Badmouth the stepnose? Begone, poltroon!

[JHertzman@xxxxxxx]

Somebody (yo, Graham?) was complaining that things had been too quiet on the
digest lately- 

Eric Sands says I got his dander up with my critical reservations about the
stepnose.

I agree generally with Sand's high esteem for Giorgetto Giugiaro, and I agree
that the Sprint GT was a major product of a very fertile period in his career,
following the very similar designs he had done for the 2000 (later 2600)
Sprint and the Gordon-Keeble, which was ostensibly cribbed for the Iso
Rivolta, all of which were formal progenitors of the nicest cars BMW ever
built, and also of some handsome Jaguar sedans. I don't have the Giugiaro
Italdesign Catalogue Raisonne ($175 from Classic Motorbooks, which is why I
don't have it) so I can't cite chronology, but I believe the shared greenhouse
was a common denominator from his schoolboy sketchbook of the fifties, and it
is splendid, and much copied.

The nose is a slightly different question. The Italian motorshows of the
period were (still are, I guess) fashion-design extravaganzas in which
everybody tried to distinguish himself from the herd by new, novel and nifty
differences; it is easy to forget how many truly ugly monstrosities the great
artisans displayed, like a Buck Rogers Giulietta Spider Pininfarina showed. A
young designer like Giugiaro could not afford to show a design which looked
too much like his 2000 Sprint of two years earlier or his Gordon of four years
earlier. The new form which results is not necessarily worse, but it is not
necessarily better either.

Alfa was, dare one say it, also under the same pressure to do something
different- to be visually "not Fiat". Do it well, if possible, but do it
different. Back and forth, from the prosaic to the outrageous to the classic
purism and back to the outrageous. The frumpy little Giulietta Berlina gave
way to the endearing outlandish fluting of the Giulia T.I. which gave way to
the austere clasicising of the 1750 Berlina. Back and forth. Milano, anyone?
Sure is different. Only car in the world that ever looked like that, or ever
will. Love it, but the Milano is not a "classic".

Eric Sands writes "And just as you would not condone the alteration of any
other more traditional work of art neither would I call the attempts to
"update" or "modernize" the maestro's finest an improvement." There was some
discussion recently on the digest of some stepnose cars allegedly being
'modernized' to the later sheetmetal, but I do not recall any suggestions of
Alfisti restyling later GT Veloces to the stepnose configuration. Nor do I
recall seeing any designer or manufacturer picking up the nose detail, as BMW
and Jaguar have mimicked the roof forms. Not even Giugiaro himself. The
stepnose was either a culmination- his finest, in his eyes, absolute
perfection, which he could not improve- or a dead-end detail, interesting,
well done, but not a fruitful beginning susceptible to further development.

If I had a restorable stepnose I would certainly not alter it. I don't see the
later iterations, the 1750 or the 2000 as analogous to alterations of a
traditional work of art. Beethoven wrote thirty-some piano sonatas, Haydn one
hundred plus symphonies, what are the number of the Goldberg variations? Each
is a play within the bounds of a particular vocabulary, each stands as a
commentary on each of the others, and each listener can savor the parts and
the wholes. But there are consensus winners, and others which will be
preferred by other equally discriminating observers with more idiosyncratic
tastes. 

Enjoy yours-

John

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