The Body
Bespoke
Long before it became an industrial product, the motorcar was, in essence, a horseless carriage. Its earliest forms were conceived not by automotive designers working from glass towers, but by coachbuilders—craftsmen whose expertise lay in shaping metal, leather, and wood into elegant bodies and breathtaking interiors. At the dawn of a new century, they simply applied these skills to a new invention, transforming what was an engineering necessity into an art form.
(Automotive history) We tend to take things for granted in 2026. Today, we speak of the automobile primarily in terms of mobility and as an increasingly complex equation shaped by urbanization, sustainability, safety, and efficiency. It is easy to forget that little more than half a century ago, even the expectation of a hot shower every morning remained a luxury in many parts of the world. Equally revealing is what transport researchers refer to as Marchetti’s Constant: Although we continue to spend roughly the same amount of time traveling each day, the distance we cover has expanded dramatically from around 9 miles in the age of wagons and carriages to approximately 30 miles in today’s developed societies. As this issue of Maison Ë explores the enduring relationship between man and horse, it seems only fitting to revisit the brief moment when horse gave way to horsepower, and when social, economic, and technological circumstances aligned to produce some of the most extraordinary forms in the history of the automobile.
Incidentally, before we unpack that statement and break it down into the precise components that allowed the art of coachbuilding to flourish, and, yes, it is directly linked to the horse and carriage, let’s explore where the term horsepower comes from. Prior to its function as a number on a specification sheet, horsepower was, in fact, a marketing tool.
In the mid-1770s, Scottish Engineer James Watt was trying to sell his improved steam engines to mill owners, brewers, and mine operators across Britain. The problem was simple: No one understood what an engine could actually do. They understood horses that powered almost everything: hauled wagons, turned millstones, pumped water from mines, and drove machinery. A horse was therefore not only an animal but also the universal measure of productive work. After observing horses working in coal mines, Watt estimated that one could turn a mill wheel with a force equivalent to lifting 33,000 pounds one foot in one minute, which became one mechanical horsepower. The irony, of course, is that the average horse cannot continuously produce one horsepower. A healthy horse can briefly generate several during a sprint or heavy pull, but over sustained work, its output is much lower. Watt intentionally chose a generous figure. When he promised his engines could replace ten horses, customers quickly discovered they comfortably exceeded those expectations.
It was a masterstroke of marketing, but more importantly, it reminds us that ideas rarely emerge in isolation. Every innovation carries the imprint of what came before it. Horsepower was born of the horse, just as coachbuilding was born of the carriage. Before the motorcar developed a language of its own, it simply inherited one that had already been refined over centuries. The reasons coachbuilding in motoring flourished were both societal and technological.
We often think social inequality is a modern phenomenon, yet the gulf between the owner of an expensive motorcar in the early 20th century and the average working man was arguably greater than the difference between today’s upper-middle class and Elon Musk. The automobiles we admire today occupied a place in society not unlike a private jet or a spacecraft today—engineering marvels commissioned by an extraordinarily small and extraordinarily wealthy elite. Technology, meanwhile, had not yet caught up with imagination.
In the earliest decades of the automobile, and despite pioneering experiments such as Lancia’s self-supporting body construction, virtually every motorcar was built in much the same way as a horse-drawn carriage. A rigid frame was constructed first; instead of attaching axles to be pulled by horses, engineers mounted an engine, gearbox, and driveshaft. Only then was a body commissioned and placed on top. It is, admittedly, a simplification but an accurate enough one for our purposes.
This is also why early automobiles appear so remarkably tall to modern eyes. Drivers inherited the elevated perch of the carriage coachman. Originally, it afforded a better view of the road while keeping one comfortably removed from the horse’s less glamorous biological functions. Later, as the entire drivetrain was placed beneath the cabin, the seating position remained aloft.
