Chassis No. 112023353
Engine No. 114.000 011647

By the early 1960s, Carrozzeria Viotti—the Turin house that had given Italy its first station wagon in the Fiat 1100 Giardinetta—was in its final years, its founder having passed away in 1956 and its work reduced to small series and one-off commissions. The Coupé Lusso offered here belongs to that last chapter. Bodied by Viotti to a Pietro Frua design and shown at the Turin Motor Show, the model is thought to have been built in a series of roughly seven examples on the Fiat 2100 chassis, with a cabriolet variant also produced. The underpinnings consisted of Fiat's 2.1-liter overhead-valve inline six driving the rear wheels through a four-speed transmission, but Frua's coachwork transformed a dignified executive sedan into something far more elegant.

A wide, finely latticed grille flanked by round lamps gives the front an imposing presence, while a single chrome spear draws the eye rearward across otherwise undecorated flanks. The greenhouse is perhaps the design's finest achievement, its slim pillars and expansive glass lending the cabin an airiness few contemporaries managed, and at the rear vertical taillamp clusters bracket a broad, flat decklid, restrained where others opted for fins.

The example offered here, chassis number 023353, is an extensively documented example. Its history opens with its original foglio di via issued by the Motorizzazione Civile permitting the bare chassis to be moved on trade plates, the coachbuilder's certificate following two days later on the 14th. Viotti's invoice, dated 4 August, notes the coupé's completion to the carrozzeria's own design on a Fiat 2100 chassis, totaling 1,200,000 lire. It is addressed to Giuseppe Polzinetti of Via L. De Crecchio in Lanciano, a provincial town in the Abruzzo, some 500 miles south of the workshop where his car had been built.

Polzinetti had in fact registered it a month earlier, on 4 July, and the original libretto issued at Pescara records plate "CH 23807," the annotation "Carrozzeria Viotti," a closed coupé body, and the 2,054-cc type 114.000 engine rated at 89 CV. Road tax stamps in the libretto run uninterrupted from 1963 to 1976. By 2001, it had passed to Antonio Maccarone, also of Lanciano, who re-registered it as "BT 434 SW" and submitted it for inspection at regular intervals over the following thirteen years. ASI admitted the car to its register in November 2007 under number 219588, and the ASI Certificato di Identità issued in 2010 confirms Viotti coachwork in Blu over light beige, noting a cosmetic restoration of the bodywork carried out in 2000.

Marco Tibiletti of Albizzate, in the province of Varese, acquired the coupé in September 2014, and within weeks it was cleared for export, leaving Italy for the first time in more than half a century. It was registered in Belgium at Aalst on 1 July 2015 to Paulus Stuker of Erpe-Mere, and within two years had moved on again to Bremen, Germany, where it joined the consignor—a collector of rare, coachbuilt Fiats.

Upon preparation for German registration, TÜV Nord issued the car Oldtimer status and a clean inspection report at 24,052 kilometers. Registration followed in Bremen on 1 June on the historic plate "HB-VI 762 H." In current ownership, the coupé has been driven sparingly but maintained properly. Invoices from Holtmann & Niedergerke in July and August 2020 record a thermostat, water pump, cylinder-head gasket, and valve-cover gasket, while JH Fahrzeugtechnik attended to cooling-system and brake work in January 2020. Roadworthiness inspections followed in January 2020 at 24,549 km, January 2022 at 24,648 km, and a further inspection in February 2024 at 24,656 km which included cleaning of the carburetor.

Today the coupé presents in a handsome Blu and beige livery, while the cabin features a period Autovox radio and a slim-rimmed two-spoke wheel with polished horn ring. Few Frua designs are as little seen as this one, and fewer still survive with paperwork of this depth—the original libretto, Viotti's 1962 invoice, the 1961 and 1962 fogli di via, PRA and ASI documentation, as well as Belgian and German ownership documents. For the collector drawn to the final years of Turin's coachbuilding tradition, this Coupé Lusso offers a rarity that no amount of searching is likely to duplicate.