Celebrating more than a century of bold design and questionable lines
Even among iconic coachbuilders, Italian firm Zagato is one of the most famous names in automotive creation. And for good reason: the design house has crafted shells for some of the greatest marques and machines over the past 100-plus years.
Yes, that long. The company was founded back in 1919 by Ugo Zagato in Milan.
Its designers have frequently pushed the boundaries of what’s possible when it comes to car design, forging everything from sumptuous grand tourers to startling sci-fi concepts as they experimented with different design languages across the decades. And, while the results weren’t always conventionally beautiful, they were nothing if not arresting.
From one-off prototypes to properly wacky production cars, here are 22 of Zagato’s greatest, most startling and outright divisive designs – which you’re bound to love or hate.
Ferrari 250GTZ
If the Ferrari 250GT is one of the most competent, capable and thrilling GTs ever made and Zagato is responsible for some of the most alluring shells in car design, you’d think a combination of the two would be something truly special. And you’d be right.
Arguably the greatest collaboration since butter and toast, Zagato’s mid-’50s makeover of the 250GT was a stunning piece of functional design. Not only did the double-bubble roof, sleek nose and burly rear arches come together to create something remarkable, but the lightweight body also gifted the GTZ a performance boost – one that helped Camillo Luglio to achieve sports car success in Italy.
Just a handful were built for discerning buyers, making the mid-century machine a true rarity today.
Ferrari 330GTC Zagato
Not to be mistaken for a Porsche 914, this one-off oddity is a long way from the standard Ferrari fare of the late ’60s and, in the words of Martin Buckley, was “a weird collection of angles, curves and overhangs.”
Borrowing bits from several of its contemporary designs, Zagato penned the bizarre body in the early ’70s for famed US importer Luigi Chinetti, a man with form when it came to oddball Prancing Horses (see his other Zagato-bodied Ferrari, the 250GT ‘3Z’).
Based around a 1967 330GTC, the reimagined coupé is certainly distinctive, with its slanted plexiglass nose, wedge-like bonnet and abrupt tail all topped with a mismatched Targa-style canopy. As Buckley wrote, “one of the best things about being in it is that you don’t have to look at it.”
Alfa Romeo Junior Zagato
Drooping snout or striking wedge? Whatever your take on Zagato’s body for the Alfa Romeo Junior, the Spada-penned effort was certainly different – and gifted the two-door a much sportier image than it would otherwise have earned.
Launched in 1969, its Kamm tail was mirrored by a flat panel at the front of the slanted nose, giving the compact coupé an aggressive edge – aided by the flared wheelarches – that belied its 1.3-litre motor and the 88bhp at its disposal.
Power would rise in ’72 with the 1600 variant, but the body would remain the Alfa’s most distinctive characteristic.
Alfa Romeo 8C Zagato Spider
Expecting to see the controversial SZ of the late ’80s in this list? While Zagato had a hand in its construction – and the Z in its name stands for the same – the sketches for its daring shell and square headlights actually came from Robert Opron and Antonio Castellana at Fiat.
But it’s an easy association to make, given Zagato’s long-standing collaborative connection with Alfa Romeo – a link that began back with racing Alfas in the 1920s and led to the staggering 8C you see above, clothed by Zagato in the early ’30s.
With incredible performance that was deployed at everything from Grands Prix to the Targa Florio to Le Mans, the 8C was arguably at its most beautiful when wrapped in Zagato’s Spider coachwork.
Autech Stelvio
Another wacky number from the ’90s, the Autech Stelvio was no joke on the road: with a thrumming twin-turbo V6 at its heart, the Japanese performance coupé had 300bhp on tap and could move with quite some alacrity.
More arresting than what was under the hood, though, was the hood itself. Styled by Zagato during something of a dry spell, the super-exclusive two-door made no bones about aping the Aston Martin V8 that came just before it – only its nose was something else entirely, its bonnet adornments spreading outwards like angry gills.
Just 104 were made and each cost twice the price of a Honda NSX-R. We know which we’d have picked. Hint: it didn’t need a nose job.
Bristol 406 Zagato
Meticulously briefed by Bristol high-up Anthony Crook, Zagato set about designing a special shell for the British firm’s luxury GT. Stylishly understated as standard, the same can’t quite be said for what the Italian firm created at the end of the ’50s.
Aston at the nose, hearse at the rear and just a little bit Zagato in the middle (the double bubble is there, albeit subtly), whatever you can call the bespoke creation, it’s not cohesive.
Whether it’s the rising angle of the side detailing or the awkward shoulder bump above the rear wheels, there’s an inescapable impression that the 406 is (at least) two cars welded together.
