Giotto Bizzarrini sketched a targa-topped version of his 5300 GT in the late 1960s. He never built it. The company folded, he moved on to designing the AMX/3 for American Motors, and the drawing gathered dust for more than half a century.
Now, 60 years later, the 5300 GT Aperta Lusso exists in carbon fiber and Chevrolet V-8 rumble, a car that is simultaneously a relic and a revelation. This is not a restomod. It is something stranger — a car that skipped its own era entirely and landed in 2026 without ever having existed in the one it was designed for.
The revived Bizzarrini company, relaunched in 2020 with plans for a new V-12 supercar, decided to settle an old debt first. Using Giotto’s original design language, the team wrapped a semi-monocoque chassis reinforced with steel in a full carbon-fiber body. The proportions are unmistakably 1960s — this thing sits barely higher than a Ford GT40 — but the materials belong to the present.
Under the hood sits a 5.3-liter V-8 producing 400 horsepower, now breathing through modern fuel injection rather than carburetors. Buyers choose between a five- or six-speed manual gearbox. Top speed is claimed at 175 mph.
Adjustable Koni dampers, ventilated brakes, and a limited-slip differential handle the chassis duties. None of that technology is revolutionary in 2026, but that is precisely the point. The engineering serves the design rather than overwhelming it.
The targa roof splits into two removable carbon-fiber panels that stow in the rear. It is a simple, elegant solution that would have been mechanically feasible in 1968 but was never executed because Bizzarrini S.p.A ran out of time and money before it ran out of ideas.
Giotto Bizzarrini’s biography reads like a fever dream of Italian automotive genius. He engineered the Ferrari 250 GTO — the most valuable car on the planet. He designed the V-12 that powered the first Lamborghini grand tourers and later the Miura.
Then he started his own company, built a tiny run of brutally low-slung GT cars with Chevy small-blocks, and watched the whole enterprise collapse in four years. The man had Leonardo da Vinci’s gift for brilliance and Leonardo’s habit of leaving masterpieces unfinished.
Inside the Aperta Lusso, Italian fashion house Zegna supplies the leather and trim materials. There is air conditioning, a modern stereo, and smartphone charging — concessions to livability that betray the car’s true birth year. The wood-lined cabin otherwise looks like it belongs in a Fellini film.
Only ten will be built. Pricing has not been announced, which in this segment means if you have to ask, the answer will hurt. The buyers who secure one will own something genuinely rare: not a continuation car, not a replica, but a first-ever production run of a design that existed only on paper for six decades.
The continuation car business is booming — Jaguar builds “new” lightweight E-Types, Aston Martin stamps out DB4 GT Zagatos, and Ford has cranked out fresh GT40s. Most of those projects recreate cars that already existed. Bizzarrini is doing something different by completing a car that never made it past the drafting table.
Giotto Bizzarrini died in 2023 at the age of 96. He spent his final years knowing the company bearing his name had been revived but never saw this car in finished form. The 5300 GT Aperta Lusso arrives as both a tribute to his restless genius and proof that some ideas are too good to stay buried. Sixty years is a long gestation period, but for a car this beautiful, the wait was worth it.
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