Carrozzeria Saturn

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Carrozzeria Saturn
legal form Corporation
founding 1973
resolution 1991
Seat Cavallermaggiore , Italy
Branch Body shop

The Carrozzeria Saturn was an Italian coachbuilding company , which for two decades US production vehicles to automobiles in retro look rebuilt. The primary business partner was Stutz Motor Car of America , for which Saturn manufactured almost all bodies.

Company history

The Carrozzeria Saturn was founded in 1971 by Rinaldo Mina and Gabriele Martino. Its founding goes back largely to the American entrepreneur James O'Donnell. At the end of the 1960s, O'Donnell acquired the rights to the design for a luxury vehicle in a retro style from designer Virgil Exner , which combined classic design elements such as free-standing headlights and fender imitations with contemporary body structures. While other investors with similar concepts had failed several times in the previous years - one of them was the Duesenberg Model D from 1966 - O'Donnell managed to start series production. For his version of Exner's retro models, he chose the Stutz brand name, which was reminiscent of the Stutz Motor Car Company of America , a traditional brand from the interwar years. The design of the cars and their structure was geared towards economic efficiency. In order to save development costs, as many components as possible were to be taken over from US large-scale models from the General Motors group. This included the drive technology and the bodyshell. Only the outer body parts were independent. O'Donnell's Stutz models were therefore not newly built cars, but only extensive conversions of series vehicles. O'Donnell had the conversions carried out in Italy . This was supported by image reasons on the one hand - Stutz advertised in several brochures with formulations such as “Handicraft by Italian artists” - and on the other hand economic considerations: Italian workshops were able to carry out the necessary modifications much more cheaply than US companies. Since no existing bodywork could be won for the Stutz order, O'Donnell decided to set up his own bodywork company in northern Italy. This company was named Carrozzeria Saturn. He was resident in the Piedmontese municipality of Cavallermaggiore .

Saturn manufactured all Stutz models until 1987. During this time, a total of around 600 vehicles were built at Saturn. Production ended in 1987 with the introduction of a new, on the Pontiac Firebird based Cabriolet Stutz Bearcat II , which had a plastic body. After the end of the relationship with Stutz, Saturn could not get any sustainable follow-up orders; the company ceased operations in 1991.

Saturn and Stutz

Made by Saturn: Stutz Blackhawk VI (1977)
Stutz Victoria (1985)

In 1970 the production of O'Donnell's Stutz models began. After the first prototype had been built by Ghia and the first copies of the series model had been created at Officine Padane , Saturn took over the series production at the beginning of 1972. The base vehicles - Coupés of the Pontiac Grand Prix and Oldsmobile 88 - came by ship from the USA. The Saturn mechanics removed the outer panels and installed new components. Many Stutz sheet metal parts were handcrafted at Saturn, some larger parts were supplied by the ICLAS press shop . The interior was also made in Italy, and this is where the paintwork took place. In this way, two-door coupes and four-door sedans were created. Later, extended representative vehicles and convertibles were added, the bodies of which were designed by Paolo Martin based on Virgil Exner's original work . Off-road vehicles based on the Chevrolet Blazer were added temporarily .

Created at Saturn:

Other models

In addition to the various Stutz models, Saturn only produced a few other vehicles. This includes a minivan based on the Fiat 850 , which Bertone had designed and which Saturn had built as a subcontractor in small series.

literature

  • Alessandro Sannia: Enciclopedia dei carrozzieri italiani , Aesthetica 2017, ISBN 978-8896796412

Web links

Contemporary pictures of the Carrozzeria Saturn on the website www.madle.org

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alessandro Sannia: Enciclopedia dei carrozzieri italiani , Aesthetica 2017, ISBN 978-8896796412 , p. 492 f.
  2. ↑ http://www.madle.org/epadane.htm Images of the production of the Stutz Blackhawk (I) at Padane on the website www.madle.org (accessed on November 17, 2017).
  3. ↑ Illustration of the Bertone 850 minivan in the Saturn factory on the website www.madle.org (accessed on November 17, 2017).