JULY 2019 — 149WORDS: JASON BARLOW. EDITED BY: PAUL HENDERSON
trains and aerospace. But ironically, this great
automotive couturier has never actually created
a car of its own – until now. And the Pininfarina
Battista is named in honour of the man who
started it all.
A new company, Automobili Pininfarina has
been created in parallel with the Pininfarina
SpA mother ship, with a plan to sell a total of
150 Battistas at a cost of approximately `17.5
crores each. It might look like a generic – though
mesmerisingly beautiful – mid-engined hypercar,
but it’s pushing the form to the outer limits.
Not least because the Battista is purely electric
and shuns the emotional but increasingly
anachronistic internal combustion engine in
favour of zero emissions and superficially guilt-
free ultra-performance.
Producing the equivalent of 1,900bhp, it can
claim to be the most powerful Italian road car
ever made. Zero to 62kph takes less than two
seconds, 186kph is up in under 12 and the top
speed is likely to be 250kph, with a projected
range of 300 km from the batteries, assuming
you’re not travelling at warp five everywhere.
A superfast charging system will replenish
the batteries to 80 per cent capacity in just
40 minutes.
The body is made of carbon fibre, with the
batteries housed behind the occupants and
along the sides in a T-format. The electrical
architecture is being co-developed with another
EV outfit, the Croatian firm Rimac (itself 10 per
cent owned by Porsche and said to be consulting
with numerous manufacturers on this fast-
moving technology). As you’d hope, given the
price and provenance, the interior is swathed
in the finest materials, although, as the product
of what’s billed as the world’s first sustainable
luxury car company, nontraditional techniques
are being explored.
“Pininfarina’s mission is to design cars that
are innovative, pure, simple, elegant,” chairman
and Battista’s grandson, Paolo, tells me. “This
project was a great challenge because we are
designing for ourselves here, so we want it to be
Pininfarina 110 per cent. It’s not a negotiation
or a compromise: This is us. Why should you
be attracted to a Pininfarina car? Because it’s
beautiful, it has harmony, it’s innovative but has
classic qualities. Electrification is the future.”
Ask him why Italy historically outranks everyother country in car design terms and Paolo revs
up an interesting theory.
“It’s a matter of people. My grandfather,
Battista, was an outlier, one in a million. To
succeed as an outlier you need three things:
talent, commitment and to be born at the right
moment and in the right place. He was born in
1893, in Turin, surrounded by other talented
people who were exploring the future of the car.
With these things, success came.”
The story runs deeper though, and it’s ironic
that Pininfarina’s first own-brand car only exists
because this Italian legend was sold to Indian
behemoth Mahindra in 2015 for `370 crores. The
company’s executive chairman, Anand Mahindra- a graduate of Harvard’s film school rather
than a hard-boiled businessman – is enabling
a plan that might well have continued to elude
Pininfarina on its own.
“The [Battista] will enable us to fulfil our vision
of participating at the pinnacle of automotive
design,” he says. “Luxury is the meeting point
of heritage and craftsmanship; it would take
90 years to build what Pininfarina has.”
The bigger picture here is as compelling
as the car itself. Mahindra believes that car
ownership will follow three paths during the
next few decades: an autonomous, fully electric
one in which simple utility is key; cars for
recreational use; and “cars that are bought
purely because they are objects of desire,
out of passion for performance and beauty.”
Secondly, Automobili Pininfarina will license
the hardware from other companies to avoid
crippling investment in proprietary technology - the asset-light business model of which Apple
is the most profitable exponent. It’s unlikely the
Battista could exist otherwise.
That said, it’s still channelling some old-fashioned
magic, as chief designer Luca Borgogno says.
“This was the most important part of the first
briefing: It has to be beautiful. Look at the cars in
our museum: What really strikes you is the purity
and beauty. Purezza e bellezza.”
ENGINE
Four electric motors generating
1,417K W (1,900bhp)
TOP SPEED 420 kph (claimed)PERFORMANCE
0-100kph; under 2sec
PRICE
`17.5 crore (minus taxes)Pininfarina Battista