“Actually, I’m not the Gran Turismo kind of guy. Which is funny, because some of my favourite automobiles, such as the Maserati Khamsin, are exactly that.”

Wikipedia says: A grand tourer (Italian: gran turismo) (GT) is a performance and luxury automobile capable of high speed or spirited long-distance driving. The most common format is a two-door coupé with either a two-seat or a 2+2 arrangement.

“Don’t get me wrong, ‘performance’ and ‘spirited long-distance driving’ do resonate with me, but I find motorways boring. My natural habitat would be the tight and twisty B-road that threads curve after curve and where you’d feel that ‘proper’ GT would be just a little bit too big. In other words, all I need is a small, light and nimble sports car, ideally without a roof”

Nevertheless, we like the Grand Turismo. There’s a kind of old school elegance deeply ingrained in this kind of car and, quite frankly, there are journeys you wouldn’t really want to do in a Lotus Elise or a little red Alfa Romeo. So this is why we are almost magically drawn to those Italian masterpieces from Gandini, Giugiaro and Pininfarina. And why our own humble doodles usually end up with a little bit of Italian flavour.

Our latest exercise, which we called after the the city of Venice and a famous Italian racing team ‘Serenissima’ – we found that it would match the idea of long distance travelling in luxury and with style – was clearly influenced by some well known automotive design icons of the 60s and early 70s, but we added our own, twenty-first century twist to it. Even though we would love to see – or rather hear – this kind of car with a healthy sounding 8 cylinder engine, this study is not meant to make much noise. We kept the details to the minimum and the lines simple to achieve a relaxed rather than overly aggressive character, even when painted in that rather bold colour of our sketch!