Zagato is an independent coachbuilding company and total design centre located northwest of Milan in the Terrazzano frazione of Rho, Lombardy, Italy. The company's premises occupy an area of 23,000 square metres (250,000 sq ft), of which 11,000 square metres (120,000 sq ft) are covered.
History: Ugo Zagato (he was born in Gavello, near Rovigo, on June 25, 1890) began his coachbuilding career in 1919 when he left Officine Aeronautiche Pomilio to set up his own business in Milan. This was: “the construction and repair of bodies for automobiles and airplanes”. He did so with the intent of transferring sophisticated constructional techniques that combined lightness with strength from the aeronautics to the automotive sector. Cars of the time were still bulky and heavy: Ugo Zagato conceived them as lightweight structures, with a frame in sheet aluminium similar to an aircraft fuselage. This change in direction came to represent a fundamental chapter in the history of taste and saw, in Europe, the adoption of the concept of functionalism applied to automotive design.