BMW Zagato Coupe makes emphatic entry into 2012 Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este

The beautiful vistas of Lake Como surrounding the picturesque Cernobbio village come alive in the summer every year when the world’s classiest concours d’elegance for classic cars and bikes is held. Begun as an event for Italian coachbuilders to show off their art and craft as long back as 1929, German car maker BMW’s patronage and whole-hearted support to the Concorso D’Eleganza Villa D’Este since 1999 has elevated what was a fine event into truly one of the greatest events of its kind in the automobile world. And what is truly the gentle art of nurturing a century-old craft of bespoke coachwork, BMW has also worked to include a class for modern concept cars and prototypes which again hints back to the very ethos of the old age Italian carrozzerias and their custom coachwork.

So imagine the collective surprise when in the inaugural session of this year’s edition, Karl Baumer, head of BMW Group Classic and the BMW Museum announced that something truly exclusive would drive up for all the assembled guests to take in. In drove one of the stunning BMW 507 V8-engined two-seater sports cars from the late 1950s, so very elegant and such a delight that it seemed like this car was always built to grace such a beautiful country as Cernobbio. Of course this wasn’t the surprise for suddenly a red rocket burst into the grounds, a loud bark from its tuned exhaust letting us hear it before we could see it.

A svelte hard top coupe sporting a twin-bubble roof and with the very apparent Kamm-back moved into view and when it stopped and the two occupants stepped out to loud applause one could understand what the surprise was. Out stepped BMW’s design boss Adrian van Hooydonk along with Andrea Zagato, CEO of the eponymous design consultancy and coach building firm. An immediate reaction was that BMW had moved the goalposts on its Z platform to come up with a very modern rendition unlike the neo-retro style the Z4 and Z8 carried but when it became clear that this was a design exercise done in the very same vein as the M1 Hommage and 328 Hommage a few years ago not many were willing to buy it! The reason was obvious; more than any other design studies shown by BMW exclusively conjured for the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa D’Este, this new Zagato Coupe makes terrific sense, and it seemed so production ready!

The other knockout was that this was the very first time that BMW had collaborated with Zagato to clothe one of its cars and the overall turnout of this creation was not stylish of course but also emotional in the sense that so many Zagato cues were on display on a modern machine. While Adrian van Hooydonk and Karim Habib, the new design chief for BMW cars played their role from the Munich car maker’s perspective, Andrea Zagato and his chief designer Norihiko Harada managed to evoke great detailing of the past in a seamless manner on a contemporary automobile. “Besides its road-acceptance, the BMW should express the emotion of this study,” remarked Andrea at the unveiling.

The curvaceous shape on the Z4-based car makes it carry off its visually very long bonnet with a fastback rear end (both BMW and Zagato were early proponents of the Kamm-back school of aerodynamic thought) encompassing a small cockpit and makes for a stunning package. The subtle Zagato cues are all there – the twin bubble roof (‘tis said to accommodate helmeted heads in sports car racing in the 1950s and 1960s as seen on many Ferraris, Maseratis and Aston Martins sculpted by Zagato), the absolute minimal overhangs front and rear, the stylishly muscular wheel arches, the rakish rear ends, the valence crease on the bonnet, and the only thing which seemed a departure from the norm was the mesh on the twin kidney grille made up of tiny little Zs.

BMW has worked with other Italian design houses before, especially the likes of Vignale and ItalDesign but the opportunity to collaborate with Zagato was so much in sync with the very ethos of the bespoke custom-clothed car as evidenced in the first half of the last century. And having an Italian take care of the design meant that even the special red shape – termed Rosso Vivace was both beautiful to behold as well as express! Underneath the double-bubbled roof is fairly contemporary territory but the confines of the Z4’s cockpit had been given the Zagato treatment with both comfort and the feelgood essence apparent in the way of accents, materials and craftsmanship.

Form follows function and what was made clear a day later was the fact that this was no beautiful soft glove approach to doing a show car but one which had been thoroughly put through the development wringer by BMW engineers in Germany. Under the bonnet is the proven N54 six-cylinder, twin-turbocharged engine now breathed upon (software updates to the EMS plus an all-new exhaust system) helps bump up power from the normal 340bhp to well over 400bhp! BMW’s 7-speed twin-clutch transmission manages the transfer of power to the rear wheels in time honoured fashion and those large five-spoke 19-inch wheels come wrapped with 255/35-R19 Bridgestone Potenza rubber.

One of the finest offerings in this class of car remains the Porsche Cayman and all of a sudden BMW could be challenging this notion with the strikingly elegant and potent Zagato Coupe. As Adrian mentioned to yours truly in the course of an exclusive one-on-one at the Villa d’Erba, the enthusiasm for the new car has been overwhelming and it is difficult to ignore that. So if mass production doesn’t beckon, a small production run of a thousand units would do just as nicely for an emotional design that works, brilliantly!