In 1970, Giorgetto Giugiaro and Italdesign took the relatively restrained Porsche 914/6 and transformed it into something that looked decades ahead of its time. Called the Porsche Tapiro, the one-off concept debuted at the Turin Motor Show with an aggressively low wedge profile, sharply defined bodywork, pop-up headlights and gullwing-style doors. Even more dramatically, the rear engine covers opened upward in the same fashion, creating four wing-like panels around the center of the car. Italdesign describes the Tapiro as one of its earliest explorations of the wedge shape, a design language that would spread throughout the automotive industry during the 1970s.
Underneath the futuristic body was genuine Porsche hardware. The Tapiro was based on the mid-engine 914/6 platform and reportedly used a modified 2.4-liter air-cooled flat-six producing around 220 horsepower, connected to a five-speed manual transmission. With a claimed top speed of roughly 152 mph, the Tapiro wasn't simply a static styling exercise. It was a functioning sports car wrapped in one of Giugiaro's most experimental designs.
Despite looking like a wild show car, Italdesign says the Tapiro was actually conceived with mass-production ambitions. It never reached production, however, and remained the only example ever built. Its influence proved much larger than its production run. The sharp wedge, steeply raked windshield and geometric surfaces became recurring themes in Giugiaro's work, appearing in later concepts like the Maserati Boomerang and helping establish the design language that would eventually define cars ranging from the Lotus Esprit to the DeLorean DMC-12.
The Tapiro's story eventually became as unusual as its design. After appearing at international auto shows, the car was sold into private ownership and actually driven on public roads. Sometime during the 1980s, the one-off was severely damaged by fire following an incident, leaving much of the body destroyed. The remains eventually returned to Italdesign, where the burned prototype has been preserved rather than completely restored. More than 50 years later, the Tapiro remains one of the strangest Porsche-based cars ever created, and a reminder of a period when designers were willing to imagine an entirely different future for the sports car.
