Ten years into a difficult professional collaboration with Franco Mantegazza, the founder, owner, and director of design and engineering firm I.DE.A Institute, and roughly five years after the creation of Ferrari’s one-off pace car [“Stranger in a Strange Land,” FORZA #225], Ercole Spada’s phone rang. Andrea Zagato, grandson of the founder of the famed Milanese coachbuilder, was on the other end of the line, and asked, “Would you consider coming back?”
Three decades earlier, in 1960, Gianni Zagato, one of company founder Ugo’s sons, had hired a young Spada. In 1969, the “prodigal son” had left the company, with countless iconic creations under his belt, in search of new challenges. He enlisted first as one of the designers at the ephemeral Italian styling studio of Ford at Bruino (Turin), which soon merged with Ghia after the latter passed from Alejandro de Tomaso’s hands to Ford’s in 1970.
By 1976, Spada had been recruited by Ferdinand Piech to work at Audi’s styling studios in Ingolstadt, but soon accepted an offer to move to Munich and BMW. He remained one of the Bavarian automaker’s most important styling contributors until tragedy struck his family; his eldest son, Andrea, died after a grueling battle with illness.
Munich now filled with painful memories, Spada considered leaving Germany. Fortunately, he was called back to Italy, in 1983, to co-direct (with Walter de Silva) the numerous design projects arriving at I.DE.A. Over the next decade, the firm would achieve a preeminent position comparable to other long-established Turin design and engineering houses, such as Bertone, Pininfarina, and Italdesign, with crucial automotive projects for the Fiat group and countless others in its always full portfolio.
By September 1992, Spada (who died in 2025) had rejoined Zagato, a company then on the verge of a profound reinvention, in the role of chief designer. And the first commission Andrea Zagato would entrust him with was nothing less than a new suit for the Ferrari Testarossa.
Early Ercole Spada sketch shows evolution of design and inspiration for FZ93.
ZAGATO INTENDED TO BUILD ON THE RECENT SUCCESS of its upgrade package for the Ferrari 348. Ten examples (nine coupes, one targa) of the handsome 348 Elaborazione Zagato were reportedly produced, even though the company’s first-ever mid-engine creation doubled the price of the original car.
The Testarossa renovation project was already underway when Spada arrived. In-house proposals had been executed by some of the company’s styling apprentices, including Gioacchino Acampora, who later became known for his highly distinctive creations for Castagna, the reborn firm he himself runs.
There were just six months left before the car was to debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1993. While this sounds like a very tight deadline for the creation of a unique piece, in some ways it could be considered a quite generous one. In the 1960s and ’70s, a mere three months were enough for Italian coachbuilders to sketch a prototype on Day One and present it at the Turin Motor Show 90 days later.
A used Ferrari 512 TR (s/n 93935) served as the starting point. Zagato retained the production car’s hard points—windshield, A and B-pillars, and so on—a tactical decision that directly addressed the practical aspects of homologation, as did leaving the car mechanically unchanged. This meant the car would be street-legal anywhere the 512 TR was.
Under Spada’s direction, a very quick sketching and rendering phase was at once followed by the transition to technical and mathematical figures of the artistic conceptions—the usual styling scale-model fabrication, validation, and refinement stages were all skipped.
A 1:5-scale piano di forma, or master drawing, realized by Marco Pedracini (and later used as background for the famous promotional artwork created by fine-artist Nani Tedeschi) was approved, followed by the full-size drawing necessary to build the pattern for the body panels to be shaped over.
Taking advantage of a dedicated group from Zagato’s design, prototyping, and production staffs, the creation of what would be called the FZ93 (for Formula Zagato and the year) proceeded at a good pace. It was one of the first creations by Zagato to benefit, though not extensively, from the use of new CAD-CAE tools, which had been brought in-house after absorbing neighboring Forma e Tecnologia. (Forma e Tecnologia, formerly run by engineers Giuseppe Bizzarrini—the elder son of Giotto, creator of the 250 GTO—and Maurizio Azzini, had made the composite skin of the Alfa Romeo SZ after absorbing the Carplast composites manufacturing company.)
The FZ93 was finished at the very last minute. Two photographs in the wintry rain were enough to decorate the already printed press release for Geneva’s world famous event. The public’s reaction at the show was mixed—echoes of which continue today—but to those who loved it, the car was magnificent, a true statement in design that not every witness was able to understand in full. The mixed reception should perhaps come as no surprise, since there had never been a road car quite like the FZ93 before.
Getting up close and personal with the latest in technology and performance was a must for a car designer working for a small company that produces niche and exciting transportation. So, in the early 1990s, Spada’s main inspirations came from Northrop-McDonnell Douglas’ striking, stealthy, and insanely futuristic YF-23 jet fighter concept and Ferrari’s Steve Nichols-designed 1991 Tipo 643 Formula 1 car.
Both inspirations were clearly visible on the FZ93’s front end. A curved F1-car-like nose rose sculpturally out of the hood, while YF-23-style twin trapezoidal air intakes sat below, flanked by flat, pointed endplates just like an F1 wing. (The intakes are difficult to see in photos, due to the driving lights positioned inside.) An integrated perimeter spoiler below the intakes provided an anti-lift effect and gracefully completed the front design. All lower elements were done in graphite grey, contrasting the bright red bodywork; this was similar to Ferrari’s F1 cars, which wore black wings.
