Time to shine
If asked to name an Italian automotive designer, most classic car enthusiasts might immediately think of Battista Farina, Giorgetto Giugiaro or Giovanni Michelotti, among other deserving candidates.
Ercole Spada is perhaps a little less likely to spring to mind, but you are certainly familiar with his work, even if you hadn’t realised that until now.
Here we’re taking a look at just a few of the vehicles he is credited for having been involved with, from mainstream models to exotic sports cars and concepts.
1. Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato
In his early 20s, Spada was given a job at Zagato partly because of his artistic skills and partly because, in answer to the question, “Can you do full-scale drawings?” he replied, “Yes,” despite never having attempted one before.
One of his first tasks was to create a shorter and lighter derivative of the Aston Martin DB4GT, which was itself shorter and lighter (by 85kg/187lb) than the regular DB4, as well as being more powerful.
Unveiled at the 1960 London Motor Show, the Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato soon became one of the best-known racing sports cars of its era, though it was regarded as more difficult to drive than some of its rivals.
2. Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ
The SZ (‘Sport Zagato’) version of the Alfa Romeo Giulietta was already a successful racer before Spada joined the company, but he was involved in the process of making it quicker still after it had reached the limit of its mechanical development.
His new bodywork was inspired by the work of the German aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm, who had discovered that the ideal ‘teardrop’ shape would still be effective if the tail were cut off abruptly, with the additional benefit that the rear of the car would be shorter, lighter and less prone to damage.
In testing, it was found that this body raised the SZ’s top speed substantially to a reported 137mph, a remarkable figure for a car with a 1.3-litre engine.
The shape would become known as coda tronca (which can be translated from Italian into English as ‘cut-tail’), and Spada was so delighted with it that he would use it again many times.
3. Lancia Flavia Sport
Characteristically, Spada’s version of the Flavia was dramatically different from Piero Castagnero’s saloon, Pininfarina’s coupé and Vignale’s convertible.
The dihedral grille alone made it stand out from all other Flavias, but Spada also went much further than anyone else in trying to make the car as aerodynamic as possible.
The front wings swooped and the windscreen was astonishingly curved, while the rear side windows extended well into the roof.
As seen from the rear, the Sport was perhaps not Spada’s most elegant design, but it did feature a tail which, if not exactly of the coda tronca type, certainly seems to have been influenced by Wunibald Kamm’s research.
4. Alfa Romeo TZ
Although it shared many parts with the Alfa Romeo Giulia road car, the TZ was based on a tubular steel chassis partly referred to in its name, which stands for Tubolare Zagato.
Introduced in 1963, it featured Spada’s by now familiar swooping body (made of aluminium, though a change of policy was not far away) and a coda tronca tail, even if fitting one rear window on the roof and two more on the sides seems at first sight to be an unusual extravagance.
TZs were built both for road use and for racing, and while there are different opinions on the exact production figure, Alfa Romeo itself says that it was 117.
5. Alfa Romeo TZ 2
Unlike Alfa Romeo’s original TZ, the TZ 2 was only ever built as a racer, which is why just 12 were made from 1964-1967.
The tubular chassis was retained, but the body was now made of glassfibre, which was both lighter (leading to a 40kg/88lb weight reduction) and stronger.
Spada was therefore able to combine the TZ’s three windows into one, and also made sure that the TZ2 was even more aerodynamic.
6. Lancia Flaminia Super Sport
Spada was not yet a Zagato employee when the company created the Sport version of the Flaminia, but he did design the Super Sport which replaced it in 1964.
Mechanically almost identical to its predecessor, the Super Sport was lower, with a more aerodynamic front, and – as might have been expected of Spada by this time – the rear was curtailed according to the Kamm principles.
The Super Sport was gone by 1968, a couple of years before the Flaminia range as a whole was discontinued.
7. Lamborghini 3500GTZ
Lamborghini’s first production car, and its first with what would become a very long-lived V12 engine, was the 350GT, produced from 1964-1966.
Its Carrozzeria Touring body was unconventional, not least because of the headlights which interrupted an otherwise smooth frontal shape.
