Cisitalia 202 Fioravante
Cisitalia 202 Fioravante is a contemporary restomod that reimagines the legendary "moving sculpture" exposed at MoMA for the modern era. This concept car wants to honor the heritage of Italian craftmanship by blending iconic post-war elegance with fluid, avant-garde design in a refined vision where history and innovation meet in perfect harmony.
ROLE
BRIEF
Designing a restomod of the Cisitalia 202, an iconic beauty of the automotive history from 1947. The output had to be a high-level digital 3D model and a 1:10 scale physical model of the car.
NOTES
The project was developed as a group for the Laboratorio di Design del Prodotto Industriale (Product Design Laboratory).
The name "Fioravante" is a tribute to my great-grandfather, Fioravante Nora (1909-1943).
During the process, we had the chance of organize our roles following a GANTT diagram, in order to work as close as possibile to a real company dynamics.
Finally, the work developed during the course was presented to the managers of the current Cisitalia brand, refounded in Argentina.
Historic Research
The brand's history was the greatest inspiration in the creation of the car, playing a crucial role in formulating the concept and identifying the plausible clients.
The historical research allowed me to dive into the roots of the brand we were working for, with curiosity and passion. I searched for as many sources as possibile, paper and digital, managing them with NotebookLM.
By looking for the most hidden testimonies of the story of this long-defunct brand, the mission of this project became clearer: using the restomod of the legendary 202 as a basis for paying homage to all the rarest and most unobtainable models, bringing them back to life in a new, modern creature.
Market Research
Historically, the Cisitalia 202 was a unique luxury GT that combined timeless elegance with a compact, lightweight build. Its premium price of 3,900,000 lire placed it in a market segment otherwise dominated by significantly larger and more powerful vehicles.
Today’s market research reveals a gap for a similar intermediate-segment car: a short-wheelbase, lightweight vehicle featuring a compact engine. Rather than pursuing track records, the project's goal is to offer to the car enthusiast a pure road-driving experience defined by analog feedback and the evocative sound of the engine.
Mission
Compact Grand Tourer: short (3.8-4.1 m) and with a relatively small but high-performance engine.
Historical Details: references to rare Cisitalia models through details for collectors to discover. The cornerstones remain the double front hump, the rear fins, the space frame chassis, and the original front grid.
Analog Experience: focus on the sound, which enhances a relatively small engine (like the original 202), driving sensations, and tactile controls for an immersive experience.
Looking to the Future: the restomod has to feel like a car released in 2025, seeking to give new hope to this legendary brand.
Concept Generation
The final choice fell on this proposal: an honest compromise between "Cisitalia" and modern shapes, with several clear references to the great models of the past. Based on those first sketches, we derived the preliminary technical layout.
Development
ZW3D
Fusion 360
The following step was to develop a perfect 3D model. As a group, we decided to take two parallel roads, producing two models at the same time: I worked on ZW3D, while one of my collegues went for Fusion 360. We eventually chose the Fusion model for the prototyping and rendering phase.
At the end of this phase, we formalized the result in a final technical layout.
