In 1967, a very young Piero Rivolta—at the time he was the youngest businessman in the automotive field—had just taken up his father’s legacy, since he had passed away prematurely. To give continuity to the company, he commissioned Giorgetto Giugiaro to create a four-door saloon that called to mind the style typical of the marque.

“Actually, I just needed to travel with my wife and our dog Mirco,” Engr Rivolta told me during a break at an important Iso exhibition, “and the Grifo Coupé I had at the time no longer suited my needs, so I thought to build a four-door coupé.”

It was Giugiaro who designed the famous “Italian muscle car” (as the Grifo was nicknamed by some,) and it was still him who was called to reinterpret its sinuous lines and transform the coupé into an executive flagship vehicle: you can admire the result in these pictures.

Iso Rivolta had just made the world aware of a new concept of vehicle, a style that would reappear again on the streets almost forty years later: I am talking about the first high-performance, 4-door luxury coupé. Many of you will now be thinking of a dozen other models that could have given rise to a market segment so popular nowadays. But confirmation of what I affirm (and not only I of course) lies in the project’s intention—that is, in the idea born from Piero Rivolta’s ingenious and eclectic mind.

This is a record, another Italian record, and that’s how it is. There is no other way to see it.

As a matter of fact, it did not matter whether it was a saloon or a coupé. The Fidia possessed all the requirements to be appreciated: impressive performance (let me remind you that Giotto Bizzarrini was involved in the chassis development,) and Italian exclusivity and craftsmanship. Bewitched by this irresistible mix of power and style, the musician John Lennon bought three of them. However, despite these premises, this car had a modest success and its production only amounted to 192 vehicles.

If the market between the ’60s and ’70s did not crown this gorgeous saloon as a best-seller, today the Iso Rivolta Fidia and the whole Iso world are experiencing a second youth, also thanks to the internet. Through social media it has become extremely easy to contact people all over the world in an instant and share, even just for the time of a post, the passion for this prestigious automotive brand. I am talking about the numerous dedicated groups and clubs thanks to which Iso Rivolta can brush up all its appeal and summon a new crowd of aficionados: yours truly, for instance.

The logical consequence is that, apart from the Grifo—the most widely known model—many other models that until recently were considered exclusively experts’ territory can once again play a leading role, such as the Lele (styling by Marcello Gandini), and, as we said, the S4/Fidia.