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There is a revival taking place, a rebirth of hand-crafted
cars. Custom coachbuilding cars, an automotive art form
that faded post World War Two, is re-emerging. The German
term is karosserie, Italians say carozziere, and the French
carrossier, but all harken back to a glorious era of custom
hand-crafted bodies with the artists and craftsmen all striving
for the same result – unique coachbuilt automobiles that
are art as much as they are cars.
The broad definition of a coachbuilder is: a craftsman
who makes the bodies for custom-built carriages or automobiles.
Traditionally coachbuilt cars have had bodies made of
some sort of metal (steel, magnesium, electron or aluminum)
over an ash framework, although historically some
have been fabric over wood. (Electron is rarely found, much
less employed, today. It was used on the Bugatti Aeroliths
and Torpedo S. The Guild of Automotive Restorers is
embarking on building an electron body for a customer).
Some builders, such as the French firm
Labourdette, used all wood construction, patterning
bodies after car construction with a wood
covering over a wood frame.
Virtually all coachbuilt cars were metal over
wood until 1937. Influenced by Charles
Weymann's system of fabric-covered lightweight
frames, Carrozzeria Touring founder, Carlo Felice
Bianchi "Cici" Anderloni, and designer Giuseppe
Seregni developed and patented a construction
technique known as superleggera. It represented a
giant step in the evolution of automotive bodybuilding
technique.
Superleggera translates from Italian as "super
light." What this north-of-Milan firm had done was
use a network of thin metal tubes as the framework
under a lightweight aluminum or magnesium body.
The approach, used on several 8C 2900 Alfa Romeos, earned
favor and was subsequently used for most pre-1970 Ferraris
and, of course, the birdcage Maserati. There may have been
American cars built using full metal construction prior to the
debut of the superleggera style, but they didn't use the thin
tubular structure introduced by Carrozzeria Touring.
With the advent of today's formula composites, there are a
handful of new car builders, some of whom refer to themselves
as coachbuilders, who are presenting glamorous,
breathtaking carbon-fiber-bodied creations. Caparo, a twoseat,
1,000 pound formula car for the street, made of spaceage
composites in England’s West Midlands, is one example.
Likewise, Henrik Fisker and Bernhard Koehler, working as
Fisker Coachbuild, have created Tramonto and Latigo (refer
to our Vol II No 2 issue) and Chip Foose has used carbon
fiber to build his Ford GT500-powered Foose Coupe from a
design he did while still a student at Art Center, 16 years ago.
Carbon-fiber-bodied coachbuilt cars are new technology.
Old school coachbuilders will probably insist the car's body
be made of metal. However, with the advent of new composites,
cars like the Enzo-based one-off Ferrari P4/5 by
Pininfarina recently created with a carbon-fiber body, are
challenging that definition. As are a plethora of fiberglass
bodied, limited production, cars such as the Anteros, using a
Corvette C6 donor-platform, that might be considered coachbuilt
cars in a broad context.
Is it coachbuilding or panel beating? The Guild of
Automotive Restorers’ Dave Grainger thinks, "There is a
misconception concerning what a coachbuilder is and what a
panel beater is. The distinction is simple. A panel beater is a
craftsman trained to create the panels or exterior coachwork
of a car, such as fenders, body, and trunk lids etc., usually
from steel or aluminum.
For more on this article and much more grab a copy of Auto Aficionado Magazine on newsstands nationwide!
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