Hero Of Two Worlds: The Fiat 124 Sport Spider
With a production run spanning almost two decades, during which nearly 200.000 units were made, the 124 Spider is a beloved Fiat classic that enjoys a strong following on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet few people know that the timeless lines of this most Italian of automobiles were actually penned by an American for a Corvette.
Published in
5 min readMay 1, 2023
Transatlantic Coincidences
Our story began in the spring of 1963, when the legendary GM design supremo Bill Mitchell sent a brand new Corvette Sting Ray to Pininfarina, with orders to turn it into a show prototype in time for the Paris motor show in the fall of the same year.
Mitchell was interested in seeing an Italian take on America’s sports car, but little did he know that once that Corvette arrived at Pininfarina, the task of designing a new body for it fell onto another American: Tom Tjaarda from Detroit, Michigan.
The result was the beautiful Corvette Rondine, whose name is the Italian for “swallow” and was inspired by the car’s peculiar rear-end design, reminiscent of the bird’s tail.
