Marcello Gandini can pen a car’s beauty without thinking twice…his lifetime’s career work is a choice list of the best cuts from Italy: the Alfa Romeo Montreal, the Bugatti EB110, the Fiat X1/9, the early Lamborghinis through the Countach, the Lancia Stratos, Maseratis, the Renault 5 Turbo…and that’s just a minor selection that spans everything from sedans to semi-trucks. His work with Bertone cranked out some of the most gorgeous lines any car could’ve had. He penned up the first-generation BMW 5-series and at the same time, drew up the radical Cizeta V16T supercar, a symbolic middle finger to Chrysler for what they did to his original design for the Lamborghini Diablo. Gandini did not design the De Tomaso Pantera…that job was penned by Ghia’s Tom Tjaarda. But Gandini can take credit for the minor facelift that Alejandro de Tomaso all but pleaded with him to do that debuted in 1990 as the Pantera Si/Pantera 90.
de Tomaso was known to be a bit of a character, and a quick glance at the kind of person Gandini is immediately sees conflict being a problem…but was it? de Tomaso died in 2003, so the only other person who could give the truest answers is Gandini himself. It’s interesting to hear how the dynamic between the expat Argentinian and the Italian began, endured and oddly enough, survived. Davide Cironi sat down with Gandini and recorded the stories of a man who was both warm and controversial at the same time.
Be sure to turn on the English subtitles in the movie settings (the gear icon)!
