ItalDesign has long been known as a coachbuilder and spirit continues with its latest car: the DaVinci.
Penned on the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, the DaVinci is a slinky four-seater coupe designed to be powered electrically.
Curiously, though, the DaVinci doesn’t actually appear to have an electric chassis yet. Despite being a subsidiary of Audi, DaVinci says that this particular car is designed to “fit different platforms developed by different brands.”
The coachbuilder does specify, though, that the DaVinci has been designed to work around a twin-motor design, not unlike Audi/Porsche’s EV platform–but also not unlike almost every other EV chassis.
“Italdesign is a service company for the mobility industry. The projects we unveil during the motor shows are never an end in itself,” says Jörg Astaloch, CEO. “The aim of the DaVinci is to stimulate the industry with a concrete vision and quickly ready-to-go. This design, with some small changes, can even fit a traditional platform with [internal combustion] engine; because this is exactly our mission: to provide OEMs with new solutions and innovative ideas to trigger the markets.”
Okay, so it’s not totally electric. And the engine ItalDesign used to design the DaVinci should be familiar, since it’s a “generous” 4.0-liter V8—ItalDesign doesn’t actually specify that it’s the VW Group V8, but if we were a betting site…
The exterior design is meant to evoke “the Italian GT tradition,” but that’s burying the lede because it also has MASSIVE gullwing doors. Big enough to allow access to rear passengers, the doors will put a Model X to shame.
ItalDesign also claims it used the ZeroUno Y duct in the electric version, because of the lack of engine. That should help with front-end downforce.
Also of note for tire nerds, this is also the debut for Pirelli’s “Elect” tires. These are designed specifically for electric and hybrid vehicles to balance low rolling resistance, low road noise while giving up as little grip as possible.
Despite not really having a set chassis, ItalDesign maintains that “with a few changes it is ready for the production.”
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