No summer holiday this year for Fabrizio Giugiaro. He and his design team were far too busy on a project as demanding as it was stimulating – a supercar for Volkswagen, requested in person by chairman Ferdinand Piech, to be prepared in the time available between the Geneva and Tokyo shows.
“Piech had seen our Scighera at Geneva and told us that he had an interesting engine, too, and wanted to do a prototype,” explains Fabrizio Giugiaro, Italdesign’s styling chief. “Towards the end of April he asked us to design a low-bodied mid-engined car with a racer look to incorporate their new 12-cylinder. It wasn’t just to be a show car, but a working car with powerful technical content.”
The styling of the W12 – named after its engine, built from a pair of VR6s – had to bear the unmistakable traits of a Volkswagen product, while exploring a vehicle typology not present in the range. The definitive design was outlined all the way from the early sketches prepared by Italdesign, who for this project worked with traditional techniques rather than the computer.
Observed from the side, the roof shape adopts the rounded line of the Passat with a small rear window. The stylisation of Passat themes was continued in many other details, such as the unusual shape of the tail and the rear lighting or the wide arc of the wheelarches and the design of the wheels.
Ferdinand Piech personally visited Italdesign several times to follow up all the basic stages: at first to see the 1:1 scale plaster model, then the mechanical setup and the definition of the interior.
The article continues in Auto & Design no. 107
