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Touring Superleggera Sciàdipersia Cabriolet | Review
Words by Tommaso Mogge / Photos by Touring Superleggera
The Italian term Scià (Shah) is used to indicate a sovereign who enjoys complete political powers and at the same time shows high spiritual values. Already this mere definition should be enough to underline what the historic Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera has decided to invest with one of their latest creations, the Sciàdipersia in fact, and to make sure that it represents a brand with an illustrious history, an extremely prolific present and a bright future always focused in the creation of beautiful cars, without forgetting the free rein of its whimsical designers with models produced in limited series and mainly following every minimum preference of the wealthy customers who will be lucky enough to put in the garage a treasure of absolute aesthetic and collectible value.
After giving birth to the Coupe version of the Sciàdipersia, produced in just 10 units, Touring Superleggera has decided to go on with the cabriolet version, the one that without a shadow of a doubt best embodies that grand tourer character inherent in the DNA of an exclusive model that rests its noble birth on the chassis of the Maserati Gran Turismo, another Italian icon capable of making every move from point A to point B something exciting. The outcry resulting from the closed variant has gained so much approval that this would have been the most logical choice for the Carrozzeria that boasts collaborations with the biggest automotive brands and that has signed unique pages of the most beautiful chapters of the car world. The Cabriolet, however, manages to move the bar even higher, thanks to an even cleaner line, an almost Renaissance-like elegance that establishes a perfect coexistence between lines that pay homage to Touring’s past, but that best blend with the dimensions imposed by the generous Maserati chassis, especially once the roof is open.
Under the hood there is one of those engines that manage to accentuate driving involvement, especially when the road widens and the cities leave room for the most unspoiled nature. A naturally aspirated 4.7 cc V8 with 460 horsepower capable of running fast but with the awareness that the driving experience will not be diminished to sterile numbers. There is no room for fast laps on the track, nor interest in showing off a top speed that almost reaches 300 per hour. The Sciàdipersia Cabriolet has been catapulted to this point from another era, where the outside world is far behind once the roof is closed and where the relationship with the most uncontaminated nature explodes during en plein air driving moments. It does not matter if in fact the passenger compartment remains almost identical to the Gran Turismo from which it draws its lifeblood, because your sight will be lost between the horizon in front of you and that blaze of old-school sounds and dynamic feedbacks that we must absolutely preserve. Last but not least, it boasts a design pretty difficult to place on a temporal level and this is not something you could underestimate.
Only 15 will be produced and each of them is accompanied by a potentially high price tag that for many of us would still leave it as a mirage, but it is the meaning of a car of this type that plays an important role in an automotive world today drastically transformed and increasingly concentrated towards a technological evolution that in a very short time seems to have got the better of the mechanical and above all the emotional one. It is a beautiful car, very beautiful, but not in an absolute sense. It could even go unnoticed to the less attentive beholder and this is precisely what makes it noble in spirit. Like a Shah, it finds the perfect balance of two diametrically opposed worlds such as the political one (that of reason) and the spiritual one (that of the heart), merges them and transforms them into an object for connoisseurs.
Let me be clearer, 90% of people would never turn their backs on a Lamborghini to realize that the V8 coming from the opposite direction is that of an Italian car at the antipodes and entirely built in the manufacture of Milan or Turin, with hand-beaten aluminum panels as it should be for a car with a demanding price like that of a house. The remaining 10% who will prefer this to an understeer-lover supercar with the dashboard almost identical to that of your cousin’s A3, that ten percent will be an audience intellectually able to really appreciate it for what it represents.
The Sciàdipersia Cabriolet has not revolutionized the automotive world and like any numerically limited production car it does not even have that goal. What it does is to present a reality that after decades proves to be continuously inspired and ready to discover new horizons, offering its rich inspiration, but also satisfying that desire to look in the mirror and be proud of itself.
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