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The Pininfarina B95 Is a True Obsession
Words Matteo Lavazza / Photos Pininfarina
It took my sleep and when I’m awake I always have that image in front of me, almost as if it were carved into my retina. The thing is, I don’t really understand why. If I think back to a few years ago, the cars that I considered part of my dreams were traditional supercars, poster ones so to speak. Then I realized that, regardless of my desires, I would never be able to afford one, so I deepened my love affair with hot-hatches or pumped sedans, which were clearly more within my reach. These were cars that, after all, could also be used in real life. I could have gone shopping in them, just before facing a curvy road that would have turned the two dozen eggs I just bought into a tasty omelette. Perhaps this is also why I have never taken hypercars into great consideration, I have always seen them as too exaggerated, unattainable and after all not very exploitable even by those lucky enough to have pockets as deep as the Mariana Trench.
Life has twists and turns and mine is called Pininfarina B95. It sounds like the name of a warplane, but it is that of a 4.4 million euro barchetta. Material that I couldn’t approach even if I live 900 years, but dreaming is free, at least in front of some photographs or the prototype of one of the only 10 units that will be produced by the Italian firm. This object that came from the depths of my most subtle unconscious does not differ too much from other barchettas, but perhaps it hides one of those subliminal messages that enter straight into my hypothalamus whispering “Sell the house, a kidney, the liver and try to buy one.” Ok, maybe I’ve gone too far, I can’t sell everything and expect to be able to drive it, but who knows, maybe I’ll get a good offer and convince me otherwise.
The B95 is an obsession, the gift that Pininfarina gives itself for its 95th birthday and which redefines – at least as far as I’m concerned – the concept of beauty and purity of forms. Logically related to the Battista, i.e. the first model of Automobili Pinifarina, the B95 gains the exoticism offered by a car body now relegated to extremely special cars – that of a barchetta – capable of uniting the past, present and future and mixing it into a gigantic and sensual emotional blender. The B95 is a product of present days, of this particular period in which if you present a beautiful car you are great, but if it is also electric then you are even cooler. Moving it quickly there is a 120 kWh lithium ion battery shaped like a “T” and housed as low as possible. This translates into 1,900 horsepower, the result of the four electric motors, each of which is intended for each individual and independent wheel. It also has five different driving modes: Calma, Pura, Energica, Furiosa and Carattere, a completely new nomenclature that underlines how much Pininfarina knows what is needed to blaze the trail, rather than following the one already taken by others. There is talk of a maximum speed of over 300 per hour and 0-100 kph in less than 2 seconds, but who cares, in the meantime we are talking about a dream, at least for me.
Yes, because this dream arose well before I became aware of its performance qualities and it didn’t change a millimeter even when I discovered that it needs to be recharged like a Dyson cleaner. The B95 bewitched me with its unnatural beauty, with its unusual color combination, with a passenger compartment embellished with houndstooth fabric inserts, with those two humps that recall the golden age of motoring and with the absence of windscreen. You can’t not love a barchetta, but you can’t look at the others the same way after spending five minutes in front of the Pininfarina B95.
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