It’s usually very difficult to pinpoint anything to do with automotive design with accuracy. The Citroën Traction Avant was not the first mass-produced FWD design. There were all-steel wagons well before the 1949 Plymouth Suburban. Straight “pontoon” fenders are not a post-war invention. And one look at a Rumpler or a Burney and the Tatra 77 looks a lot less revolutionary. Is the Cisitalia 202 the first truly modern front-engined sports car?
I was going to do a full-length post about the Cisitalia company, but it’s best to keep things focused on just this car, which after all is that marque’s main (only?) claim to fame. And it has less to do with the chassis than the body, which was the work of, you guessed it, Pininfarina. This was back in the day when that name was usually hyphenated – Pinin-Farina.
“Pinin” is northern Italian slang for “youngest”, as the Farina family had two coachbuilders. Older brother Giovanni founded Stabilimenti Farina in 1909, employing his then teenaged brother Battista “Pinin” Farina (1893-1966). The younger Farina soon proved a highly gifted designer, though Stabilimenti Farina also used the talents of such budding luminaries as Frua, Vignale or Revelli di Beaumont. Battista founded his own shop in 1930 and soon equalled his brother in reputation.
Fifteen years on, Italy was in the throes of reconstruction. Both Farina brothers’ works, being involved in subcontracting work for the military and aeronautical industry, were affected by bombings. Italian car production had slowed to a tiny trickle, but never completely stopped. Pinin-Farina had continued to develop styling ideas during the first half of the ‘40s, when most of the rest of the automotive world was in Jeep mode.
Enter Piero Dusio, a man of means ready to take risks in Italy’s shaky postwar scene. In 1945, Dusio created Consorzio Industriale Sportive Italia – or CISitalia for short – in Turin, getting Dante Giacosa to design a singlet-seat racer using Fiat bits and a lot of ingenuity.
The resulting Cisitalia D46 (above) put the new company on the map, even as Ferrari were also emerging and Maserati were making a comeback. The heat was on!
Cisitalia were also going to compete on the roads, not just the track. Named technical director after Giacosa went back to Fiat in late 1945, Giovanni Savonuzzi supervised the creation of the 202 CMM Aerodinamica – a daring lightweight Berlinetta, designed for competing at Le Mans or the Mille Miglia. Pinin-Farina was supposed to build it, but his shop had just had a major fire, so the first couple of Cisitalia coupés were made by Colli and a newcomer by the name of Vignale, instead.
Savonuzzi’s little monster was only supposed to be a one-off, though Cisitalia wanted to sell their 202 in civilian form as soon as possible. Once production could resume, Pinin-Farina had a design ready for the new marque of the block, and by late 1946, the first 202 coupés were being sold. The picture above was taken a year later at the 1947 Paris Motor Show, by which time a convertible had joined the range.
It’s difficult to overstate the impact this little car had on contemporary car designers. By using the Savonuzzi prototype’s extremely low front end, complete with that ingeniously simple but effective oval grill, Battista Farina had pushed the hood line way down, completely breaking with any hint of radiator grille. The fenders were now higher than the engine, a real aesthetic break from the past was acted.
This did not happen in a vacuum, of course. Nor can we credit Savonuzzi alone for this evolution in car design. The above cars (top left: Lancia; top right: Maserati; bottom: Alfa Romeo), which came out of Pinin-Farina’s shop in 1945-46 (i.e. before the Cisitalia) all have this low hood line – especially the Maserati with the hidden headlights there.
But those were one-offs, whereas the Cisitalia 202, though far from a regular production car, was dressed with this body by default. The reason lies in the fact that the 202 chassis, just like the D46, was a tubular spaceframe. This was extremely avant-garde for the time, but it meant that the body had a structural role that was quite new to anyone not involved in aeronautics. The Farina brothers, as well as Savonuzzi (who had worked for Fiat’s aircraft branch, just like Giacosa, before the war), had the right skills at the right time.
Manufacturing these bodies took a lot more effort than the old-fashioned stuff that was still the coachbuilder’s bread-and-olive oil. In fact, PF were so snowed under, they had to share the burden with other coachbuilders. This exact design – only differentiated by extremely minor details, like door handles and the like – was produced by Vignale and… Stabilimenti Farina.
This particular car came from the Pinin-Farina works in 1948. A few changes were implemented on later cars, most notably a one-piece windscreen, but this shape would take a while for the rest of the automotive world to catch up to it.
Nothing all that revolutionary inside, on the other hand. Speaking of which, in keeping with what was then a very strong tradition in Italian and French sports cars, Cisitalia 202s were all right-hand drive.
The 202’s engine was, unsurprisingly, a Fiat-derived 1089cc 4-cyl., with a few differences from stock, of course. Make that quite a lot different: all that Cisitalia kept from the original motor was the block – everything else was remade, usually in light alloy. The result was a whopping 55 to 66hp, depending on the state of tune and the number of carbs. Pretty damn good for a modest 1.1 litre OHV straight-4 designed in the ‘30s.
