A conversation with Touring Superleggera CEO Markus Tellenbach on the Ferrari 166, the Maserati 3500 GT, and the Veloce12 as a continuation of the company’s design philosophy.

Photo Credits: Stephan Bauer

For a century, Touring Superleggera has shaped cars through elegance. Its place in automotive history has always been more deliberate than excess. More design focused. The Milanese coachbuilder belongs to a tradition where proportion, restraint and execution matter more than overindulgence.

In its 100^th anniversary, the company is creating a seamless dialogue between past and present through four carefully chosen cars: celebrating its heritage with the Ferrari 166 and Maserati 3500 GT and expressing its modern identity through the Veloce12 Barchetta and Veloce12 Coupé. Together, they do not form a complete history of the brand. They do something more interesting. They reveal a philosophy. For Markus Tellenbach, CEO of Touring Superleggera, that philosophy begins with a simple idea. "Let us go straight to the essence of what I believe is the Touring Superleggera DNA,” he says. “We are first and foremost a design house that has made its name through timeless creations, icons if you like, that all had one common denominator, which is elegance.”

It is an important distinction. Touring is not positioning itself as a performance brand. It does not build its identity around horsepower, lap times or straight line acceleration. Tellenbach is clear on that point. “We are not about horsepower. We are not about straight line acceleration. We are not about engine performance as such, because we have never been racing, and the company has no heritage in that field.”

That gives the story a different rhythm. Touring’s relevance is not based on trying to be louder than the surrounding automotive culture. It sits in the more difficult territory of aesthetic. Its cars persuade through balance, through line, through surface, through the kind of detail that does not need to announce itself immediately. The Ferrari 166 and the Maserati 3500 GT show two early expressions of that language. The Veloce12 Barchetta and Veloce12 Coupé show how Touring is carrying it forward today.

Photo Credits: Stephan Bauer

The origin of the Barchetta

The Ferrari 166 is more than an early reference point. It connects Touring to the very idea of the Barchetta. Tellenbach describes it as one of the moments where form itself created language. “We really created the Barchetta as a product,” he says. “We built the Ferrari 166 for Enzo Ferrari, and the design and build quality were so unique that at a car fair, a journalist, I think when the company presented it in 1948 at the Turin Motor Show, remarked that the shape of the car was very different.”

The shape mattered because it inverted the expectation of that era. Performance cars had often been visually narrow above and wider lower down. The Ferrari 166 played with that proportion. “It was wider at the shoulder line and narrower at the wheelbase,” Tellenbach explains. “The journalist said it looked like a little boat. Naturally, little boat in Italian is called ‘barchetta’, and that is where the name comes from. ”That story gives the Veloce12 Barchetta a particular depth. It is not simply a modern open car borrowing an evocative Italian name. It is connected to a body of thought that has existed within Touring for decades: lightness of form, open expression, a sense of movement even at rest.

Defining the grand tourer

The Maserati 3500 GT belongs to a different but equally important side of the Touring story. If the Ferrari 166 helps explain the Barchetta line, the 3500 GT explains Touring’s idea of the grand tourer.“ The Maserati 3500 in the 1960s was exactly what I just described,” says Tellenbach. “An elegant two door grand tourer that expressed the taste and mood of the time.” It was also a car with international reach. Popular in Europe and the United States, the Maserati 3500 GT helped establish the company as a road car manufacturer in a stronger sense.

Tellenbach calls it “one of the masterpieces that Touring designed and built” and notes its importance as the first true series-production street legal road car. For Touring, the Maserati 3500 GT is not only important because it is beautiful. It is important because it carries the proportions and restraint that define the grand tourer as an idea. Long bonnet, front engine, two doors, visual balance. A car designed for distance, not dominance. That line continues into the Veloce12 Coupé.

Heritage without nostalgia

For an enthusiast, this is where the story becomes more than heritage. It raises the essential question: when does a modern reinterpretation become legitimate? When is it more than nostalgia? Tellenbach sees the difference clearly. Heritage, for Touring, is not an excuse to preserve the past unchanged. It is a framework that needs to be handled with judgment. “To reinterpret a car takes a lot of courage,” he says.

The donor car behind the Veloce12, the Ferrari 550 Maranello, was chosen precisely because it occupied a rare position. It had the right mechanical foundations, but also enough space for Touring to add something of its own. “The Maranello has excellent genes, which are the naturally aspirated 12 cylinder engine and the analogue gearbox,” says Tellenbach. “The rest is something we can absolutely do better today because of different materials, different technologies, etc. ”This is central to the Veloce12. Touring is not trying to recreate the 1990s exactly as they were. Tellenbach is almost brutally honest about that era.

“Cars were not as reliable as we are used to today,” he says. “The cars at the time got hot in traffic jams. The plastic was sticky. The electrics were not always reliable. The alarm and door lock systems worked or did not work.  ”What Touring preserves is not the weakness of the period, but its character. The analogue nature. The manual gearbox. The naturally aspirated 12 cylinder engine. The feeling of mechanical connection before cars became fully digital, electric and surrounded by assistance systems. “There is a group of people that still enjoys this sort of non electric, non digital era,” says Tellenbach. The Veloce12 therefore sits between memory and correction. It takes the qualities that made the 550 Maranello desirable and rebuilds the experience through modern engineering, materials and execution. Touring gives the car new TracTive suspension, Brembo brakes and a reworked intake and cooling system, while refurbishing it strictly to factory specifications and preserving its road legal character. The aim is not to erase the original spirit, but to let it meet today’s expectations.

