Paolo Di Taranto, Marketing and Communication Manager of Zagato

In 1919 Ugo Zagato had the idea to create an Atelier in Milan to dress airplanes and cars with aluminium bodies. He had the extraordinary intuition to transfer aeronautical techniques to the automotive sector.

During the whole 1900 Zagato brand became a synonym of technology and innovation in the field of light bodyworks. It was the brand of the cars winning the Mille Miglia, the Alfa Romeos of Scuderia Ferrari and many other models built for the most prestigious Car Manufacturers that made the history of Italian cars in the world.

In the 90s Andrea Zagato, supported by his wife Marella Rivolta, changed his original factory into a very modern Design Center, able to offer services like style research, CAD-CAM modelling, virtual rendering, engineering, expert panel beating, model and prototype manufacturing. The company mission is to reconcile time honored workshop expertise with state of the art development technologies and computer-aided design.

Today, Zagato faces the market in a flexible and dynamic way, offering its integrated services, in order to optimize production times and costs. Once renewed the whole building, which was the past headquarter for assembling cars, and strengthened the start up phase, Andrea Zagato developed two divisions: Zagato Atelier and Design Center.

Zagato Atelier creates unique or exclusive cars in limited production runs, from 9 to 99 units, for special customers, such as important collectors and international Gentlemen Drivers. This process is the right mix between workshop expertise and innovation. Zagato’s cars are conceived in 3D, then developed using the most advanced rendering techniques, and are finally hand beaten and finished by expert panel beaters. This phase, determined by the available top technologies, is combined with the more emotional aluminium panel hand beating, according to the most classic brand origin.
The interesting aspect of the Atelier is the fact to deal both with the business to business and the business to consumer. In the first case, it means a dialogue with corporates for project sharing, brand use authorization and planning of the marketing and communication strategy. In the second one, it refers to the peculiar relationship between the Atelier and its clients, with whom Zagato shares coach building, colours and tailored details, according to the traditional “Italian Haute Couture”.

So, over almost ninty years, Zagato brand has contributed to create and innovate cars, particularly sports cars. To do this Zagato faced many operative and managerial ups and downs, changing from a coach-building workshop to a modern Design Center through a radical changeover, which is representative of the so called “flexible model”. In fact, car market trends are characterized by a quick and considerable evolution. This is able to create an offer that can rapidly match the demand and, at the same time, anticipate and foster it, when traditional sectors are overstocked and have already been widely explored.

Today, product quality, innovation and competitiveness merge with non secondary aspects, like style, design and the seeking for a well defined image and identity, often against mass production requirements. The automotive sector is one of the expressions of the Made in Italy worldwide renowned excellence, particularly as for coach-building and brands, which have determined the car innovation history during almost all the 20th Century. 

This very strict interaction with the automotive and transportation sector imposes extremely high quality and technology standards, constantly updated by the necessity of an excellence devoted competitiveness. Zagato Atelier’s products are specifically characterized by the exclusive mix of tangible and intangible components, which cannot be practically imitated or replaced by any new company today. Tradition and innovation, combined with quality and perceptive factors are both Zagato’s strengths and acknowledged elements of the Made in Italy and the new luxury.

To sum up, historical brand, workshop expertise and technology, numbered and limited production runs, strong uniqueness and distinctiveness features represent the embedded mix both in the concept of luxury products and in Zagato’s peculiar strengths. These last ones make this brand an Italian case with respect to niche products, in the middle between design and innovation.