Yahoo Autos Bulgari Aluminum Vision Gran Turismo Concept coming to GT7 next year
Italian watchmaker Bulgari recently teased an entry for the Vision Gran Turismo series of concepts that ideally end up as playable cars in Sony's Gran Turismo. Were Bulgari to show up to the party, it would be the first non-carmaker to put a vehicle on the start line; Nike and Jordan teased something eons ago that never materialized. We're happy to report that at the same Gran Turismo World Finals 2023 in Barcelona, Spain where Genesis showed its X Gran Berlinetta VGT, the Bulgari Aluminum Vision GT concept made its virtual debut. No one should be surprised to find out that in an inversion of the order we're used to, a watch celebrating a vehicle, this roadster takes its inspiration from Bulgari's Aluminum watch.
In fact, there's so much more to it that the backstory is at least as interesting as the roadster. Ex-Pininfarina designer Fabio Filippini penned the Fittipaldi EF7 Vision Gran Turismo concept. He published a book about car design that the senior director of Bulgari's Watch Design Center, Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, saw and liked. Stigliani, who had been a designer with Fiat and ran his own design studio, got in touch with Filippini about designing a car for Vision Gran Turismo that would debut on during the 10th anniversary of the VGT project, which is this year. For in-house inspiration, they chose the Bulgari Aluminum watch. The timepiece debuted in 1998 as an evolution of Bulgari's first sport watch, the Diagono, making an impact at the time for mixing aluminum and rubber, an unconventional material mix for a luxury watch. Bulgari released a new line of Aluminum watches in 2020, resurrecting the metal and rubber theme.
