The Capsula was a concept car created by Italdesign, the design house founded by Giorgetto Giugiaro in 1968 after he left Ghia. It was unveiled at the 59th Salone internazionale dell'Automobile in Turin in spring 1982, alongside another Giugiaro concept, the Orca, marking the first two concept cars the studio produced in that decade.
The Capsula continued a line of thinking Giugiaro had already explored with the 1976 New York Taxi project and the 1978 Megagamma, both aimed at tall-bodied, practical vehicles suited to easy entry and exit for short-distance travel. Its unconventional shape drew partly on bus design, and it featured gullwing doors along with a separately built chassis. All mechanical elements, including the suspension, fuel tank, battery, spare-wheel well, luggage space and the front and rear light units, were fixed to this chassis, while the body itself sat on top as a separate, interchangeable "capsule" -- hence the name. Giugiaro proposed that this construction would allow manufacturers to produce a single running chassis and fit different bodies to suit various uses, from passenger cars to specialized vehicles such as school buses, ambulances or fire trucks.
The realized five-seat passenger version featured a roof visually split lengthwise by a contrasting band, which also allowed for a lower row of windows beneath it, an idea Giugiaro later applied to sportier concept vehicles. The cabin offered generous space, with 80 percent of the car's overall length usable for passengers. Part of the luggage area was built into the flanks below the gullwing doors, and because these doors extended far toward the rear, no separate tailgate was fitted for the rear luggage compartment; sliding windows were used along the sides. The front seats, mounted on pedestal-like consoles and built from multiple cushion sections, could rotate rearward into a "conference" layout, while the rear seats could slide and fold. Controls were concentrated at the center of the steering wheel, combining a small digital instrument cluster with nine function buttons, though this arrangement required the driver to look away from the road more than usual.
The Capsula used the front-wheel-drive powertrain from the Alfa Romeo Alfasud, with a 1490cc horizontally opposed four-cylinder engine producing 105 hp at 6000 rpm and 133 Nm of torque at 4000 rpm. It rode on a 2400mm wheelbase with a 1450mm track, measured 3720mm long, 1770mm wide and 1660mm high, and weighed around 950 kg. The body was a tall-roofed, steeply sloped hatchback design with two gullwing doors and seating for five.