Photo Credits: Stephan Bauer

Design means nothing without execution

That word, execution, is important. Touring has never been only about drawing cars. Its credibility has always depended on the ability to build them. That is what separates a design idea from a finished object. It is also what keeps Touring relevant to manufacturers and collectors alike. “Design vision without execution is fantasy,” Tellenbach says. It is a sentence that captures Touring’s position with unusual clarity. Touring’s identity depends on both sides of the equation: the ability to imagine form and the discipline to realize it properly.

“We are very much people of execution,” he adds. “We have about 100 employees today, and we are producing cars every day.” This also explains why OEMs continue to work with Touring. The Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale sits in the background of this story as a contemporary proof of capability. Its design was done by Alfa Romeo, but Touring’s role speaks to a different part of the company’s reputation: the ability to handle special projects at the required level of quality. “People are aware that products from us meet the highest quality standards,” says Tellenbach. “That is why OEMs come to Touring for special cars like the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale, and that is part of our reputation.”

The language of quiet elegance

The four cars in this story therefore operate on several levels. They are beautiful objects, but they are also evidence of a method. The Ferrari 166 and Veloce12 Barchetta express the open, sculptural side of Touring. The Maserati 3500 GT and Veloce12 Coupé express the grand touring tradition. Between them sits the same underlying discipline: elegance without excess, character without noise. Tellenbach describes the Touring design language as something deliberately sophisticated. “It is not provocative or extreme. It is not crying out loud or trying to impress with exotic solutions. It is generally the perception of balanced elegance that is convincing and timeless.”

That restraint is what makes the cars interesting. Touring’s work does not depend on instant recognition. In fact, part of its appeal is that it may reveal itself slowly. A Touring car does not need to shout its authorship. It carries it in proportion, stance and composure. “As we say, it is for people who wear the fur inside,” says Tellenbach. The phrase is unusually vivid. It captures something important about the brand. Touring is not about visible excess. It is about a more private kind of luxury, one that expects the viewer to understand rather than merely react.

Photo Credits: Stephan Bauer

Pure Italianità as a common trait

Another thread running through Touring’s history is something Tellenbach describes as pure Italianità. “If there is one common denominator across the last hundred years, it is Pure Italianità,” he says. “People who drive a Touring generally have a sympathy for Italian design, Italian manufacturing, and the spirit that goes into our cars.” This is also why the question of nostalgia matters. Many modern reinterpretations rely on familiarity. They make the past recognizable enough to be immediately consumed. Touring’s approach is more selective. Tellenbach is clear that not every icon should be revisited. “If I were to take a design icon like a Lamborghini Miura, I would not dare to touch it because it is perfect,” he says.

“There is nothing you can do. ”The Ferrari Maranello was different. It had strength, but also room for reinterpretation. “The Ferrari 550 has never been seen as a design icon as such,” says Tellenbach. “It has been seen as a gentleman expression. It was a high performance car, a piece of technology of the 90s, but it has not made its place in the hall of fame of unforgettable design. ”That is precisely what made it suitable. It had the right mechanical character, but it left space for Touring to create a new form. Not a replica. Not a tribute. A reinterpretation. “We reinterpret that original design, and so I do not think we are supposed to be trapped in nostalgia.”

Why proportion matters

The same philosophy applies to proportion. For Tellenbach, elegance is not simply a feeling. It can almost be measured. “Perceived elegance in a car starts with a few basic components and basic elements in the mix, and proportion truly is the key. ”He defines one of the most important elements with unusual precision: the distance between the center of the front wheel and the vertical line from the A pillar to the ground. The longer that distance, the more elegant the car becomes.

That is why the grand tourer remains so central to Touring’s identity. A front engined car gives the framework for the long bonnet and balanced silhouette that Touring values. “A short bonnet, for example on a mid engine car, is never elegant,” Tellenbach says. “It may be huge in performance. It may be a fantastic track tool. It may even be, as an object, something that is design wise intriguing and unique. But it is not elegant. ”It is a strong statement, and intentionally so. Touring’s definition of elegance excludes certain forms, even if those forms are successful, expensive or spectacular. It is not a universal definition of automotive beauty. It is Touring’s definition.

Four cars, one vision

That is what makes the four car structure so effective. The Ferrari 166, the Maserati 3500 GT, the Veloce12 Barchetta and the Veloce12 Coupé are not presented as isolated highlights. They are used to explain continuity of thought. Through them, Touring Superleggera appears not as a company repeating its past, but as one using its past as a design standard.

The result is not nostalgia. It is a form of continuity. A century after its foundation, Touring’s story is still not about excess. It is about the understated authority of proportion, execution and restraint. The kind of confidence that reveals itself through balance, detail and time.It was built for those who notice.