Aldo Brovarone – Driven To Write

History in Cars – A Bottle of Evening in Paris Perfume

It is said that you cannot buy style. I beg to differ.

It had been getting increasingly worrisome for some time now, but no, this time the gearlever was most definitely jammed. Having engaged reverse as I slotted the Peugeot into a Camden Town parking space one balmy post-Millennial Sunday afternoon, it hadn’t as yet dawned upon me that for the rest of my tenure, not only would I neither reverse this car, nor parallel park it again. The fact that the 304 was going nowhere – except nominally in reverse – had largely carjacked all further thought. That, and the question of what the loving hell I was going to do now? Continue reading “History in Cars – A Bottle of Evening in Paris Perfume”

In Memoriam – Aldo Brovarone

We salute a departed master of form.

Brovarone’s magnum opus. Prototype Dino 206 GT. Image: stylepark

In an ideal world, the deserving always rise to the top. In such a environment a young stylist might perhaps serve his time, building up a body of work before branching out on his own, culminating with his name atop the doorway of a stand-alone carrozziere. Instead, the name of Aldo Brovarone, who departed the surly bonds of earth in mid-October, remains (outside of enthusiast automotive circles at least) largely unheralded.

Life has never been fair, and despite Brovarone being one of the very best of his era, the reasons for his low-key passing owe as much to the nature of the man as they do to the depth of auto-design apprehension that existed amid the contemporary motoring media.

Should we therefore view Brovarone as simply another in a long line of stylistic talents who mortified their egos to Continue reading “In Memoriam – Aldo Brovarone”

Adding Dimensions (II)

When it came to translation a car design sketch into a tangible object, craftsmanship and even cultural background used to be of the utmost importance.

9f72541209ef01b37ea4c7d936d8cdbf — Photo (c) Pinterest

As described earlier on, the technique and style any car designer chooses to depict his ideas is highly informative.

Back in the golden era of the Italian carrozzieri, however, this did not matter as much, as most of the legendary Italian car designers didn’t much care for impressive illustrations. Viewing the sketches of the likes of Leonardo Fioravanti, Marcello Gandini or Aldo Brovarone from today’s perspective, their artistic qualities appear rather naïve, to put it mildly. Continue reading “Adding Dimensions (II)”

Children of the Revolution

The ‘Sixty-Eighters’ rocked France, yet one of its more illustrious offspring would become a bastion of more conformist values.

In a curiously prescient article for Le Monde in March 1968, journalist, Pierre Viansson-Ponté made the assertion that France was suffering from the dangerous affliction of ‘boredom’. During a period which French economist, Jean Fourastié coined as Les Trentes Glorieuses, the country settled into a period of political stability and economic prosperity, transitioning from a predominantly agricultural economy to a largely industrial one.

Rural France had decanted into the cities and its universities were brimming with the young and sexually frustrated, expected to behave in a similar fashion to that of their socially conformist parents. But students from Paris’ Université Nanterre, emboldened perhaps from a diet rich in Satre, Brel, and Dylan would no longer Continue reading “Children of the Revolution”

In the Name of the Son

A Masterpiece from Maranello.

1967 Ferrari 206 GT. Image: (c) Ferrari.com

The car with which Alfredo Ferrari’s name would become synonymous did not carry the famous Cavallino Rampante emblem but is perhaps the most significant (and beautiful) Ferrari of all.

Enzo Ferrari preferred to be addressed as ‘ingegnere’, which was something of an irony, given his somewhat reactionary views on the subject. A staunch traditionalist, his principles were firmly rooted in the pre-war era, pivoting around the notion of a powerful, high revving power unit combined with a driver of sufficient bravery and skill to Continue reading “In the Name of the Son”

Gamma Bytes – Pininfarina’s Concepts

The Gamma Coupé evolved to become the model’s stylistic True North, but was this Pininfarina’s tacit admission of failure?

Aldo Brovarone sketch. (c) carstyling.ru

Over the course of our ongoing examination into the Gamma, I’ve focused primarily upon the Berlina, styled at Pininfarina by Aldo Brovorone, under the supervision of Leonardo Fioravanti. The origins of the saloon’s styling we will return to, but today I want to examine the version that captivated the pundits at the 1976 launch – the Pininfarina Coupé. Continue reading “Gamma Bytes – Pininfarina’s Concepts”