The eight best Pininfarina road cars

Cisitalia 202 – 1947

Italian companies had been banned from the 1946 Paris Motor Show but Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina was determined not to be overlooked, so he and his son Sergio drove two of their creations, an Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 S and a Lancia Aprilia cabriolet, to Paris and simply parked them outside the entrance. Despite being dubbed ‘the devil Pinin Farina’ by the show’s organisers, it did secure the company an official invitation to exhibit the following year and the car the company brought along was a revelation.

Commissioned by Italian road and racing car maker Cisitalia, the 202 effectively set the form for post-war performance car. Gone were the previous design conventions of separate forms for the passenger space, engine, luggage and wheels. Instead Pinin Farina gave the 202 a single cohesive form in which all the separate elements, including lights, grille and fenders were all smoothly integrated into the whole. The result was not just a revelation but a work of sculpture, given the seal of approval by the Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York when it added a Cisitalia 202 to its permanent collection after a 1951 exhibition. Its form aided its function as well with Nuvolari piloting a 202 to second place and first in class at the 1947 Mille Miglia against much more powerful opposition.

A die-hard Pininfarina fan? Then take a look at ‘High‑speed testing the 1,900PS Pininfarina Battista’

Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider – 1954

Vincenzo Lancia provided Battista Farina with the financial backing to found his coachbuilding enterprise in 1930 and the two companies enjoyed a close relationship over the years, with Pinin Farina clothing many of Lancias innovative machines with suitably beautiful bodywork. A case in point is the Aurelia B25 Spider. The Aurelia family, launched in 1950, brought the V6, front and rear independent suspension and inboard brakes to mass production but it was Pinin Farina’s convertible which brought the glamour in 1954.

Based on a shortened B20 GT chassis – regarded as the world’s first ‘Gran Turismo’ – the B24 Spider was simple in the extreme and all the more beautiful for it. A simple panoramic windscreen matched the rake of the elegant wooden steering wheel, the bumpers framed the Lancia shield grille, and the half doors lacked such foolishness as handles which would have interrupted the lines. Just 240 B24 Spiders were built before the far more practical but less desirable Convertible replaced it in 1956, featuring such fripperies as a practical hood, wind up windows and, yes, door handles.

Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider – 1955

This was probably not the Alfa Spider you were expecting here but its forebear was arguably ever prettier. Much like Lancia with the Aurelia, Alfa Romeo drafted in Pinin Farina to add open-topped glamour to its new production car family.

The Giulietta featured the then new and now legendary Alfa Romeo Twin-cam all-alloy four-cylinder engine fitted to a 2+2 coupe called the Sprint designed and built by Bertone, a Berlina saloon and the delicate little Spider, designed by Pininfarina. It wasn’t quite so elegantly simple but there were elements of the Aurelia Spider in the new Alfa including the grille framed by the bumpers, a single sweeping line defining the flanks and a minimalist set of tail lights at the end of a vestigial pair of fins. No, it wasn’t in production forever, like the Giulia Spider, but it does deserve the spotlight for just how incredibly pretty its design is.

Love Alfa Romeo? Then read our list of the 12 best Alfa Romeo road cars ever made.

MGB GT – 1965

Battista handed over the reins to his son, Sergio, in 1961, the same year in which the family and business names were officially changed to ‘Pininfarina’. It was also around this time that Pininfarina began to branch out from its Italian ciabatta and olive oil models to designing bread and butter cars for other countries’ manufacturers. Having designed a number of badge-engineered saloons for BMC beginning in the 1950s, Pininfarina was appointed to create a coupe version of the hugely successful MGB roadster.

The MGB may be unfairly maligned as having become almost a pastiche of itself over the years and the raised ride height, rubber bumper models certainly did the car no favours but the MGB GT deserved all its contemporary praise and still looks the part today. By continuing the roofline down into the rear deck and incorporating a hatchback rear window Pininfarina created a truly stylish grand tourer that almost deserves the shooting brake epithet.

