ZagatoRaptor

01

Origins

The Raptor of 1996 was Zagato reasserting its old game — take a great chassis, make it lighter and stranger — on Lamborghini's Diablo VT: a carbon-and-composite coupé over the four-wheel-drive V12 running gear, drawn with the house's trademark double-bubble roof and a visor-like canopy that opened as one piece. Developed swiftly with Alain Wicki's backing and shown at Geneva, it was pitched as a limited series lighter and more extreme than the donor car; the money never materialised, and the Raptor remained a single running prototype. Its afterlife has been kinder — feted at concours, sold at auction as a landmark of nineties design courage. It marks Zagato mid-transition: no longer a coachbuilder of series cars, becoming instead the maker of singular, collectible statements.