Built on the Maserati MC12’s carbon-fibre chassis and powered by the Trident’s six-litre V12 engine, Pininfarina’s Birdcage 75th concept is arguably the prettiest car at the Geneva Show.
Built on the Maserati MC12’s carbon-fibre chassis and powered by the Trident’s six-litre V12 engine, Pininfarina’s Birdcage 75th concept is arguably the prettiest car at the Geneva Show.
The car, designed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the famous Italian coachbuilder, was inspired by the classic “birdcage” race cars of old, which had space-frame chassis that could were clearly visible through forward-stretched windscreens.
Pininfarina Creative Director Ken Okuyama’s design is characterised by a one-piece wrap-around roof comprising bonnet and passenger compartment door in a single structure, which hinges up on powerful struts to allow access. A long glass panel stretches from far in the front of the car forming windscreen and roof before tapering away behind the passenger compartment to a sharply defined central point at the rear end.
Overall, the white pearl body colour is contrasted with dark tinted glass on the delta-shaped canopy, together with bright blue seats. The exposed carbon fibre parts are also tinted blue.
Inside is an ambitiously -tyled two-seater cabin created in co-operation with Motorola to resemble the workings of a mobile phone interface. It mirrors the car’s integrated exterior panels by allowing the car’s occupants to “interact seamlessly with the car’s technology”, Pininfarina said in a statement.
Distinctive touches include the centralized twin vertical exhausts, ultra-thin stretched-out LED head- and tail-lamps, aircraft-style head-up” instrument display utilising a centrally-mounted clear-perspex screen, and control yoke with centrally-set panel instead of a steering wheel.
