Late on Sunday, Ferrari confirmed the passing of its legendary coachbuilding collaborator Sergio Scaglietti. He was 77 years old.
The name Scaglietti is indelibly intertwined with that of Ferrari. You may recognize the name as belonging to the 612 – the twelve-cylinder 2+2 GT that preceded the current FF – but that model was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it came to the ties that have bound the two icons over the years.
The relationship started when Scaglietti’s work, based in the same town of Maranello as Ferrari itself, caught the eye of Enzo Ferrari in the early days of the Scuderia. Scaglietti soon became Ferrari’s preferred coachbuilder, and was responsible for the designing and crafting the bodywork on, among others, three of the most valuable collector’s cars in the world: the 250 GTO, the 250 GT California and the 250 Testa Rossa.
Legendary for crafting sheetmetal into the most beautiful forms using only his hands and eyes with no blueprints or sketches, Scaglietti eventually sold his outfit to Fiat in the 1960s, and in 1977, it became part of Ferrari’s operations. The Scaglietti department continues to craft the bodies for modern-day Ferrari models to this day.