Ferrari 166MM Panoramica
Enzo Ferrari knew of Zagato from his days as an Alfa Romeo driver. When he started creating his own racers? It wasn’t long before a customer wanted one with a Zagato body – and when the call came from Antonio Stagnoli, the 166MM Panoramica was born.
Retaining the long nose synonymous with the 166MM, Zagato added a roof to create the first ever Ferrari coupé. It was quite the oddity, with a split windscreen and a high, curved profile to maximise the panoramic effect but minimise drag.
Delivered in 1949, just a year later Stagnoli instructed Zagato to change it into an open-top roadster. The picture above? A reconstruction created in 2007 to celebrate Ferrari’s 60th birthday.
Fiat 8V Zagato
Originally bodied in-house by Fiat, several coachbuilders had a crack at re-shelling the Italian firm’s nippy ’50s sports coupé – but few did it better than Zagato.
Trimmer and more timeless than the factory effort, Zagato’s body for the 8V echoed several contemporaries – not least the DB4GT – but also managed to be very much its own thing, offering clean, classic lines and a recognisable low nose punctuated by a big grille and bonny lights.
That its V8 engine made the Fiat a zippy thing only added to the appeal.
Lancia Flavia Sport Zagato
Over the years, Zagato has crafted some truly lovely designs for Lancia. The Flaminia, for example, was an elegant ’60s GT with excellent proportions.
Not everything was quite so nice, though. Exhibit A: the Flavia Sport Zagato, a two-door version of the executive cruiser that didn’t know what it wanted to be – imposing GT or sci-fi sports coupé?
Squared-off at the front, further along the body its panoramic cabin was oddly wedded to a sculpted rear-end replete with curved glass. Like the unwanted offspring of a Maserati and a Citroën, it just didn’t quite seem to fit together.
Lamborghini Canto
No stranger to daring concepts, Zagato got busy in the ’90s penning prototypes for numerous marques, including Lamborghini.
It worked first with Alain Wicki to create the Raptor – a wacky hypercar creation built around the Diablo’s chassis, with no doors but an entire canopy that swivelled up from the front. Shown at Geneva in 1996, it never made production.
Not to be discouraged, Zagato went back to the drawing board for the Canto (pictured). A design exercise to find a replacement for the Diablo, it bore more than a passing resemblance to the mighty McLaren F1 – though the vast rear air intakes were truly novel. Too novel, in fact: top dog Ferdinand Piëch was discouraged after just a single 6-litre prototype was built.
Lancia Aprilia Sport Zagato
As we said at the beginning, Ugo Zagato founded his fabled firm in 1919, having learnt his trade crafting lightweight shells for aeroplanes. That experience would be brought to bear on his firm’s many aluminium car bodies – and none more so than the Aprilia Sport.
Built for Lancia dealer Enrico Minetti in 1938, the stunning open-top racer was a masterclass in drag reduction, its swooping shell and enclosed rear wheels ahead of their time in aerodynamic understanding.
The original was sadly destroyed during World War II, but Zagato masterfully recreated the machine (pictured) using computer modelling from period photographs for Lancia’s centenary in 2006.
Lancia Fulvia Sport Zagato
A step-change in Zagato design, the Fulvia Sport left Ercole Spada’s pen in the late ’60s and showed strong hints of a more angular future – from the firmer lines of the shell to that edgy front end and its pointy grille.
Sporty cousin to the existing Coupé, the speedy two-seater – at its fastest in 1600 guise, with 115bhp at its disposal – was marketed as a crossover model for road and racing, its aerodynamic body acceptable around town and truly useful on the track.
Still an arresting piece of automotive design, it’s probably the most affordable way to own a Zagato coupé today.
Lancia Hyena
An all-’90s coupé with quite the story, the Hyena came from the brain of Dutch collector Paul Koot, who fancied a two-door version of the legendary Delta HF Integrale rally weapon. Off he went to Zagato where, in 1990, Marco Pedracini penned the distinctive Hyena with all the tropes – from low nose to double-bubble roof.
Revealed at the 1992 Brussels Motor Show and packing a turbocharged 2-litre motor at its core, efforts to put the model into production foundered when Fiat wasn’t keen. Koot had to source and strip down Integrales ready for re-shelling which, predictably, made the Hyena seriously expensive and the whole enterprise ceased after just 25 were built.
Maserati A6G/54 Zagato
A race-bred GT that defined the 1950s for Maserati and set the bar for all of the firm’s future road cars, the A6G/54 was a thing of pure touring finesse – and never more so than in Zagato guise.
Equipped with a punchy motor good for 150bhp, the mid-century Maserati shipped in four body styles, raciest of which was Zagato’s coupé.
