10 British cars designed in Italy

As its amusingly-contrived title indicates, this perform is a in depth review of all of the autos crafted in Britain, but styled in Italy. Italy has prolonged been recognised as the finest car building country in the world, developing some of the most lovely, influential and admired vehicle styling for decades. Seminal Italian auto layout times have provided the stylish Zagato-bodied 1930s Alfa Romeo 1750 GSs and Touring 8Cs, Pininfarina’s greatly highly regarded and influential 1947 Cisitalia 202, as well as later classics as varied as the Ferrari 250 GTO, Giugairo’s Fiat Panda and classy Pininfarina Peugeot 406 Coupe.

In the essential Export or Die era of the British Motor business put up-war – the most significant automobile exporter on the planet in the 1950s – Britain’s car or truck makers popped out some worthy but staid devices, benefitting from sound engineering and excellent, but with gray porridge’ models that lacked a selected design or flair.   

When spending a formal take a look at to BMC’s styling studio at Austin’s Longbridge drawing office environment in the mid-1950s, for illustration, none other than H.R.H Prince Philip remarked to the motoring giant’s keen hosts proudly giving him a privileged sneak peek of their planned potential relatives saloon cars, that the products ended up much too staid and unadventurous, recommending that BMC goes to the celebrated Italian designers to model interesting and interesting autos. BMC took take note and acted on Prince Philip’s shrewd advise. They commissioned Pininfarina of Turin to style and design a amount of vital foreseeable future types. These involved the influential truncated-tail Austin A40 that established the two-box pattern and profile for today’s well known hatchbacks, several years in advance of this sort of devices existed. Pininfarina was also tasked with styling the smart higher-medium-variety salons of 1959, these successful Austin Cambridge/Morris Oxford household versions collectively recognised as the Farina cars and trucks. The automobile that dominated Britain’s new vehicle sales all through the 1960s – the Austin-Morris 1100-1300 vary – also enjoyed that crisp, present day styling Pininfarina excelled at.  

Over and above BMC and Pininfarina, a extensive assortment of other British car makers have overwhelmed a route to the doorways of Italy’s best vehicle designers and studios for a lot of years from the late 1950s Meadows Fiskey microcars, even though to Triumph, AC, Aston Martin, and even Rolls-Royce.

Here are ten prime examples of British vehicles, in no particular purchase, all dressed in sharp Italian fits. There is noticeably extra depth supplied on each and every machine (furthermore lots of some others) in Chris Rees’ very-suggested Encyclopaedia Britalicar, a steal at £48 for all genuine car or truck enthusiasts.