Thanks to its tubular frame, the 202 weighed less than 800kg, enabling a top speed in excess of 160kph. The slight let-down, according to people who drove these cars, was the suspension, which was a Fiat 1100’s leaf-sprung live axle at the back and the Topolino’s front. Heavy steering, bouncy ride – not the best. You have to cut corners somewhere, I guess.
Cisitalia’s fortunes as a car company went to extremes: they were at the top of the world winning races in 1947, only to go into receivership two years later. Production carried on regardless, but the firm’s financial health was always precarious. The 202 coupé was popular, in a way, but they still only sold about 170, including 17 cabriolets and five long-wheelbase “five-seaters”, produced between 1946 and 1952.
After the 202, Cisitalia attempted several other models, including a short-lived cooperation with Ford, but they never managed to catch lightning in a bottle like they did with their first production car. The firm struggled on until about 1964, having turned into one of a myriad of sporty Fiat derivative makers.
Famously, the Cisitalia 202 was recognized in its lifetime as an exceptional car by none other than the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), being included in an exhibition as early as 1951. In 1972, the museum bought a Cisitalia 202 to feature it as a permanent display. That is not something that happens to many cars – the Citroën DS was celebrated in a similar way, I guess, but usually, cars and the art world don’t really mix.
I must admit that, when seen in the metal, the Cisitalia does seem more like a rolling sculpture than a vehicle. Pinin-Farina’s accolade from the gatekeepers of American Academic Art, with a triple capital “A,” must have taken the coachbuilder by surprise, but it was well-deserved. No wonder the design house is still with us.
So to answer the question I posed at the start, i think we can safely say that yes, for once, it’s fairly clear that the Cisitalia 202 is the first modern sports car. Without it, no ’53 Corvette, no Aston Martin DB2/4, and Ferraris would have looked a lot chunkier. Pininfarina did many seminal designs after this one, but did they do anything more influential? That’s a question for another post. or the comments section…
Related post:
Museum Classic: 1946 Cisitalia 202 GT – The First Modern Fastback, by PN
It’s perfect. Clean. No tricks of the day like rear fins or excessive vent ports of the engine compartment. In a way, much like the Porsche 356. One has to wonder if there was any influence of the 202 in the eye and mind of Erwin Komenda, who penned the Porsche around the same timeframe this masterpiece was made?
Kommenda had also penned the Porsche Type 64, from 1938, which was the spiritual predecessor to the 356, and is of course also very “modern” and aerodynamic. But it was a one-off. Kommenda undoubtedly saw the 202, but he really didn’t need to be inspired by it, as he had been penning very advanced and aerodynamic designs for some time.
The key factor here is not that the 202 was radically new; it mostly wasn’t. It was the fact that it was a production car, relatively affordable, and that all these design elements just really came together quite perfectly.
It’s rarely a matter of something being done first, or truly original. It’s usually a matter of all the elements coming together and receiving public acclaim.
Finding this example curbside, rather than in a museum, is a very nice twist to the story.
Nice write up. It’s a car that I never get tired of looking about, which alone says a lot. And I keep thinking about what made it so special. One of the key elements is its size, which is quite small. I believe that this works in its favor, allowing the proportions and lack of ornamentation to work so well. I don’t think it would quite as well if it were scaled up significantly. Those other cars of the period you showed were bigger and almost invariably had more detail and ornamentation. I think this size issue also favored the early Porsche 356 in this way. They’re both small jewels.
The other very key factor is P-F’s decision to not have this be a true pontoon design, with flat flanks, but to keep some of the classic rear fender haunches. Note that none of those other four cars you showed have that; they are all true pontoon designs.
Who knows what drove P-F to make that choice, as he did a lot of true pontoon cars at the time, and later. But this decision is a critical one, as it keeps the 202 from looking too modern and perhaps too anodyne.
I can’t help but wonder if the 202’s rear fender haunches are what drove GM’s Harley Earl to kill the full-pontoon design that was going to be the 1948 C-Bodies at the last minute and revert to a more classic design with bulging rear fenders.
I should add that the 202 had a very huge influence in the US, not as in actual sales, which were of course limited, but as a model for the burgeoning fiberglass DIY sports car scene. That was a very big thing in the late ’40s through the mid ’50s, with many fiberglass bodies available to fit various American chassis and drive trains. The 202 was used to create molds, as it was deemed highly attractive and an ideal size for the smaller cars. The other car to be so emulated in fiberglass was of course the Jaguar XK-120. The Atlas Swallow is one of those 202 fiberglass cars:
Wonderful creation. This seems to be the appropriate place and time to leave this here, three years younger than the Cisitalia and Giovanni’s work. Caught last August.
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Tatra87
Your articles are always a treat to read