of the company’s pre-’66 era, such as, obviously, the Disco Volante Coupé and Spyder, and those not considered part of the AERO family nonetheless suggested the great classic sports and GT machines of the front-engine days.