Re: "Pininfarina" Spiders

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

I will gladly bow to Caribou's authority on things Fiat, but in addition to 
the former Fiat Spider being imported to the United States branded as a 
Pininfarina rather than as a Fiat, the former Fiat X1-9 was imported to the 
United States branded as a Bertone.  I had the impression that both of these 
changes happened concurrently when Fiat elected to withdraw from this market 
and (less certainly) that they occurred through the intervention of a single 
party which was neither Pininfarina per se nor Bertone per se, who undertook 
US distribution and contracted with Pinindfarina, Bertone, and Fiat for the 
production of the cars. Whether it was a third organization or a consortium I 
don't know, but I doubt that Pininfarina was pushing Bertone's products.

One quibble, however, is that Caribou (following Scott) refers to the car 
being "both designed and coach-built by Pininfarina". Coach-built (or 
coachbuilt) originally meant built as coaches were built, with wood framing 
and light panels of wood, leather, oilcloth or (later) metal sheets. With 
evolving technologies it came to include some metal framing, like Touring's 
Superleggera, but it always meant EITHER traditionally framed OR "bespoke" 
bodies built individually or in small series largely by manual artisans. To 
use the term "coachbuilt" to describe bodies assembled in jigs by industrial 
robots from stamped panels on moving assembly lines is stretching the term to 
absolute meaninglessness. The MG TD bodies, mass produced, were considered 
coachbuilt in terms of the technology; the Giulietta Sprint Zagato could be 
considered coachbuilt by virtue of every panel being hammered-out by hand to 
match a template before being fitted to an armature; but Pininfarina's bodies 
for the Fiat and Alfa Spiders were no more "coachbuilt" than a Ford Escort or 
Geo Metro.

Cordially,
John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

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