Cars and Races: RitzSite.net

Car of the Month - May 2008

Sbarro_Turbo_S20_2007

Sbarro Turbo S20 - roadster body - manufactured in 2007

The traditional art of coachbuilding may enjoy a small revival at the moment but there is at least one designer who never lost his faith in producing unique creations. That man is Franco Sbarro, of Italian origin but based in Switzerland. At a time when hand-building cars to special designs based on available mechanical components, such a common practice in the early years of motoring, had all but disappeared Sbarro started out for himself in a Swiss town named Grandson. Within a decade Sbarro evolved into being one of the most prolific coachbuilders of recent years, each year presenting a number of designs which have one thing in common: uniqueness.
Sbarro moved to Switzerland at the age of 17 with a burning ambition to construct automobiles. While the financial situation in Switzerland was much more favorable to that in Southern Italy where Sbarro was born this country did not seem ideal for a career in car manufacture when he established himself there in 1957, having hardly any automotive industry left. After various jobs he became a car mechanic and later he opened his own garage, where he already experimented with putting together specials. Things started in earnest when Sbarro met Georges Filipinetti, an influential Swiss car dealer and Ferrari importer, in 1963. Filipinetti not only had an elaborate car collection which needed restoration and maintenance, he had also just founded the Scuderia Filipinetti which was to become a renowned private sportscar racing team. Filipinetti hired Sbarro as a chief mechanic for his racing team and as a supervisor for the work on his car collection.
Now Sbarro was close to the means necessary to construct cars of his own and, surely, a few years later appeared the first Filipinetti coupé. This was a rear engined prototype based on VW components and regarded as Sbarro's first real creation. In 1967 it was followed by a second Filipinetti coupe, showing a revised body design. 1967 was also the year Sbarro left the employment of Filipinetti and set up his own business, having made a name for himself. At first most work evolved around preparing racing cars and converting cars like the Ford GT40 and Lola T70 for street use. In 1968 Sbarro founded the ACA (Atelier de Construction Automobiles) company and under this banner new projects were developed, resulting in a gradually increasing number of specials, sports cars, show cars, replicas and concepts to come out of the atelier each year, with the production models bearing the Sbarro name.
From the 1970s most money was probably made by producing replicas of the classic BMW 328 and Mercedes 540K amongst others but Sbarro never neglected to draw attention by presenting new designs which were often wild and exciting. In the 1980s the Sbarro designs became more extravagant, catering to rich individualists who'd like something out of the ordinary. A remarkable change in direction came in 1992 when Franco Sbarro founded Espace Sbarro, a school for car design. Part of the course became manufacturing a few of the students' designs each year, increasing the output of concepts, show cars and modifications. In 1994 a similar school was opened in Casablanca, Morocco which was named Créa. The Espace Sbarro moved to a larger premises in Pontarlier in France in 1996 en was renamed to ESPERA (Espace Sbarro Pédagogique d'etudes et de Réalisations Automobiles, which quaintly translates into Pedagogic Sbarro Room for Automotive Studies and Realization). From then on Sbarro and his students worked closely together on realizing new designs, often making the distinction between Sbarro and Espera designs difficult. There were also close relations forged between Sbarro/Espera and the design studios of Alfa Romeo, Citroen and Peugeot; producing a number of concepts and studies made in collaboration. Underlining the success of Sbarro's schooling initiative is again a move to larger facilities in 2007, now in Montbéliard, while Espera now spells "Ecole Sbarro Prototypage Etude Réalisation Automobile" (Sbarro School for Automobile Prototyping Study Realization).

For a coachbuilder the history of Sbarro is as unique as its products but both the continuity of the company while others fail (recently Bertone for example) and of its creativity prove that Franco Sbarro has made the right choices and that there is still room for individual creations in the industrialized world of cars. The Turbo S20 shown here is a good example of such an individual creation: it was made as a graduation project by 20 Espera students for a French television program named Turbo, which celebrated its 20th anniversary. End result is a modern, clean lined and attractive open 2-seater which appears quite realistic and actually is fully functional: powered by a 5-litre V8 from a Porsche 928 producing 350 hp and weighing 1150 kg it should provide an exciting drive.