Zagato
Zagato is the Milanese coachbuilder whose relationship with Alfa Romeo has lasted more than a century — from the first collaboration on the G1 in 1921 to the Giulia SWB Zagato in the present day — making it the most sustained partnership between a single coachbuilder and a single manufacturer in automotive history. The company was founded in 1919 by Ugo Zagato, born 1890 in Gavello near Rovigo, who had worked at Officine Aeronautica Pomilio building aircraft before deciding to apply aviation’s principles of lightweight construction and aerodynamic form to the automobile. He set up on Via Giorgini 16 in Milan, a short distance from Alfa Romeo’s original Portello factory — the geography was not coincidental.
The foundational insight was structural: Ugo Zagato envisioned car bodies not as heavy steel shells but as aluminium-frame structures analogous to an aircraft fuselage. In the early 1920s this was radical; by the end of the decade, when Vittorio Jano’s new 6C engines were making Alfa Romeo the most successful racing marque in Europe, it was indispensable. Vittorio Jano commissioned Zagato bodies for the 6C 1500 — the resulting cars achieved second place in the 1927 Mille Miglia and won the Mille Miglia outright in 1928. The 6C 1750 Zagato then won the Mille Miglia in both 1929 and 1930. In the 1930s, all racing Alfa Romeo 8Cs received coachwork from Zagato — the combination of Jano’s supercharged engines and Zagato’s ultra-light bodies was the engineering foundation of Alfa Romeo’s pre-war dominance.
The relationship produced one of coachbuilding’s most recognisable signature motifs: the “double bubble” roof — two parallel domed sections running along the roofline and meeting at the spine — which became synonymous with Zagato design from the 1950s onwards. The double bubble solved a structural and aesthetic problem simultaneously: it provided headroom for the occupants’ helmets while maintaining the lowest possible roofline, and its forms became instantly identifiable.
The post-war decade saw continued collaboration. In the 1960s, Ercole Spada — perhaps the most talented designer ever to work at Zagato (1960–1969, returning briefly in 1992) — produced the Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ (Tubolare Zagato, 1963) and TZ2 (1965) for Autodelta: lightweight aluminium-and-fibreglass tube-framed racing coupés that extended the Zagato lightweight philosophy into FIA competition. The Giulietta SZ, 2600 SZ, and Junior Z followed in the same tradition.
In 1960, Zagato moved production to Terrazzano di Rho — immediately adjacent to the new Alfa Romeo Arese factory. The proximity was deliberate, reinforcing what had already become a creative dependency. In 1989–1991 the Alfa Romeo SZ (sport coupé) and RZ (roadster) were designed and assembled entirely at Zagato’s Rho facility — the first automobiles in history to use CAD (Computer-Aided Design) for body design — and their controversial “il mostro” styling, conceived under Ermanno Cressoni and realised at Zagato, provoked strong reactions. For the 2010 Alfa Romeo centenary, Zagato presented the TZ3 Corsa concept at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este (winning the design concept award) and began small-series production of the TZ3 Stradale the following year.
Among the later chapters in the Zagato-Alfa relationship: the Alfetta GTV Zagato (1986) — designed for homologation in Group B rally — brought the double-bubble roofline to a front-engined touring GT and recalled the purposeful severity of the early sports-racing models. The Junior Zagato (1969–1975), built on the Giulia floorpan, distilled the TZ aesthetic into a street-legal coupé. The Giulietta SZ (Sprint Zagato, 1960) and 2600 SZ (1961–1963) preceded the TZ series, continuing the line from the pre-war lightweight tradition. In total, Zagato’s catalogue for Alfa Romeo spans more than a century: from the 1921 G1 to the 2023 Giulia SWB Zagato, each iteration expressing the same conviction that a car’s body should serve the needs of speed first and aesthetics second — though at Zagato, the two have rarely been in conflict.
Ugo Zagato died in 1968. His sons Elio and Gianni continued the company; current chief designer is Norihiko Harada (since 1996). Across its history, Zagato has collaborated with 44 marques and produced over 440 bespoke bodies — a figure unmatched by any other surviving Italian coachbuilder.
Connections
- Alfa Romeo — principal client and collaborator from 1921 to present; most important relationship in the company’s history, source: wikipedia.org
- Vittorio Jano — commissioned Zagato bodies for 6C 1500 and 6C 1750; Jano-engine/Zagato-body partnership won Mille Miglia 1928, 1929, 1930, source: gtspirit.com
- Autodelta — Zagato built Giulia TZ and TZ2 for Autodelta’s competition programme, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo 6C — Zagato bodies for 6C 1500 and 6C 1750 won Mille Miglia 1928, 1929, 1930, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 — all racing 8C bodies by Zagato, source: wikipedia.org
- Mille Miglia — won outright in 1928, 1929, 1930 in Zagato-bodied Alfas, source: wikipedia.org