Newsletter 23: FERRARI ICONS: PININFARINA
The launch of the Ferrari 812 Superfast marks the end of the era of Ferraris designed by Pininfarina.
Pininfarina is a design house, founded in Turin in 1930.
They first did coachbuilding work for Ferrari in 1951 and continued to design almost every Ferrari, well into the 21st century.
Ferrari made use of other coachbuilders in the 1950s and 1960s, but by the 1970s, Pininfarina was responsible for every Ferrari road car except for the 308 GT4, which was penned by Bertone.
Eight years ago, however, Ferrari established its own in-house design studio, Centro Stile Ferrari. Centro Stile Ferrari worked in conjunction with Pininfarina for the first few years, however, the La Ferrari, launched during that period, was an entirely in-house Ferrari design.
The California, 458, and FF both featured Pininfarina styling, and as a consequence, were adorned with the Pininfarina badges. Their successors, the California T, 488, and GTC4 Lusso, however, do not have Pininfarina badges, even though the California T was launched with the tagline, “Penned by the Ferrari Styling Centre in collaboration with Pininfarina.”
This was not the case with the GTC4 Lusso or 488, as they were completely designed in-house.
That left the F12 Berlinetta as the only Ferrari on sale, at the time, designed by Pininfarina.
Of course, all of Ferrari’s current line-up features Pininfarina influence, since all of its cars are heavily updated versions of models originally styled by the Turin design house. Still, this is a significant moment in the historic story of the world’s most revered auto manufacturer.
Indian automaker Mahindra, bought Pininfarina back in 2015. Since then, Pininfarina has focused on designing interiors for self-driving cars and innovating electrified powertrains, while continuing to do commissioned one-off cars.
Together, Ferrari and Pininfarina created some of the most beautiful cars of all time. Ferrari will surely continue to do good work, and it’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for Pininfarina, but we really hope this isn’t the end of the road for the famed partnership.
