Touring Superleggera
Touring Superleggera is recognized worldwide as one of the iconic names in Italian car design and coachbuilding. Founded by Felice Bianchi Anderloni and Gaetano Ponzoni in 1926, the company started to produce custom built automotive bodywork with two distinctive features from the very beginning: sporting elegance and lightness.
Early customers were reputed car makers as Isotta Fraschini and Alfa Romeo. It was the start of a flamboyant period, culminating in the “Flying Star” era that gave birth to several spectacular spider coachworks.
Touring Superleggera also gradually researched the streamlining science. The marriage between aerodynamic study and their Superleggera construction system, using aluminium body panels over a light but rigid tubular steel frame, resulted in masterpieces such as the 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C2900 Touring, which today have become icons of automotive design.
In 1945 the excellent Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni joined his father at the company, which soon started to receive its first orders from Enzo Ferrari. The Ferrari 166 MM Touring Barchetta of 1948 was a new milestone for light, elegant and effective design on a competition chassis.
Under Carlo Felice, Touring saw its industrial customer basis grow in the mainstream of the expanding automotive industry in Europe and overseas. A number of specialty models were designed and built on Alfa Romeo 1900, Lancia Flaminia and Maserati 3500. Another new inspired car manufacturer from the Bologna area relied on Touring’s skills: Lamborghini, that commissioned its first GT, the 350. In the same period Touring created another iconic automobile: the Aston Martin DB4, followed by the DB5 and 6, manufactured in Newport Pagnell under license for the Superleggera bodywork system.
Since 2008, Carrozzeria Touring is an all-round supplier of automotive design, engineering and body manufacturing. Services range from style research and digital design to body engineering, CAD feasibility studies, FEM/FES analysis, CFD/aerodynamic analysis, virtual crash test.
The manufacturing department provides style models, show cars, rolling concepts, street legal one-offs and limited production series. Recent models include the Bellagio Fastback based on Maserati Quattroporte and the concept two-seater A8GCS Berlinetta winner of the “Best Supercar of the Year” award in 2009.
They were followed by the acclaimed Bentley Continental Flying Star (2010), manufactured in limited run with the endorsement of Bentley Motors, and the Gumpert Tornante by Touring (2011), a superfast Grand Tourer commissioned by the German sports car manufacturer.
In 2012 Touring celebrated a masterpiece from its rich heritage, taking inspiration from the Alfa C52 Disco Volante of sixty years before. The innovative, breathtaking Alfa Romeo Disco Volante, built by hand in a limited run of up to eight units, won the coveted Design Award at Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2013.
In 2014 in collaboration with MINI, Touring Superleggera designed and built an elaborately crafted, unique concept car to explore new design languages for the iconic British brand. Exhibited at Villa d’Este as the BMW Group’s annual design statement, the MINI Superleggera™ Vision adds the Italian design touch to MINI’s British essence, while continuing the tradition of classic coachwork construction.
The company aims at perpetuating the core values of Touring design: purity, integrity, proportions, simplicity, resulting in timeless sporty elegance.
Design, manufacturing and restoration activities are run in the company premises nearby Milan