Tag Archive for: Soul

Soul of the Industrial Artist

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The 1931 Zagato Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 again. Equisite early light bodied aerodynamic body! Rolling Art, definitely!

"Ugo Zagato (he was born on June 25, 1890) began his coachbuilding career in 1919 when he left Officine Aeronautiche Pomilio to set up his own business in Milan. This was: “the construction and repair of bodies for automobiles and airplanes”. He did so with the intent of transferring sophisticated constructional techniques that combined lightness with strength from the aeronautics to the automotive sector. Cars of the time were still bulky and heavy: Ugo Zagato conceived them as lightweight structures, with a frame in sheet aluminium similar to an aircraft fuselage. This change in direction came to represent a fundamental chapter in the history of taste and saw, in Europe, the adoption of the concept of functionalism applied to automotive design.
During the next decades, Zagato continued building a variety of aerodynamic cars. He adopted inclined windscreens, more aerodynamic headlights, firstly enclosing them in aluminium hemispheres and then incorporating them within the bodywork, convex bootlids and perforated disc wheels that favoured brake cooling. Thirty-six Zagato bodied cars were at the start of the 1938 Mille Miglia. " thank you Wikipedia…..notice also the inclined radiator shell. BEAUTIFUL lines and details