BMW’s team-up with Italian styling house Pininfarina, has given birth to the Gran Lusso coupe, revealed in full at the 2013 Villa d’Este Concorso d’Eleganza in Italy. The imposing V12-powered coupe is a one-off styling concept for now, but shows the direction BMW could take for a new 8-series coupe, designed to battle the new Mercedes S-class coupe and Bentley Continental GT.
A long wheelbase two-door, four-seat coupe with a low roofline and a huge V12 engine, the Pininfarina Gran Lusso manages to retain all of the physical design cues and indicators of the current BMW range while at the same time offering something entirely new — a vehicle that could conceivably compete head to head with a Bentley Continental GT or Porsche Panamera in terms of comfort, performance and looks. Conceived with Italian design house Pininfarina, the Gran Lusso Coupe is a power broker on 21-inch wheels.The striking concept combines the prestige German manufacturer’s styling pillars of luxury and elegance with the Italian design house’s trademark attention to detail and finesse. The slender L-shaped tail-lights are set in matt aluminium and embrace the rear end in a single stroke. The four-seat cabin is BMW at heart with a Pininfarina twist, boasting kauri wood aged more than 48,000 years, high-quality Tobacco Brown and black Foglizzo leather, Italian virgin wool headlining and metal highlights in stylish black chrome.
BMW Group Design senior vice president Adrian van Hooydonk says the brand’s values of technology, precision and dynamics are complemented harmoniously by Pininfarina’s skilled craftsmanship to create a vehicle with “sheer presence in a highly elegant form”. “[Pininfarina’s] expectations for the end result have been just as high as ours, and their understanding of the design perfectly complements the BMW design DNA for a vehicle of this kind,” van Hooydonk said.
Pininfarina head of design Fabio Filippini says the product of the cooperative venture is “far greater than the sum of its parts”. “When two such tradition-rich and experienced brands join forces to turn a vision into reality, something utterly new and exciting emerges,” Filippini added.
Do note though, that absolutely no performance figures have been released, regarding the engine’s output or top speed, but the way that the controls “wrap” around the driver’s seat suggests that if the car did go into production, it would be more than a little sprightly.
