RIP Ercole Spada 1937-2025

By Alastair Clements

| 4 Aug 2025

Classic & Sports Car – RIP Ercole Spada 1937-2025

Design legend Ercole Spada died yesterday, 3 August 2025, at the age of 88.

Across a career that spanned more than half a century, the quietly spoken and modest former Zagato and BMW styling chief was responsible for shaping countless landmark classic cars, yet he tended to remain in the background.

As a result, he is rarely afforded the same reverence as contemporaries such as Giorgetto Giugiaro or Marcello Gandini.

The shorter, lighter Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato was built with competition in mind

Born in Busto Arsizio on 26 July 1937, Spada studied at the Technical Institute of Milan before being hired by Gianni Zagato in 1960.

“I was asked if I could do full-scale drawings and I said ‘yes’,” he told Richard Heseltine in an interview with Classic & Sports Car in 2013.

“Of course, I had never done one before in my life! Back then… cars were made by craftsmen as rapidly as possible.

“You would sketch something, hand it to one of the metalworkers and they would turn it into a three-dimensional object.”

The Alfa Romeo Junior Z (foreground) was Spada’s favourite design, here with a Lancia Fulvia Sport

Cars to emerge from Spada’s pen in those early years included the Bristol 406, the Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ ‘Coda Tronca’ and the seminal Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato, and it was during this period that he developed an interest in aerodynamics, nurtured by Elio Zagato.

“You could always tell a Zagato design from one by Touring or Bertone; they had their own particular style,” he said.

“Elio was a successful competitor and insisted that our cars be light and appear ‘fluid’, as if the bodywork was wrapped around the mechanical parts like skin… I applied those basic principles to the Aston, and put a lot of effort into reducing the frontal area as much as possible.”

The elegant yet modern E34 BMW 5 Series moved the game on for the Bavarian car maker

Among Spada’s more road-biased projects for Zagato were the Alfa Romeo Junior Z (his personal favourite) and Lancia Fulvia Sport, both quirkily attractive designs that have acquired a fervent following among enthusiasts.

They marked the shift at Zagato from traditional coachbuilding methods to higher-volume production.

But his next move would bring real volume, as he joined Ford at its new Styling Centre in Bruino, south-west of Turin, but few of his designs would gain public recognition bar his elegant reworking of the stillborn GT70 rally car.

Spada’s wild Ferrari FZ93 foretold the Enzo by nearly a decade

After a brief sojourn at Audi, he moved to BMW in 1976, beginning another hugely productive and influential period that yielded, among others, the elegant and influential E32 7 Series and E34 5 Series.

“My years there were wonderful,” he told Classic & Sports Car, “I enjoyed having the freedom that came with working in a large studio.”

Spada returned to Italy in 1983, first to run Turin’s IDEA Institute and then back at Zagato a decade later, where standout designs included the extraordinary Ferrari FZ93, based on a damaged Testarossa, which would foretell the look of the Enzo nine years before the Maranello hypercar appeared.

The late, great Ercole Spada at the wheel of his Zanzara prototype

Even in retirement, when he wasn’t buzzing around the hills near his Turin home in his Fiat 500-based Zanzara prototype, Spada couldn’t resist getting out the magic markers.

He worked on the Subaru-powered Osca 2500GT Dromos project in the late ’90s before launching his own car company in partnership with his son, Paolo.

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