It may have been long forgotten by history, but the Autobianchi Coupé cast a long shadow all the same. The idea of a small, mass-manufactured sports car with the engine sited amidships was first mooted within parent company Fiat as early as 1964. This was barely five years after a mid-engined car had first won the Formula One World Championship, and there were no mainstream road cars with such configurations. Engineering deity Dante Giacosa initiated the G31 project (‘G’ for Giacosa, ‘31’ for the project number), the programme subsequently falling under the auspices of the Autobianchi sub-brand.
This was understandable given that Autobianchi was associated with innovation. In 1964, the firm introduced the Primula, the first-ever product from within the Fiat combine to employ a transversely-mounted engine and front-wheel drive. The Primula provided its engine (itself derived from a Fiat 124 unit) for the G31, construction of the prototype being farmed out to OSI. Austrian-born stylist Werner Hölbl created a pretty fastback silhouette during 1967, working under the direction of Sergio Sartorelli.
However, OSI was assimilated into Fiat in May of the following year and, accordingly, the G31 project returned in-house. The design was reworked by Pio Manzù who was recently installed at Fiat Centro Stile, the renamed Autobianchi Coupé (aka Sports Coupé) emerging at the 1968 Turin Motor Show. The glassfibre-bodied prototype was resplendent in ‘Geranium Red,’ the dashboard, inner doors and pillars being swathed in polyurethane foam panelling by way of a safety measure.
Autobianchi boasted that its electronically adjusted headlights could be raised or lowered in just three seconds, as per US regulations (we’re not sure which regs it was referring to…), while the glass aft of the doors could also be lowered. The top-hinged rear decklid, meanwhile, afforded access to the engine and spare wheel compartment. It also incorporated a patented flush-fitting aerofoil that was activated at 93.2mph to reduce negative lift. Not only that, there was a small bench behind the front seats for occasional use by children, or crosswise by an adult contortionist, while the gearlever was height-adjustable.
Road & Track was won over, likening it to a smaller scale De Tomaso Mangusta. ‘The front of the mid-engined Autobianchi is exceedingly clean,’ it gushed. ‘This exciting prototype is hopefully for production.’ Style Auto reported in typically idiosyncratic fashion: ‘It is gratifying to take cognizance of how Fiat does not conceive its present expansion exclusively in terms of finance or productivity. That Fiat is effectively aiming at ever more important targets is no secret; but that such ambitious targets cannot be achieved except by designing cars whose concept level is higher than the ones attained by the competition.’ Quite.
However, despite the motoring media begging for the car to be put into production, this was strictly a concept car. Unbeknown to them, Giacosa had already decided that a new mid-engined sports car should be created using componentry from the soon-to-be-announced Fiat 128, the following year’s Autobianchi Runabout foretelling the Fiat X1/9 production car which went on sale in 1972. Fiat being Fiat, it soon lost interest, as it so often does, and it was left to Bertone to keep the flag flying.
Tragically, Manzù didn’t live to see the X1/9 or his 127 design reach production. He died in May 1969 after his car connected with a bridge near Turin. As to the fate of the Autobianchi Coupé, it is widely held that it was scrapped, sob, sniff.
