Italian car design legends captured in unique photobook
Italian car design greats captured in unique new photo book by Car Design News contributor and former Bertone employee Piotr Degler
If you want to get your hands on an Italian car design photography book like no other, Made In Italy might just be the one for you. And if you move fast – by reading on and ordering before January 31st 2022 – there is still an early bird discount available to be grabbed by Car Design News readers.
More than ten years in the making and lovingly created by sometime Car Design News contributor and former Bertone employee Piotr Degler, the 264-page coffee-table book features 100 of Degler’s original photographs of bona fide Italian automotive design masterpieces, from the classic 1970 Ferrari 512 S Modulo and Lancia Stratos Zero to the more contemporary 2003 Pagani Zonda Roadster S and 2016 Pininfarina H2 Speed.
To accompany the brilliant automotive photography the book also features in-depth interviews with, and portraits of, some of the greats of Italian car design: Giampaolo Dallara, Leonardo Fioravanti, Marcello Gandini, Giorgetto Giugiaro, Flavio Manzoni, Paolo Martin, Horacio Pagani, Paolo Pininfarina, Ercole Spada, Alfredo Stola and Andrea Zagato are all included.
The book officially goes on sale in February 2022 for €135, but Degler is offering an early bird discount of €95 on signed launch edition copies purchased by the end of January 2022 via his dedicated website – www.madeinitalybook.com – in a bid to offset some of the book’s overall €100,000-plus production costs.
Despite this attempt to cover costs, the project is clearly a massive labour of love first and foremost. “Without any economic sense and moved entirely by passion I really wanted to create something important and with the highest quality and materials possible,” Degler told Car Design News. “These are the kind of crazy projects you do only once and will remember for the rest of your life.”
Written in English and Italian, the whole book will be printed on an eight-colour Heidelberg Press in Italy using the finest quality paper stock. For each book produced two trees will also be planted with the Eden Reforestation Projects organisation, as Degler added: “Although our books are made exclusively with cellulose fibres from sustainably-managed forests and guaranteed by our suppliers as being 100% FSC®wood, with this tiny initiative we wanted to do something in return for the environment.”
Degler is also offering an ultra-exclusive run of just ten 50 x 50cm framed prints of some of his photographic works – signed by him and the designer of the car pictured. For example, you could have a photo of the 1963 Alfa Romeo TZ signed by Ercole Spada on the front and numbered and signed by Degler on the back. Or perhaps a Degler photo of the 1968 Ferrari P6 signed by its designer Leonardo Fioravanti. These limited edition prints come in at a not inconsiderable €10,000 each including free shipping worldwide, but as such they represent an authentic and collectible slice of car design history that will be hard to match.
For the full list of prints available and to find out more about the book, go to www.madeinitalybook.com and follow Degler on Instagram @degler_studio to keep updated with the final production process.