CAVËN Atelier

CAVËN Atelier describes itself as a creative engineering studio spanning design, specialist manufacturing and craftsmanship, but the premise worth noting is narrower and more interesting than that. Its Hommage programme hands a significant car back to the person who designed it, with the benefit of thirty years of hindsight and materials, engineering and manufacturing methods that did not exist at the time. Hommage 26, Chapter One of the Designer Series, is developed with Fabrizio Giugiaro and returns him to the Lamborghini Gallardo. The stated aim is to strip out the compromises circumstance forced on the original while leaving its character intact. Twenty-five cars are planned, and the studio is explicit that they are built to be driven rather than preserved. Design authorship, rather than restoration or reinterpretation, is the organising idea.