Keen to approach the matter from a different angle, Lamborghini commissioned Zagato to design a short-wheelbase derivative called the 3500GTZ which, to those familiar with his work, clearly bears many of Spada’s usual elements.
Only two 3500GTZs were ever built, and while one of them has certainly survived, the whereabouts of the other are unknown.
8. Lancia Fulvia Sport
It can’t have come as a surprise to anyone that Zagato’s version of the Fulvia looked very different from the straightforward saloon and the more elegant coupé.
Even allowing for that, however, Spada’s design for the Sport fastback introduced in 1965 was exceptionally distinctive, largely thanks to a front light/grille arrangement which looked unlike anything else on the market.
In an unusual development, Spada refrained from creating a coda tronca tail, though he would return to that idea later.
The second Fulvia Sport (pictured), which made its debut at the 1970 Turin show, differed from the first in several ways, including the fact that it had a steel rather than an aluminium body and a five- rather than four-speed gearbox, but Spada’s design remained more or less the same as it had been from the start.
9. Fiat 125 GTZ
Several Italian coachbuilders transformed the resolutely boxy Fiat 125 into something very much more dramatic, a notable example being Vignale’s Samantha coupé.
For Zagato, Spada came up with the 125 GTZ, which featured an aggressive front end and the by now almost customary coda tronca tail.
Like other examples of his work, this car was never taken beyond the prototype stage, and the cumulative disappointment persuaded Spada to leave Zagato in 1969, later remarking that the cancellation of the 125 GTZ in particular was a major factor in his decision.
10. Rover 2000TCZ
At the 1967 Turin motor show, Zagato revealed Spada’s interpretation of the Rover P6, which had already been in production for four years and became the first model to win the European Car of the Year award.
The 2000TCZ retained Rover’s front grille and twin headlights but was otherwise almost completely different, not least because it was a two-door coupé rather than a four-door saloon.
Spada had not always paid close attention to visibility (the Lancia Flavia Sport, for example, having obstructive C pillars), but the TCZ, like the Fiat 125 GTZ, was notable for its very large glass area.
Elegant though the car was, Rover did not take the bait, and the TCZ remained a one-off.
11. Lancia Flavia Super Sport
Although it was based on the same car, Spada’s Lancia Flavia Super Sport bore almost no resemblance to his earlier Sport.
In fact, it looked rather like the Rover 2000TCZ, almost as if Spada had used the same basic idea for both, though there were many detail differences.
For example, the centre section of the Lancia’s bonnet was raised, while that of the Rover had been lowered, and rear visibility seems to have dropped down the priority list.
While the Sport was in production for several years, the arguably more attractive Super Sport was canned after two prototypes had been built.
12. Alfa Romeo Junior Z
The Junior Zagato was based on Alfa Romeo’s 105-series coupé and, more specifically, on the Spider derivative launched in 1966.
Needless to say, it looked nothing like the Spider, even though it shared the same floorpan and mechanicals, but there was a certain visual connection to Spada’s Fiat 125 GTZ.
The original, 1.3-litre engine was replaced in 1972 by a 1.6, and the tail was extended by 4in/102mm (not necessarily to the car’s advantage in terms of aesthetics), though by the time this happened Spada had left Zagato.
In the words of motoring writer John Zimmermann, the 1.3 was ‘the car that lifted Zagato onto equal footing with Bertone and Pininfarina among Alfa’s contract coachbuilders’, while Spada himself has said it is his personal favourite of all the cars he designed.
13. BMW 7 Series
After leaving Zagato, Spada moved to Ford, where almost none of his work was shown publicly, and then to Audi, which he left very quickly to take up a new role at BMW in 1976.
“My years there were wonderful,” he said many years later. “I enjoyed the freedom that came with working in a large studio.”
The downside was that no BMW could be described as having been shaped by him, or by any other single person, but there is no doubt that he was heavily involved in the design of the second-generation flagship 7 Series, which would become the first post-war German production car fitted with a V12 engine.
14. BMW 5 Series
The other car Spada has been most keen to talk about from his time at BMW is the third-generation 5 Series.
There is a clear family resemblance between this model and the 7 Series mentioned earlier, the 5 looking very much like a slightly smaller 7.
