BizzarriniManta

01

Origins

The Manta of 1968 was the first car from Giorgetto Giugiaro's newly founded Italdesign, built on the racing chassis of a Bizzarrini P538 and shown at Turin as a portfolio in fibreglass: a single vast windscreen raked at fifteen degrees, three-abreast seating with the driver central, and a one-volume wedge profile that effectively announced the next fifteen years of supercar design. Nothing about it was production-feasible and that was not the point — the Manta existed to show what the young designer could do without a client's caution. It succeeded totally; commissions flooded to Italdesign, and the wedge era it prefigured arrived on schedule. Restored decades later, the Manta now tours concours lawns as what it always was: a manifesto with wheels.