VILLA D’ESTE STYLE 2018
One Lake, One Car
7th edition
Villa d’Este, Cernobbio - Saturday, 21 April 2018
Villa d’Este Style: showcasing the amazing Alfa Romeo Coupé Villa d’Este, a symbol of elegance and good design
A spellbinding, 100% Italian story about people, places and motors
23April 2018–Another great success for Villa d’Este Style,the established occasion that has been animating the Villa’s gardens for seven years with the meeting of the extremely rare and always fascinatingAlfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS Villa d’Este models still existing in the world today. Conceived and promoted byVilla d’Este – the world-famous hotel on the shores of Lake Como known the world over as a symbol of refined hospitality – for the second year running, the event brought the exhibition out into in Cernobbio’s Piazza Risorgimento, right on the lakefront, wherea host ofauto enthusiasts had a chance to admire the once-in-a-lifetime collection–forthis edition hosting five models drawn in from all over the world – plus another twentyAlfa Romeos dating back to before 1980that celebrated the immortal Villa d’Este models.
“Every year we receive more and more compliments from the owners of these revolutionary cars, who have a chance to get to know each other during the event, exchange experiences and admire each others’ vehicles”, comments DrGiuseppe Fontana, Vice-President of the Villa d’Este Group, which first added a model of this Alfa Romeo to its art collection in 2011. “Considering the enormous interest shown last year, when for the first time the cars made their way out of the villa’s gardens to parade along the lakefront promenade in Cernobbio, we decided to repeat the format this year, to give everyone a chance to admire these masterpieces of such unparalleled beauty”, continues Danilo Zucchetti, Managing Director of Villa d’Este Hotels.
The Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS Villa d’Este is actually the model that won the Villa d’Este Gold Cup at the last edition of the Elegance Competition, held in 1949, primarily because of its inimitable style – created by the Touring Coachworks – that marked the advent of a new era in the history of Italian automobile design, ushering in light weight and grace, representing the kind of atmosphere that people could breathe in those days and the excellence being produced by the country’s firms.
With every edition, the event’s concept is updated to stimulate the production of new ideas. In past years, light has been cast on several parallels between automobiles, design and architecturein the forties and fifties. The focus of this seventh editionwas on Villa d’Este’s heritage of style: the event hosted two cars produced in the following years that have several points in common with the star of the show, the 6C 2500, illustrating how some of the stylistic features introduced by Bianchi Anderlonisurvived for a long time in cars built a long way away from Milan.One of these is the 1950Ferrari 166, which was built by the Touring Coachworks in the same periodand constitutes a vital link between the classic Alfa Romeo and the dawn of the great Ferrari legend. Another special guest was the 1962AC Cobra, an evolution on the theme of the 1950s AC Bristol that furnishes a sense of continuity and modernity for the Villa d’Este line and is still in production to this day.
“With the Villa d’Este Coupé, the result of evolutionary studies that lasted more than two years, Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloniachieved one of the highest points of his Touring Coachworks”, declaresMarco Makaus, project manager of the Villa d’Este Style initiative and of the register of these fantastic coupés. “The proof is there for all to see: Touring succeeded in adapting those lines and those details to other vehicles, some of which were very different from the 6C 2500. Certain details inherited from the Villa d’Este can even be recognised in some English cars produced in the early sixties. On this occasion, we had a chance to observe some of these vehicles”.
All this made this seventh edition a unique opportunity for period car enthusiasts – and others – to discover an event that has been hard at work since 2012, celebrating some of Italy’s most universally-acknowledged pinnacles of excellence – automotive and hospitality – and that gathers all the coupés together that owe their name to this location and brings them back home once every year.