I wonder how long publishers can continue to make money on Pininfarina or Ferrari, or particularly both together.
Antoine Prunest's most recent book about Pininfarina's 70 years (up to 2000) is one of those that promises a lot, but delivers much less. The book is subtitled 'Art and Industry' and since we meet a lot of the industrials here, is it too much to expect that we are to meet an artist or five, too?
Take this short list of (almost no one is pre-war!) recent and, in this context, fairly prolific ex-Pininfarina designers: Albisser, Andreani, d'Aprile, Arcangeli, Arcuri, Beccio, Bianco, Bonello, Brovarone and Fumio (just to take ten, fairly high up on my (alphabetical) list). Not one of them is mentioned in the book, according to the index. Not even high profile ex-Pininfarina designers like Tom Tjarda, Leonardo Fioravanti or Ken Okyuama (who moved to Art Center in 2001) have been given a single sentence here!
Does Antoine Prunet, whom we know as a serious Ferrari historian and founder of the respected Automobiles Classiques magazine, really want us to believe that all the great Pf-designs have been done by someone called Pininfarina? On the other hand, we have one photo showing one of the 1948 Lancia Aprilias demonstrating Pinin's creativity at it's highets level. Here the car is being admired by one Gino Bartali. Excuse me, but who, actually, is Gino Bartali?
Prunet has included some fairly uninteresting, short interviews with people who knew, or even worked with, old Battista Pininfarina. Gianni Agnelli, Bob Lutz and Mabuhiko Kawamoto (ex-chairman of Honda) among them. Sergio Scaglietti, panel beater par excellence, is the closest we come to Pininfarinas proper metier in these sections.
It may be very interesting for someone to see another photo of Pininfarina together with Bill Mitchell, but the real and final story about the GM designed (Haga/MacKichan?) Pininfarina-built Twin Rotor coupé for Frankfurt 30 years ago would be much more welcome.
This is a book with nearly 2000 black and white photos, not many of these are unexpected, and the usual absentees are still absent (Frazer Nash, Rover or Bristol, for instance). Photos with fairly insignificant, and never very unexpected, captions. Proper text, as such, is limited to 40 pages at the front, not very much of interest there either. And if you find some of the photos fascinating it can only mean that you are a fairly recent arrival to this block.
