FEATURED: Boniolo Design - Part 1 - AllCarIndex
italian designer francesco boniolo, was born in padua in 1945. after his technical studies, in 1965, he started out as a technical designer employee in the fields of shipbuilding and aeronautics with a company in switzerland, attending at the same time, a college of industrial design. in italy he worked in the fields like cars, industrial vehicles and products design.
in 1975 he started out on his own company boniolo design collaborating in various fields of italian industry: from machine tools to cars, and mass-production items. soon after, he made a very interesting design - the meta.
this wedge-shaped prototype was based on fiat 127 keeping original mechanicals and original frame. it was targeted for young audience and intended for a small series production. a person in charge of homologation was feruccio covini now known as the creator of the six-wheeler supercar c6w. together with boniolo they created a lightweight coupe sportscar capable of achieving top speed of 175 km/h.
the car was presented at geneva motor show in 1976 where it won award for original design. anyhow, planned production never happened and the meta, like many others, remained a forgotten prototype.
feruccio boniolo's creative nature was to plan and design with efficiency, functionality and simplicity. he made a great number of other automotive designs which will be presented in the next parts of this article.
sadly, mr boniolo passed away in april, 2015. this series of articles is a tribute to his work in automotive and input to italian design.
photographs: www.allcarindex.com archive via boniolo design