At once both sporty and refined, detailing on the hood and sides made it somewhat fussier than other Zagato designs – and the nose was certainly beefier – but it was also a glorious example of competition style for the street, and remains a desirable rarity today.
Osca 1600 Zagato
Classic coupé lines were a hallmark of Zagato in the ’50s and ’60s, appearing on several designs in similar yet unique fashion.
Take the Osca 1600 (pictured, as sold by RM Sotheby’s in 2012 for £162k) – a clean and understated evocation of Italian touring elegance, marked out as a Zagato number by the subtle double humps in the roof and that slender front-end.
Compare that to the aluminium body that Zagato designed as a one-off for the AC Ace in 1958, an equally beautiful thing with its own double-bubble, low nose and possibly the loveliest bonnet scoop you’ll ever see.
Aston Martin V8 Zagato
Zagato might have wrapped the modern Aston Martin Vanquish in a shell of stunning curves, but it had altogether different ideas back in the 1980s: tasked with rebodying the firm’s meaty V8 GT, Giuseppe Mittino went wild, weird and properly boxy.
It’s hard to pick a single component as the most controversial. The squared-off grille and blocky lamps? The ugly bulge on the bonnet to make room for the engine’s airbox? The sort-of-double-bubble roof? Suffice it to say, AM purists were not best pleased – even though the 432bhp aluminium machine was stupidly fast.
An equally challenging convertible variant followed and both remain cult rarities today. Even Mr Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson, bought one in 1998. Mercifully, Zagato returned to curves with its next Aston, the DB7 Zagato in 2002.
Fiat-Abarth 750
Zagato bodied a number of sporting Fiat-Abarth 750 models in the ’50s, all of which featured distinctive humps on their rear engine covers – at their widest on the Sestriere variant – to allow room for taller motors.
Most iconic of the lot, though, was the ‘double-bubble’ version first seen in ’55, featuring the twin roof humps that have since become a Zagato trademark – and an engine cover to match.
Compact yet elegant, the zippy Fiat’s unique shell set it apart from its 750cc brethren, its low nose and shapely second half setting the tone for many Zagato designs to come.
Zagato Zele
Sporty coupés were Zagatos bread and butter, but that didn’t stop the Italian firm from experimenting with some altogether weirder ideas – and few came odder than its electric microcar in the mid ’70s.
With underpinnings borrowed from Fiat, the Zele was Zagato’s answer to the fuel crisis. Offering a theoretical range of 50 miles and room for just one, the glassfibre box could be ordered with three specifications of electric motor and in seven different colours. Crumple zones weren’t an option, though.
Easily the least exotic four-wheeler ever penned by the Milanese studio, just a few hundred were built in its two years of production, making the model ironically rare today: the example pictured sold for £12k with RM Sotheby’s in London in 2018.
Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ
Another Ercole Spada effort, the Alfa Romeo TZ was a lesson in sporting grace and – along with the Giulietta SZ – yet more proof of the wonders Zagato worked for Alfa in the ’60s.
With a purposeful design pairing an exquisite front end with a glassy cabin that swept back to an abrupt yet beautiful Kamm tail, just looking at the TZ was almost as appealing as driving the 134mph racer.
A truly gorgeous package, the TZ1’s refined lines were matched only by the TZ2 that succeeded it in 1965, with an even curvier glassfibre shell – also crafted by Zagato – seeing its weight slashed and its performance enhanced, putting 150mph within reach.
Lamborghini 3500GTZ
A long way from the angular Lambos of today, the firm’s first model was the 350GT – a space-age tourer fit for the ’60s. Albeit one with a divisive design. When critics questioned its shell? Ferruccio Lamborghini sent a pair of chassis off to Zagato for a rethink.
The result was the 3500GTZ, a captivating blend of classic mid-century style with muscular curves and a meaty rear end – a design that sat at the crossroads of old and new, and one that still cuts a distinctive picture today.
Sadly, Ferruccio wasn’t sold on the vision – first seen at the London Motor Show in ’65 – and sent future work to rival designer Bertone, leaving the Zagato’s GTZ destined to be a dream.
Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato
Zagato has lent its pen to many an Aston Martin over the years, but the first was undoubtedly the finest: a re-skinned DB4GT that remains an era-defining stunner today.
Revealed at the London Motor Show in 1960, Ercole Spada’s design saw all superfluous elements dropped – including the bumpers – and the standard panels replaced with aluminium to create a featherweight racer that was all smooth lines and pure aerodynamic elegance.
Just 19 examples of the 314bhp GT were originally built, including the fabled ‘2 VEV’ – a machine piloted in period by Jim Clark that fetched £10.1m at auction in 2018.
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