Fiat 124 Spider – 1966

There were two affordable, open-topped sportscars launched in Italy in 1966. Both went on to sell in serious numbers for decades and, once again, this isn’t the Spider you were expecting. Like its Alfa Romeo rival, the Fiat was based on saloon car underpinnings although in typical Italian fashion these were not exactly humdrum, including as it did the twin-cam engine designed by legendary ex-Ferrari engineer Aurelio Lampredi, four-wheel disc brakes and a five-speed manual transmission.

The saloon and coupe were designed and built in-house by Fiat but American-born Tom Tjaarda, who had joined Pininfarina in 1961 and was given the task of designing the droptop. The result combined classic rear-wheel-drive convertible proportions with a more modern aesthetic and sharper lines that made it look immediately up to date. Its looks certainly struck a chord, as more than 200,000 were built and, when Fiat stopped manufacturing the car after 15 years in 1981, Pininfarina took over, selling it as their own model until 1985.

Peugeot 504 – 1968

Just in case you thought this list was going to be all fragile Italian exotica, here is one Pininfarina design famed for its robustness and longevity on some of the roughest roads in the world. Launched as Peugeot’s flagship in 1968, the styling of the saloon and estate versions was the work of Aldo Brovarone at Pininfarina, helping the car to the European Car of the Year Award in 1969. A very stylish pairing of coupe and convertible versions, this time penned by Brovarone’s colleague Franco Martinengo joined the range the same year.

Well-built with long-travel suspension and a tough torque tube driveshaft the car was widely praised for its styling, comfort, refinement and performance (especially with optional fuel injection). Peugeot built the car for 15 years and cranked out over a million of them, but that wasn’t the end of its remarkable success. The 504 has garnered a reputation for monumental toughness in various African nations and production moved there under licence and continued until 2006. In fact, the Peugeot 504 was popular enough that in Australia it was actually assembled by rival Renault and sold from its showrooms.

Lancia Gamma Coupe – 1976

This is an unashamedly biased entry since I am looking out of my window at one of these elegant coupes as I write this. Lancia was never known for taking the conventional approach to engineering and while this resulted in some spectacular leaps forward over the years, the decision to fit its flagship with a flat-four rather than a V6 was still a puzzling one.

Both the saloon and coupe versions of the Gamma were styled by Brovarone who took advantage of the low engine height to design a rakish bonnet and steeply sloping windscreen. And while the Berlina was something of an oddity with what appeared to be a useful hatchback turning out to be a conventional boot, the coupe was altogether more stylish with chiselled lines and simple detailing. The 2.5-litre flat-four was torquey and lightweight, giving the car a low centre of gravity and praiseworthy front-wheel-drive handling.

Alfa Romeo 164 Procar – 1987

Another example of shameless bias: I learned to drive in my mother’s 164, a pretty sharp set of wheels at aged 17. Thanks, mum. The 164 was Alfa Romeo’s take on the Type 4 platform, a joint endeavour in the executive saloon class alongside the Fiat Croma, Lancia Thema and Saab 9000. Designed by Enrico Fumia at Pininfarina, the 164 first appeared at the 1987 Frankfurt Motor show, making it the last car to be developed while Alfa Romeo was still an independent company. Its design would go on to influence the entire Alfa Romeo range beginning with the facelifted 33 and continuing into the revived Spider and GTV models.

Distinctively wedge-shaped with prominent side lines the 164 was the last of the four cars to go into production and the most distinctive. Only ever available as a saloon it was available with the famed ‘Busso’ V6 under the bonnet and was the only one of the variants to be offered with four-wheel-drive towards the end of its 11-year production life. Incidentally in the Hong Kong and Malaysia markets it was rebadged as the 168 because the 164 combination of numbers was considered inauspicious.

Sadly the V10-powered Procar version pictured never raced in anger but it has wowed the crowds lining the Goodwood Hill on occasion.