Visions in Design

Naturally, being an Italian car designer, Paolo Martin has a pasta machine to his credit Since he went his own way in 1976, there have been boats, trucks, many a motorcycle, sanitaryware, lighting, a hairdryer (standard fitment on cruise ships), watches, a coffee pot (as predictable as the pasta machine), a cheesegrater – even a McDonald’s Drive In And as you scroll through photo after photo in this book of his works, you may spot a recurring theme: the Ferrari Modulo Yes, Martin’s own late-1960s masterpiece has even cropped up as a deckchair Or, being fairer to its intended concept, as modular garden furniture We’ll come back to that because, although this concept car is easily Martin’s most significant calling card, the story behind it might surprise you And there’s far more to learn about the man beforehand

In essence, this is Paolo Martin’s autobiography: 304 pages long, with nearly 400 colour images and almost twice that number of sketches and design drafts. Edited by the noted Indian automotive journalist Gautam Sen with a light touch, at first it comes across as a little naïve. But settle into the prose and you imagine how it might be narrated by Martin. There is a homespun charm to the way he describes his career and achievements, and, although he intends to come across as modest – ‘I do not like the word “I”’ – he isn’t slow to claim credit for ‘those magic moments that, over 50 years, have helped me realise absolutely every one of my dreams’.

The earliest chapters begin with Martin’s Piedmontese childhood and then a chance meeting with Giovanni Michelotti that resulted in his first job, followed by a rather less fortuitous consultation that saw him working for Nuccio Bertone At Bertone he created the carrozzeria’ s stylised ‘b’ logo and the Alfa Montreal’s distinctive dash clocks, but after just a few months he moved to Pininfarina in 1967

Among his designs are the Rolls-Royce Camargue, Peugeot 104, Fiat 130 Coupé, show cars based on the Fiat Dino, plus – of course – the Modulo While working on the Camargue in 1967, he began sketching something rather more progressive: a single sweep of the pencil balanced over a lengthy wheelbase, the wheels themselves semi-concealed When the Pininfarina studio closed for summer, Martin stayed behind, slicing an 8m3 block of polystyrene until his dream form was realised – and then hidden under a blanket Only two years later was he allowed to clad a Ferrari 512 chassis with the radical body, after which it was unveiled to a rapturous reception at the 1970 Geneva show

Design fans will love the pictures; designer fans will love to hear Paolo Martin in their heads. GW

& Sons, £45, ISBN 978 1 914929 01 4

TAYLOR,

James Taylor’s first book on the Series I Land Rover in the Original series appeared in 1996 and was an instant hit As interest in restoring old Landies has sky-rocketed, so too has the demand for hard info about exactly how they left the factory, and this all-new work on the post-53 models is packed with superb colour photography and forensic detail about spec changes, optional extras, and even foreign-built versions MD

Lost Cars of the 1970s

CHAPMAN, The History Press, £17 99, ISBN 978 0 7509 9944 1

The title is a bit of a come-on, because many of the cars featured in this attractive softback will be very familiar to anyone who reads classic car magazines – Volvo 262C, Bond Bug; even Bentley T2 – but get past that and you’ll find yourself won over by the great stories behind a lot of them. Chapman is always an entertaining writer and this mix of (mostly) period press pics and his pithy prose works remarkably well. There’s ample coverage of the more obscure corners of the Japanese industry, too, so even hardcore classic enthusiasts are likely to find something they’ve not read about before. MD