The design was totally groundbreaking, unseen on any previous sports car. It was also a change for Ferrari, which had never before featured anything other than a normally oval grille located front and center. Future Ferrari models, starting with the 360 Modena, would adopt these twin, separate air intakes, while the Enzo would famously feature its own version of an F1 car’s nose.
The FZ93’s flanks featured clean radiator air intakes, fed by a recess that originated at the front’s end plates, all visually tied together in graphite grey. The Testarossa’s characteristic side strakes (an invention originally necessitated for U.S. certification) were removed in favor of simple and more elegant vertical single vanes.
The sharply profiled rear fenders were reminiscent of the YF-23’s massive engine domes, their thrust-vectoring nozzles emulated on the FZ93 with black blades that obscured the taillight clusters. This sense of aeronautical poetry was further accentuated by the small black air intakes for rear brakes, which protruded like discreet periscopes from the red contours of the engine cover, very much in the style of Group C sports cars.
The double-bubble roof section (in steel) was a classic Zagato touch. Rather than a typical square tunnel behind the occupants, Spada specified the shape of a wide, inverted NACA duct, encompassed by the roof’s buttresses and painted in graphite grey, to cover the engine, although the cam covers were left exposed. Once again, this was a never-before-seen treatment.
A beautiful omega-shaped rear diffuser/bumper rose high to embrace the license plate area and blend sweetly with the graphics, reflectors, red bumperettes, and exhausts, finished the rear end with a vibrant harmony of excitement and aggression. The new bodywork, a mix of aluminum panels and carbon fiber bumpers and hood, supposedly reduced the donor Ferrari’s weight by around 275 pounds.
An excerpt from Zagato’s press release read as follows: “The cockpit of the FZ93 is as individual as the exterior; rational in its simplicity, it combines innovative and practical forms with essential sporting touches. Special ergonomic, manually adjustable racing seats (in gray Alcantara) were crafted by Sparco based on Zagato’s design. The striking dashboard abandons the trend for imposing, wrap-around designs: instead, the FZ93’s dashboard was designed to intrude as little as possible on the interior. The instrument panel dials are individually recessed into a brushed aluminum plate reminiscent of classic instrument clusters.”
I believe the cockpit design was the work of young apprentice Donatella Frediani, but this remains unconfirmed. The cockpit floor was made of carbon fiber (which wasn’t mentioned in the press release), the door panels were upholstered in smooth, padded black leather, and other surfaces were bare or painted matte black. The car did not feature a sound system and, just like the exterior, not everyone understood that choice. But that was the essence of the FZ93: take it or leave it!
A YELLOW ALFA ROMEO RZ (the convertible version of the SZ) and a black Lancia Hyena completed the display on Zagato’s bright and immaculate stand at the Geneva Motor Show, undoubtedly one of the busiest and most talked-about. The rebirth of the legendary house of the capital “Z” was now underway, albeit on a much smaller scale than before. Arising from the ashes of a mid-sized industrial concern was a rather compact design atelier, which still survives in good health today.
After the hype and superficial controversy of its Geneva debut, the FZ93 received a large black Cavallino Rampante on both flanks, behind the side intakes, to further confirm its provenance. In this guise, it was gloriously photographed in a photo studio by I’d Like to Know, something that couldn’t be done before Geneva due to the lack of time.
Alas, the FZ93 would not remain so distinctive for long. Zagato, perhaps swayed by the opinions of prospective customers or unsure of its own choices, implemented a number of detail changes. The result was a bulky, red uniform volume, devoid of its previous graphite grey contrasts, which, in turn, removed much of its Formula 1 character.
The revised car was re-introduced as the “Testarossa Z” at Geneva’s Autostory exhibit in February 1994, and it was later rebaptized “ES1” after Spada himself. A run of ten examples remained the objective, but even with the concessions to presumed better taste, Zagato did not get the expected firm orders needed to begin a production run.
Spada designed a few more projects—including the one-off Alfa Romeo 155 TI.Z (based on the Q4 and inspired by the 155 DTM) and a proposal for a new “Super Diablo” for Lamborghini dubbed Progetto 147—before leaving the company in late 1994. While I believe he wasn’t entirely happy with the cosmetic changes made to the FZ93, which clearly contradicted his original vision, the more likely cause of his departure was Zagato’s inability to pay him the agreed-upon salary after the company’s Lancia Delta Integrale-based Hyena prototype failed to make it into production.
Large investments had already been made reworking the donor car, and the lightweight Hyena was almost ready in its final form, when Fiat decided to discontinue the Integrale altogether. Then, with the demise of the Alfa RZ, the once-busy Zagato production premises closed forever in late 1994, an event that coincided with the retirements of both Gianni and Elio Zagato.
Although younger than the Zagato brothers, Spada opted for retirement, too—although, by 1995, he was back in business with Luca Zagato (Gianni’s son) and Shozo Fujita (who had financed previous Zagato projects). But that’s a story for another day.
