The new Aperta, meeting with mixed reviews. Photo Ferrari Media.
By Wallace A. Wyss
And now, the third iteration of the streetable 599, following the GTB, the halfway new “ Handling Gran Turismo Evoluzione”,and the GTO, introduced last April, is the Aperta, or “open” 599.
Pininfarina and Ferrari announced a new open car at the Paris Auto Show. Called the 599 SA Aperta, it turns out that a lucky few already saw it last August near the Quail Lodge at an invitation-only preview.
How did you get an invitation? You had to already own a Ferrari. And not just any Ferrari, but the right Ferrari. For all of you Ferraristi who thought you were known by the factory, let us give you the bad news; if you didn’t get the e-mail, you aren’t.
They only plan to make 80 of the cars so that’s why they were so selectively pitching it. Of course by now all the cars have been sold, so don’t reach for your wallet.
The SA refers not to Superamerica but to Sergio, the patriarch of the clan and his late son Andrea, who died recently in a motor scooter accident. The new car has strong styling hints from a one-off, called the 540 Aperta, built for a wealthy American under the Portfolio custom design program. That car was also displayed on the Monterey peninsula in August to the general public at Pebble Beach.
So, the new car isn’t totally new, being 599-based, but here’s one man’s critique of the design.
IN SUM… Ferrari deserves credit for bringing out another front-engined V12 powered open car, similar in purpose to the Daytona Spyder, but it is too bad they spent so much money to design a car that still looks remarkably like a Corvette. As we have criticized with the GTB, for years, the Corvette has been edging toward Ferrari bit by bit by copying one design cue after another (the last one being the headlights and now working on side vents). A flagship like the Aperta needs its own distinctive body styling like nothing else on the road, much as Lamborghini’s Murcielago couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.
Ferrari’s biggest fan?
Stealing styling cues work both ways and always has, particularly between Italy and the U.S. But who at G.M. is responsible for the Corvette, and therefore it’s likeness to the Prancing Horse?
There is an old saying attributed to Al Capone: “Don’t steal the hubcaps, steal the whole car.”
Well, GM, so far , in their Corvette’s design updates are stealing in essence the hubcaps from Ferrari—a headlight design here, a side vent design there, a hood scoop somewhere else and even the general shape, though in the case of the Ferrari 599 it is Pininfarina, Ferrari’s designers, that stole the shape of the Corvette present generation from GM..
Edward T. Welburn
The chief designer at GM is Edward T. Welburn, who became chief designer at GM a few years back. His mission , he told the press back then, was to develop visually distinctive brand identity for the twenty-first century.
Welburn was born in December of 1950 and grew up in the Philadelphia area. His father was a co-owner of a body shop so Welburn and his brothers spent a lot of time seeing cars being repaired. At an early age he was tracing over the sketches his father had done of 1930s Duesenbergs and similar classics. So you could say he was a second generation car man steeped in car history.
He first wrote to GM when he was eleven years old and to their credit, they took his queries seriously and wrote back with information on what he needed to study to eventually qualify as an intern. He studied fine arts and sculpture at Howard University in Washington, D.C and won a slot in the GM internship program while still in college. He was hired full-time after graduation, and spent his first three years with Buick, the moved to Oldsmobile. His first shot at something wild was the one off Oldsmobile Aerotech show car, a car that looked good on the stand and actually set a new world land-speed record for a closed course at 259 miles per hour.
Welburn worked for GM’s Saturn and then went to Opel, then back to Olds where he was chief designer and did the Antares concept car. After 2001, Welburn oversaw the designs of the Cadillac Escalade, Hummer H2, the hot-rod Chevy pick-up SSR, and Chevrolet Avalanche. On September 26, 2003, GM announced that Welburn would succeedWayne Cherry as GM’s VP in charge of design.
Comparing him to the old time design heads like Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell, he seems pretty quiet, more of a blend-in-with the-background kind of guy but he show signs of being aggressive in the design field and that’s where he may take the Corvette to new heights as the American car that sank Ferrari…..
The Author, who has served as a guest speaker at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and on occasion doubles as a fine artist, created the chalk drawing of the Aperta above. Prints, sans lettering, are available from www.Albaco.com.