Sergio Scaglietti, Sculptor of Sleekly Tailored Ferraris, Dies at 91

From the New York Times, Nov 26: Sergio Scaglietti, Sculptor of Sleekly Tailored Ferraris, Dies at 91
Sergio Scaglietti, who used intuitive genius and a hammer — seldom blueprints or sketches — to sculpture elegant Ferraris that won Grand Prix races in the 1950s and ’60s and now sell for millions of dollars, died on Nov. 20 at his home in Modena, Italy. He was 91.

Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari’s chairman, announced the death.

Ferraris, with their hair-raising acceleration and sleek lines, bespoke postwar modernity in the manner of the Color Field paintings of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko or the architecture of Eero Saarinen. Mr. Scaglietti in the 1950s designed the blood-red skin of the 375MM sports car that the film director Roberto Rossellini, the master of neo-realist cinema, gave to his wife, Ingrid Bergman.

In August, Mr. Scaglietti’s 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa sold for $16.4 million, said to be the most ever paid for an automobile at auction. His 250 GT California Spyder was the vehicle in which the teenage heroes of the 1986 film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” cavorted. (The Ferrari in the movie was actually a fake: the producers couldn’t afford a real one.)

Mr. Scaglietti (pronounced skahl-YET-tee — the “g” is silent) lacked the kind of formal education acquired by his patron and best friend, Enzo Ferrari, the race driver-turned-automotive-impresario. Both believed in speed, power, utility, superb craftsmanship and sleek, sensuous beauty, and they abhorred mass production. By craft Mr. Scaglietti was a “coachbuilder,” but others use loftier descriptions.

Leslie Kendall, curator of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, compared his cars to couture clothing. “They were individually tailored, and achingly beautiful,” he said in an interview after Mr. Scaglietti’s death.

Mr. Scaglietti’s method was to receive a prototype from the legendary designer Battista Farina or one of his associates and “interpret” it in aluminum, rarely using a drawing. He made a wire frame, then hammered the metal into the shape he envisioned. He did this on bags of sand, because wood proved too hard. He did everything, he said, “by the eye.”

He followed the designers’ concepts to varying degrees. Many sources give him considerable personal credit for the overall look of the 250 GTO in 1962-63. Just three dozen were made, and Mr. Ferrari, who died in 1988, approved every sale personally. The car was one of the last front-engine cars to remain competitive at the top levels of sports car racing. (Most racing cars today have the engine behind the driver.)

Motor Trend Classic in 2010 called the car the greatest Ferrari of all time, and some people consider it the most beautiful automobile ever made. There have been reports that one sold for $50 million during the classic car boom of the 1980s, and the Web site Supercars.net called that figure not “entirely unrealistic.”

In their 2007 book, Ferrari: Stories From Those Who Lived the Legend, John Lamm and Chuck Queener said Mr. Scaglietti got his inspiration for the GTO by “looking at cars.” Mr. Scaglietti said, “If you use your head, knowing the car has to go fast, you make it smaller and lighter.”

Sergio Scaglietti was born into the family of a poor carpenter on Jan. 9, 1920, in Modena. Four of his five brothers became carpenters, but Sergio aspired to work with metal. When he was 13, his father died, and he dropped out of school to work in a local garage specializing in damaged cars. His brother had gotten him the job, and four years later, the brother and a partner bought the business. At 17, Sergio became one of their first employees. He met Mr. Ferrari when Mr. Ferrari asked him to fix a mud flap on a racing car.

After World War II, Mr. Scaglietti opened his own shop. Mr. Ferrari, who had also started his own business, noticed Mr. Scaglietti’s work repairing a bashed-up racing car and told him he had done a good job. By the mid-1950s, he was doing much of Ferrari’s bodywork at a business he named Carrozzeria Scaglietti. He is credited with coming up with the design for headrests on Ferrari racing cars.

He drew broad praise for the pontoon fenders on the 250 Testa Rossa, of which 34 were built from 1956 to 1961. The fenders’ design allowed cool air to flow into the brake area to prevent overheating. On a visit to Allentown, Pa., in 2000, Mr. Scaglietti told the newspaper The Morning Call that the Testa Rossa got its name almost by accident.

“The chief of production came to Mr. Ferrari and said, ‘We have to stop production because we have no black paint to paint the engines,’ ” he said.

Mr. Ferrari asked what color paint they did have. The answer was red. Mr. Ferrari said, “Paint the engines red and we’ll call it the Testa Rossa,” which means redhead in Italian.

Mr. Scaglietti greatly expanded his business in the 1950s after Mr. Ferrari co-signed a loan. He sold the business to Fiat in the late 1960s, then continued to manage it until his retirement in the mid-1980s. In 2004, Ferrari named a four-seat sports car the 612 Scaglietti.

Information on survivors was unavailable.

Mr. Scaglietti owned only one of his own cars, a California Spyder, which he bought after a friend told him he could make money on it. He lost $1,000 when he sold it.