Spada has written that he drew the original, 1:5-scale drafts for the 5 in 1982, when the 7 was still four years from production but already well into the design stage.
Unlike the 7, however, the 5 Series was available not only as a saloon but also as an estate, or Touring (pictured), the first time this body style had been used for any BMW 5 Series.
15. Fiat Tipo
Both the BMWs mentioned previously were still some way from production when Spada returned to his native Italy, where he joined the IDEA Institute in 1983.
IDEA’s philosophy was about as far removed from those of Zagato and BMW as could be imagined, being centred on the development of practical (and not necessarily stylish), mass-market cars, rather than sporting or premium models.
The Fiat Tipo was a conventional, front-wheel-drive hatchback based on exactly those principles, far less adventurous than any of Spada’s work at Zagato, but at the same time far more successful.
In 1989, it won the European Car of the Year award, beating strong opposition in the form of the Opel Vectra A (sold in the UK as the Vauxhall Cavalier Mk3) and the third-generation Volkswagen Passat.
16. Lancia Dedra
The Lancia Dedra was the first of three cars based on an extended version of the Tipo platform, all of them designed at IDEA while Spada was there.
Despite their mechanical similarities, they were aimed at different customers, and their styling reflected that.
Lancia was a premium brand, so the Dedra had upmarket styling, just as potential customers would have expected.
Introduced in 1989 (in the form pictured here), the Dedra became even more ornate four years later, when extra chrome was added to the radiator grille.
17. Fiat Tempra
Although the Fiat Tempra, introduced in 1990, was broadly the same shape as the Lancia Dedra, and based on the same platform, it was the product of a far more mainstream brand.
There was no need for Lancia-style frills here, so the Tempra had a simple, straightforward appearance.
Unlike the Dedra, the Tempra was not given a styling update, and there was a commercial version known as the Marengo which had no Lancia equivalent.
18. Alfa Romeo 155
The third and last of the extended Tipo cars, which arrived in 1992, was Alfa Romeo’s front-wheel-drive replacement for the rear-wheel-drive 75.
Following the usual policy for these otherwise very similar models, the Alfa 155 had a quite distinctive visual character, being more adventurous than the Fiat Tempra but less extravagant than the Lancia Dedra.
Despite Lancia’s phenomenal record in motorsport (at the time of writing, it still holds the record for more World Rally Championship manufacturers’ titles than any other marque, despite not having participated for more than three decades), the 155 was the only one of the trio to take part in international competition.
Built to very different technical regulations, 155s won both the British and the German Touring Car championships in the 1990s.
19. Lancia Delta
The long-running, first-generation Lancia Delta was replaced in 1993 by a new model based on the standard-length Fiat Tipo platform.
In styling terms, it was related to the Tipo in much the same way that the Dedra was to the Tempra, once again no doubt due to the expectations of the people who might buy it.
Its more adventurous design included a headlight and front grille arrangement which resembled that of the Dedra, though it was more compressed vertically.
While the original Delta remained in production for a decade and a half, this one lasted for only six years, and was not followed by a third until 2008.
20. Nissan Terrano II
Towards the end of Spada’s time at IDEA, the studio worked on a Nissan compact SUV known in Japan as the Mistral and in Europe as the Terrano II.
Constructed on the body-on-frame principle, it was available as either a three-door or a five-door (the latter being several inches longer) and also as a panel van.
The vehicle pictured here is one of the early versions and therefore has the original styling, which was altered several times over 12 years.
If it seems familiar to you, but you don’t think it’s a Nissan, that’s because it was also marketed in Europe as the Ford Maverick, though that arrangement was abandoned before the end of the century.
21. Ferrari FZ93
More than 20 years after he had left, Spada returned to Zagato in 1993, and soon began work on a very special Ferrari.
A customer whose Testarossa had been lightly damaged decided to go well beyond the normal repair process and asked for a new body, which made the car look very different.
“To me the Testarossa was very heavy-looking,” Spada said years later. “I wanted to remove that sense of mass.”
The FZ93, as it became known, does indeed appear to be much lighter than the standard model, and its high nose, which was very unusual for the time, has since become common in single-seat racing cars.