Curated collection
Rare coachbuilt derivatives that lived in the shadow of more celebrated siblings, despite their distinctive design, craftsmanship or historical significance.
Collection note
Prestige does not always follow rarity. Some coachbuilt cars arrived alongside faster, prettier or more successful interpretations of the same chassis and were quietly pushed to the margins of automotive history. This collection gathers those overlooked variants: low-volume cabriolets eclipsed by sporting coupés, alternative bodies from celebrated carrozzerie that never became the definitive version, and expensive hand-built derivatives whose compromises made them less desirable when new but more intriguing with hindsight. Their importance lies not in being the fastest or most influential members of their families, but in revealing roads not taken - different ideas about luxury, performance and style expressed on familiar mechanical foundations. Often produced in tiny numbers and rarely given equal attention by historians or collectors, they show that the lesser-known branch of a model’s family tree can sometimes tell the more interesting story.
Rolls-Royce of America liked to name its catalogue coachwork after English places, and the habit never sat more awkwardly than on the Piccadilly Roadster: a London street name, a chassis built in Springfield, M...
Lincoln's first V12 was engineered with a thoroughness its accountants could not afford, and the Brunn Convertible Victoria was the body that wore it best. The pairing only makes sense against the backdrop of 1...
Alfa Romeo never built a body for the 8C 2300. That decision, unremarkable for an Italian racing marque of the early 1930s, is precisely what allowed one long-wheelbase 8C 2300 chassis to cross the Channel and...
The Sebring 3500 GTi Series II is a Maserati caught mid-sentence. Its body is the 1965 facelift, with a reworked nose and new tail lamps that Maserati itself likens to those of the Quattroporte. Its engine, in...
When Carlo Abarth wanted a more civilised companion for his race-bred Zagato coupé, he did not send the brief to Fiat's own studios, and he did not send it back to Zagato either. He sent it across Turin to Carr...
When BMW set out to rebuild itself as a carmaker after the war, it did not have the luxury of starting with a clean sheet of paper. The Munich works had been bombed into uselessness, the historic Eisenach plant...
Rolls-Royce never built a Wraith drophead coupé. What left Derby from 1938 was a rolling chassis, and the folding-hood two-door bodies that some customers ordered for it were the work of independent coachbuilde...
Lagonda's LG45 spent its short life being asked to be two things at once: the heir to a Le Mans winner, and a hushed, well-mannered carriage for people who would rather not wrestle a big six through a corner. T...
Battista "Pinin" Farina carried more prestige than almost anyone else in Italian coachbuilding by 1951, yet when Alfa Romeo handed out contracts for its new short-wheelbase 1900C chassis, the glamour assignment...