Gradually, pioneers such as Ettore Bugatti recognized the advantages of decreasing the center of gravity, particularly as motor racing became both the greatest laboratory for engineering progress and the most effective marketing tool imaginable. Although revolutionary designs such as Lancia Lambda’s monocoque construction hinted at the future as early as 1922, they remained the exception rather than the rule. Even decades later, when engineering masterpieces such as the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing or Maserati’s extraordinary Birdcage demonstrated the potential of lightweight space-frame construction, for the overwhelming majority of automobiles, the separate chassis, and with it the freedom to clothe it in virtually any body imaginable, remained the accepted solution.
Fashion evolved. Art Deco came and went. New materials, new proportions, and new esthetic ideals transformed architecture, furniture, and industrial design before and after the First and Second World Wars. Wealthy patrons wanted their automobiles to evolve just as rapidly as the world around them. Since manufacturers such as Isotta Fraschini, Hispano-Suiza, Delahaye, Delage, Bugatti, Mercedes-Benz, and Rolls-Royce supplied little more than exquisitely engineered rolling chassis, the only real differentiators being the shape of the radiator and the trademark perched atop its cap, clients were free to commission any body their imagination, ambition, and bank account could conceive.
Enter, stage right, the great carrossiers
Russian-born Jacques Saoutchik. Achille Van den Plas from Brussels. Marcel Pourtout from Bourgival. Great Britain had Hooper, Park Ward and H.J. Mulliner, Germany – Gläser and Reutter, the United States – Brewster. And of course the Italians: Carlo Castagna. Giovanni Bertone. Joseph Figoni and Ovidio Falaschi. Ugo Zagato. Giacinto Ghia. Battista “Pinin” Farina – who adopted the Piedmontese nickname meaning “the little one” before founding Pininfarina. Touring. Vignale. It’s worth noting that while the most beautiful carrosseries were produced in Paris up until WWII, after the war, Italy held the top spot for decades.
Together, these ateliers transformed the automobile from a machine into an object of fashion, architecture, and, especially looking at Figoni’s or Saoutchik’s work, sculpture. Manufacturers supplied the engineering; the carrossiers supplied the identity. Their workshops dressed chassis with the same care that Savile Row tailors and the great Parisian couturiers clothed their clientele, producing automobiles that reflected not only wealth but also personality, taste, and artistic zeitgeist.
Looking back, it is tempting to dismiss coachbuilding as a beautiful but ultimately obsolete chapter in automotive history. It was anything but. It represented a unique moment in which engineering, craftsmanship, economics, and culture briefly aligned to create something that had never existed before and is unlikely to exist again.
As the automobile matured, the separate chassis gave way to monocoques and ever more integrated structures. The running board disappeared into the body, its elegant upper edge surviving only as the “coachline” that still traces the flanks of many cars today. After the Second World War, the economics of mass production transformed the industry. Some great marques disappeared altogether, while others reinvented themselves. Coachbuilders either adapted, became design consultancies, or quietly faded into history.
Ironically, despite possessing computational power beyond the imagination of Figoni, Saoutchik, or Pourtout and despite CAD, artificial intelligence, carbon fiber, and manufacturing tolerances measured in fractions of a millimeter, creating a truly bespoke automobile has become more difficult than ever. Modern cars are no longer collections of interchangeable mechanical components clothed in independent bodies. Their structure, safety systems, and regulations are inseparable from their design. Changing the position of an A-pillar today is no longer an artistic decision; it is the beginning of an entirely new engineering program costing hundreds of millions.
Which is perhaps why the great coachbuilt automobiles continue to fascinate us. They remind us of a brief moment when the automobile was still an unfinished idea, when engineering invited interpretation, when patrons commissioned rather than configured, and when the body of a motorcar could be conceived not as a product, but as sculpture.
Nothing in history exists in isolation. The horse gave us horsepower. The carriage gave us the coachbuilder. The coachbuilder gave the automobile its first language. Understanding those connections is not simply a matter of appreciating beautiful cars; it is understanding how culture itself evolves, which is never through sudden invention, but rather through the patient refinement of ideas inherited from those who came before.
