The “Half-and-Half” Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ Zagato of Corrado Lopresto won the FIVA preservation award at the 2016 Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, held 20-22 May at the Grand Hotel Villa d’Este on Lake Como in Cernobbio, Italy. The pictures tell it all — half the car is cleaned but not restored, while the other is in as-found condition.
Corrado Lopresto treated the 1961 Alfa Romeo — the Coda Tronca prototype, jointly developed by Elio Zagato and Ercole Spada — as a work of art, saving as much as possible of the amazingly well-preserved original. But he also drew on archaeological techniques, in that he decided to clean only half the car, leaving the other half frozen in time. In the uncleaned half, Lopresto preserved everything (including the dust) under a thin layer of transparent matte lacquer.
The FIVA awards are one of the ways in which FIVA (the Fédération Internationale des Véhicules Anciens) is marking World Motoring Heritage Year 2016, a FIVA initiative to which UNESCO has granted its official patronage. At Villa d’Este, the award was presented by Dr Khalil Karam, Lebanese Ambassador to UNESCO, who congratulated FIVA on its 50th anniversary in 2016. Karam added that, “We are very much inspired by what is being done by FIVA as a protector of world motoring heritage.”
FIVA established the preservation awards to recognise vehicles that retain such a high degree of their original components, materials and finishes that they can be seen as important cultural artefacts. The awards will be followed by an end-of-year invitation for the winning cars to assemble in Paris. The plan is then to put the cars on display at UNESCO’s international headquarters in the heart of the French Capital.
The next FIVA preservation award will be presented at Le Mans Classic, 8-10 July 2016.
1961 Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ Zagato “Half-and-Half” – Photo Gallery
[Source: FIVA; photos: BMW Group]
