The 1952 Pegaso Z-102 Berlineta ENASA Cúpula - The Driving Spaceship

This car, 1952 Pegaso Z-102 Berlineta ENASA Cúpula, with its exaggeratedly curvy lines was an one-off car designed and build by a company who were known for building trucks and buses. The car was designed in the time when there was a huge hype around UFOs after the Roswell UFO Incident in the late 1940s, you can clearly see they got their inspiration from that.

ENASA (stands for “Empresa Nacional de Autocamiones SA”), was formed just after the war in 1945 and was led by former Alfa Romeo employee, Wilfredo Ricart. They mainly produced trucks, buses and military vehicles under the Pegaso brand. Pegaso was named after the winged horse in the Greek mythology, called Pegasus.

As you can clearly see the Berlineta Cúpula (Yes, Berlineta with one “t”, it’s Spanish) has a rather unconventional design, it looks similar to something Touring Superleggera could’ve designed, yet they didn’t.

It has some pretty interesting design features. For example look at that rear window, I’ve never seen a rear window on a car that looks even vaguely similar to this one, imagine how much it would cost if you were to break it.

Then there are those tyres, it has red ones, instead of the normal “whitewall” tyres. In my opinion they look amazing in combination with the yellow body.

The interior is probably the most conventional looking part of the car, yet it still has some rather odd features.

It has a metal toolbox near the passenger footwell instead of being in the trunk where most cars have it.

There are ten ivory-coloured piano keys on the dash, in order to start the engine you turn the ignition key and then press the piano key on the far left.

That’s enough about the looks, let’s talk numbers.

The Berlineta Cúpula was powered by a 2.8-Litre V8 with 32 valves and a supercharger, producing 250bhp at 6500 rpm, with a five-speed manual gearbox. As I just mentioned, the car has a supercharger, it didn’t work that well though since they were still experimenting with them back then.

As you probably expected, the car is rear-wheel drive.

The car definitely isn’t slow, with a pretty impressive top speed of 224km/h (140mph) and 0-100km/h (0-60mph) is done in 8 seconds. That might not sound all that impressive, but don’t forget we’re talking about a car from 1952. Back then, this was really fast.

This really is one of those cars you either love or hate, so please tell me, on which side are you? Do you love it or hate it?

But anyways, thanks you so much for reading and have a wonderful day! :D

Marijn M.

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