Photo by Norbert Schnitzler, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr. (credit links at the end of the content)
Our journey is mostly focused on classic F1 stories, but every now and then, we like to explore something different. From unusual concept cars to forgotten classics and fascinating automotive creations, there are plenty of stories beyond the F1 world worth telling. And the Sbarro Autobau Concept is certainly one of them.
A car that was never meant to please everyone, some concept are created to preview the future, others are built to test new tech or prepare the public for an upcoming production model, but the Sbarro Autobau belonged to a completely different world.
When Franco Sbarro unveiled the car at the Geneva Motor Show in 2010, it immediately became impossible to ignore, finished in an intense shade of orange and featuring one of the most unusual front ends ever seen on a car, the Autobau divided opinion almost instantly.
For some, it was fascinating, for others, it was simply one of the strangest and most controversial creations ever displayed at Geneva, but calling the Sbarro Autobau ugly and stopping there misses the entire point of the car.
This wasn’t a car designed after market research, focus groups or predictions about what future customers might want, the Sbarro Autobau was a personal project, created as a tribute to Swiss racing driver and businessman Fredy LIenhard, a longtime friend of Franco Sbarro.
A Tribute to Fredy Lienhard: Sbarro Autobau
Behind the dramatic bodywork was a much more personal story, the Autobau was created in honour of Fredy Lienhard, a Swiss driver with a long connection to motorsport and the automotive world, he and Franco Sbarro shared a friendship, and the concept became a way of celebrating that relationship through something both men understood, the creation of an extraordinary automobile.
The name itself also connected the project to Lienhard’s automotive world, rather than creating a conventional racing-inspired supercar with familiar propotions, Sbarro was given complete freedom to imagine something different, and different was exactly what he delivered.
The result looked less like a traditional supercar and more like a machine that had escaped from an alternative vision of the future, its proportions were low and aggressive, but almost every familiar design rule had been abandoned along the way, the Autobau didn’t ask for approval, it demanded attention!
Beneath the Wild Bodywork Was a Serious Machine
It would be easy to assume that a car looking this outrageous was nothing more than a showpiece, the Sbarro Autobau had serious mechanical creditentials hiding underneath its extraordinary exterior, at its heart was a mid-mounted Ferrari V12 engine producing up to 550 horsepower, depending on the specification quoted.
Power was sent through a six-speed manual gearbox, giving the concept something increasingly rare even among high-performance cars, a direct mechanical connection between driver and machine, this wasn’t an idea built around screens, electronic driving modes or an automatic transmission doing everything for the driver.
The Autobau was designed around the old fashioned pleasure of driving. Its tubular frame chassis supported a body made from polyester composite materials, while the entire car weighted approximately 1,500 kilograms, those numbers suggested that, beneath all the visual madness, there was genuine performance potential.
Sbarro Autobau: The Front End Nobody Could Agree On
If there is one part of the Autobau that ensured its place in automotive history, it is the front, the three-pronged structure stretching forward from the nose became the car’s defining feature, over the years, people have compared it to everything from a giant fork to a futuristic weapon or even a household appliance.
None of those comparisons are particularly flattering, yet perhaps that was exactly why the design worked.
In an automotive world where many modern cars can begin to look increasingly similar, the Sbarro Autobau remains instantly recognizable, you may dislike it, laught at it or wonder what Franco Sbarro was thinking, but forgetting it is almost impossible, the bright orange paint only made the situation more dramatic.
At the Geneva Motor Show, surrounded by polished supercars and carefully designed concepts, the Autobau looked like something that arrived from another planed, and maybe that is why it still attracts attention years later.
Getting Inside Was Part of the Experience
The Autobau didn’t even allow its occupants to enter in a conventional way. Instead of traditional doors, the car featured a dramatic forward-tilting slamshell conopy, the roof, windscreen nand side windows formed part of a single assembly that opened to allow access to the cabin.
The arrangement brough to mind one of the most famous experimental concepts in automotive history, the Pininfarina Modulo.
Once again, Sbarro wasn’t interested in making things ordinary, even the rear-view system followed the same unconventional philosophy, traditional mirrors were replaced by a camera system positioned around the roof area, integrated into the car’s unusual aerodynamic structure.
Everywhere you looked, there was another reminder that the Autobau had been created by someone who was willing to question almost every traditional rule of automotive design.
Related Content: If you are interested in other unusual prototypes, check out the Jaguar JX13.
An Interior as Bold as the Exterior
The cabin continued the dramatic theme, although in a very different way, while the exterior was dominated by bright orange composite bodywork and sharp, unusual shapes, the interior surrounded its occupands with intense red Alcantara and contrasting black metal details.
It was luxurious, but not in the quiet and elegant way normally associated with an expensive grand tourer, the Autobau’s interior felt theatrical, one of the most appealing features was the exposed gated gear selector, in an era when paddles and automated transmissions were becoming increasingly common, the traditional manual gearbox provided a mechanical centrepiece inside the cabin.
It reminded anyone sitting behind the wheel what this strange orange creation was still, at its core, a car designed to be driven, that contrast may be one of the Autobau’s most interesting qualities, and outside, it looked almost chaotic, inside, there was a more tradtiional connection between driver, gearbox and engine!
Why the Sbarro Autobau Was Never Going Into Production
The qustion of production was almost irrelevant from the beginning, the Autobau wasn’t developed to become the next limited-production supercar, and Franco Sbarro’s design philosophy had never been based on following the traditional path of concept car development.
For Sbarro, the creative process itself was often the destination.
Once an idea had been transformed from imagination into a real machine, the challenge was complete, there was little interesting in spending years adapting that idea of factories, production regulations and thousands of potential customers.
The Autobau would also have faced enormous challenges if anyone had attempted to put it into series production, its extreme front design, particularly by modern standards, would raise obvious questions about pedestrian protection and safety regulations, but changing the Autobau to satisfy those requirements might have destroyed the very thing that made it special, it was never supposed to be sensible, it was supposed to be Sbarro’s vision!
Related Content: If you are interested in the Aston Martin Bulldog, the futuristic supercar that was built with ambitious performance goals but never entered production.
A One-Off That Found the Perfect Home
Today, the Sbarro Autobau has found a permanent home at the Autobau Erlebniswelt in Romanshorn, Switzerland, there is a certain poetic connection in that location, the museum was founded by Fredy Lienhard, the man whose friendship with Franco Sbarro inspired the creation of the Autobau in the first place, the extraordinary orange machine is therefore not simply another unusual concept preserved in a collection.
It remains connected to the story that created it, what once shocked visitors at the Geneva Motor Show, has become a permanent reminder of a different approach to the automobile, the Autobau wasn’t created to chase sales figures, beat competitiros or predict the next generation of cars, it existed because one designer had an idea, the engineering knowledge to make it real and the freedom to create without compromise.
More than a decade after its debut, the Sbarro Autobau remains one of those cars that continues to divide opinions!
It existed because one designer had an idea, the engineering knowledge to make it real and the freedom to create without compromise.
Sometimes a car only needs to make people stop, look at it and ask one simple question.
What on earth is that?
And perhaps that is exactly what makes the Autobau unforgettable.
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FEATURED IMAGE CREDITS: Photo by Norbert Schnitzler, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
