Every car from new project will be a masterpiece, design partners claim
Italian automotive company Automobili Pininfarina has launched a new initiative with specialist car designer Walter De Silva. The partners are calling their new programme Unicum.
As the name suggests, the aim of the project will be to produce one-off cars, designed and built to each customer’s specifications.
Walter De Silva spent 20 years as design director at Alfa Romeo. He then moved to SEAT before becoming director of design for the Audi Group in the early years of this century, and later director of design for the whole Volkswagen Group for nine years until 2016.
After leaving Volkswagen, he set up a design consultancy, Munich-based Walter De Silva Automotive Studio.
Unicum will work in what Pininfarina has described as a simple way. Clients will place a request for an exclusive car. The Walter De Silva Automotive Studio will design it, based on the “needs, desires, personality and preferences” of each customer.
Once the design is complete, Pininfarina will craft each unique car at its workshops in Cambiano, near Turin.
“The result will be not merely a bespoke car, but a masterpiece of automotive culture,” Pininfarina said, “conceived in the same spirit that defined the golden age of bespoke coachbuilding. Each car will have its own story, its own aesthetic language and its own identity.”
For his part, Mr De Siva said Unicum would lead to “a new era of luxury, where beauty and elegance engage in dialogue with the most advanced technology”.
