2005 Geneva Motor Show: Pininfarina Birdcage 75th Concept

With the Birdcage 75th, based on the Maserati heritage and on its most advanced mechanicals and realized in collaboration with Motorola, Pininfarina revives the storied theme of the true dream car now proposed in a synthesis of the vision of the three companies: exclusive design, sports DNA and technological innovation. Pininfarina’s prosperous collaboration with Maserati, marked by the great international success of the Quattroporte, is celebrated with this rolling hi-tech sculpture that evokes a new future context, imaginary but possible, while simultaneously paying homage to the strong and distinctive brand characteristics of the Tridente.

In celebration of Pininfarina’s 75th anniversary, Birdcage 75th returns to the storied tradition of extreme sports prototypes which highlighted the Italian renaissance of car design, born in the Fifties and prolonged in the Sixties and early Seventies. This period of optimism and boundless creativity produced some of the world’s most astounding and beautiful automobiles. Never before had our love affair with speed and beauty been so abundantly expressed. Boldly challenging our aesthetic ideals, these prototypes were exercises in creativity and passion, unconstrained by the regulations and the limitations of today’s context and considerations. They were true dream cars that evoked images and sentiments of a utopian future.

Beginning with the Maserati A6 GCS of 1954, whose clean-lined design and harmonious proportions made it one of the most memorable projects from that period, Pininfarina embarked on a prolific period of extreme sports prototypes based on the era’s state of the art racing car mechanicals. In 1965 the stunning Ferrari Dino Berlinetta Speciale made its debut, while in 1967 the Dino competizione combined voluptuous beauty with some of the world’s first studies on moveable aero devices. The following year brought about the aero study of the Alfa Romeo 33 and the sensual Ferrari P5, which demonstrated a future vision of Le Mans prototypes. 1969 bore three radically different prototypes, the Abarth 2000, the sinuous Alfa Romeo 33 Prototipo Speciale and the extreme wedge study of the 512s which stood less than 1 meter tall. Finally, in 1970 arrived what many consider the preeminent dream car of the era, the audacious Ferrari Modulo. A radical research vehicle which abandoned traditional styling and construction techniques in favor of extreme geometric simplicity. Originally shown at Geneva, Turin and the Osaka World Fair, the excited and shocked public was forced to question its very context. How and where did this vehicle come about? Where would this vehicle take us? Effectively, the Modulo represented the ultimate manifestation of the dream car spirit, for it succeeded in transporting its viewer to another time and place.

For 2005, in celebration of its 75th anniversary, Pininfarina has chosen to rekindle this creative spirit. The Birdcage 75th is a concept of a road car where everything – style, performance, use and conception of the car – is extreme so as to get the maximum impact on the collective imagination. The car is a futuristic extension of the Maserati brand, and at the same time it serves to reinforce the Tridente’s potent design heritage, and continues its grand tradition of advanced technology enveloped in sporting elegance. Integrating some Motorola technologies make the Seamless Mobility vision real, or the fluidity of the technologies as a subsequent stage of the Internet revolution.

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