No, it wasn’t lost. It’s just that I didn’t know where it was, until now. Ever since I wrote my first post about the Porsche Tapiro I’ve become more and more curious about the car, it’s brief but explosive history and what happened since its debut at the Turin Motor Show in 1970. Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a great many Porsche fans since I started writing this blog and a number of them went out of their way to help fill in the blanks. If you haven’t already done so, I would encourage you to go back and read my original post “The Porsche Tapiro by Giorgetto Giurigaro” in order to familiarize yourself with the car, its designer and a history cut short, supposedly by a terrorists bomb.
I’ve tried contacting the good people at Italdesign Giugiaro SpA a number of times. And while they do respond to my inquires, I think something gets lost in the translation between my questions and their answers. As a result, I’ve worked on piecing together the Porsche Tapiro’s history from my growing list of contacts. If, after reading this post, you can help fill in another piece of the history, I would love to hear from you.
Thanks to long time reader Ben Salvador, I was able to salvage some of the pictures seen in this post, a great article about the Tapiro’s design, and more importantly, the next step in its history. In my last post I had incorrectly stated that the Tapiro was purchased by a wealthy Spanish industrialist immediately following its debut at the Turin Motorshow. This is not the case. Instead, ownership of the car was retained by its creator and the car subsequently made its US debut at the 5th Annual Los Angeles Imported Automobile and Sports Car Show in 1971. The Tapiro was not sold into private hands until 1972.
According to published accounts (there are unpublished accounts that vary greatly from the official story and I’ll go into those in a later post), the show car was sold to a Spanish industrialist who used it as his daily driver for a while until a group of labor activists engaged in the time-honored European tradition of anarchistic demolition and planted a bomb under the Tapiro. The burnt shell was repurchased by Italdesign and put on display in its Giugiaro Museum.
What I Would Still Like to Know about the Porsche Tapiro
- Does anyone know if the car was shown at any other shows besides Turin and LA? If so, where and when?
- Does anyone know the name of the “Spanish Industrialist” that purchased the Tapiro?
- Are there any archived news stories about the Tapiro being bombed?
- Lastly, does anyone have a better picture than mine of the car in the musuem?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!
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View Comments (14)
This is first time I have ever seen this car, but I think it is pretty safe to say that a large amount of the design ended up in the DMC-12. It's a shame that the disenfranchised took this bit of Porsche heritage from us.
Hi Mark and thanks for reading through the post. I hope you spent a few minutes checking out the original post. You are 100% correct. Much of the Tapiro's design ended up in the Delorean as well as many other cars of that era ("folded paper" design era).
Hello 993C4S!
First of all thank you for this and for the original posts. And thanks for sharing LA show article with us.
I'm making 3d model of Tapiro for the Need For Speed 5 Porsche Unleashed game. And all this information and photos were very useful to me.
Do you have something new? Right now I'm looking for detailed view of the cockpit and logos around the car. I found that logos just behind front doors are "tapiro". But I don't know what were the logos in front of the doors, on the steering wheel and on the top back between engine/luggage compartment doors...
In search for information I found this topic: http://www.roadglue.com/forum/showthread.php?t=188&page=3
It has a lot of rare photos I've never seen before(needs registration to view photos). I've posted some thoughts I'd got after studying the car by photos. Maybe you would find them interesting.
Hi,
If you are still interested, my uncle happened to have found the Tapiro in Spain during a rallye. We had it in our garage for a few months until we sold it. We have a lot of pictures (of the burnt chassis). If you are still interested, I'm a big NFS fan, please feel free to contact me.
Pat
@Patrick,
We sent you an email. Looking forward to hearing back from you!
Hi, Patrick
Yes, it would be interesting to see those pictures. How can I contact you?
Egor.
@Egrorogr,
We're still waiting to hear back from him too. If we do, we'll let you know!
I remember when this car came out and seeing it on the covers and in magazine articles... arguably one of the best looking cars ever with many great design cues... the car certainly helped to put a young Giugaro on the map... It is indeed a shame it did not go into production as it would have raised the bar for sports cars very high indeed... surely the most famous 914 Porsche ever built and the nicest of all the 914 show cars... Giugaro was the right man at the right time in the world...
Thank you for sharing these rare photos. Yes if this car had gone into production it would have been quite an addition to the cars then and would have a crazy collector status now...
@Phillip, we're still hoping to get to see it in person next time we're in Italy! Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting and welcome to our site!
I remember seeing the Porsche Tapiro show-car in the showroom of Northwood Porsche Audi of San Antonio. It was shortly after the dealership opened. It made quite an impression on me. I can't remember what year, but I assume it was 1971.
Hey, Bob,
Welcome to the site. That must have been fantastic to see it in person! Take any pictures? :-)
The Tapiro was also shown at the 1973 Barcelona "Salón de Automóvil", where it was bought. by a musician. Maybe labor activists did not blow it up. See:
http://spirfa.blogspot.com/2011/12/porsche-tapiro.html
http://arqueologiadelmotor.blogspot.com/2012/08/porsche-tapiro-y-maserati-boomerang.html
http://noticias.autocosmos.com.ar/2013/09/27/retro-concepts-tapiro-el-porsche-italiano
Thanks, Karl,
Those are all great links. thanks for sharing! Lots of new pictures and info. Unfortunately, none of the articles cite sources and all seem to come from the same material...