Get Hotcars Premium. Start your free trial today

Really fast and optimized to cruise on any terrain, the Parcour was built to celebrate Italdesign Giugiaro's 45th anniversary.

For most people, trucks and SUVs are their first - and sometimes - their only impression of off-road vehicles. Sports cars are usually not in that mix. Are there 4x4 sports cars that can handle off-road terrains like a pro? The answer is a resounding yes. You may not go rock crawling in them, but they chomp through dirt tracks like no one's business.

You know about rally cars, right?

They’ve been around since Adam. They’re usually AWDs. Millennial gearheads remember with fondness the 1980s Group B GT (grand touring) sports car racing and rallying. It was neither the stunning Lamborghinis nor Ferraris, but the 1986 Ford RS 200 Evo, a failure both as a Group B rally car and a production car, that was the quickest car money could buy from 1986 through 1997. Guess what? It was an AWD rally car. It could make the 0-60 sprint in a mind-blowing 2.9 seconds.

That era saw other marvelous dirt eaters like the Porsche 959 toting 199 mph and tire pressure sensors. The list goes on, but you already get the message; offroading sports cars are nothing new. Enter the Italdesign Parcour Concept, a supercar that blends the high-performance of a rally car with the go-anywhere capabilities of a 4X4. Let’s introduce you to an unprecedented approach to GT cars.

Related: Everyone Forgets That These Cars Were Designed By Giorgetto Giugiaro

The Italian automotive design company we know today as Italdesign was founded in Moncalieri, Italy, on February 13, 1968, by the duo of Giorgetto Giugiaro and Aldo Mantovani under the name “Studi Italiani Realizzazione Prototipi S.p.A.” The company offered its services to manufacturers around the world. They did everything from product design to modeling, styling, project management, engineering, packaging, prototyping, and testing services.

VW and Italdesign have a working relationship dating back to the early 1970s. In fact, the Italian design house is behind the design of the 1973 VW Passat, the 1974 VW Golf, the first generation VW Scirocco, and the 1974 Audi 80. With Lamborghini purchasing over 90% of Italdesign shares in 2010 and Audi racking up what's left in 2015, Italdesign essentially became a VW Group holding, and Giugiaro promptly resigned from the company. Lamborghini S.p.A is an Audi subsidiary, which is a Volkswagen subsidiary.

However, before the complete exit of the Giugiaro family, Giorgetto Giugiaro’s son, Fabrizio, presented VW CEO Martin Winterkorn with the idea of a dual-purpose, mid-engine sports car/SUV. It was the month of July 2012. Fabrizio’s bold and disruptive concept spelled a novel approach to everything - GT et al. Before then, everything has always been what it is; a sedan, a sedan; an SUV, an SUV; a mid-engine sports car was just that, none encroaching the other's territory too deep.

Fabrizio’s disruptive idea was inspired by the famed Paris–Dakar Porsche 959 we mentioned earlier, and his beloved Ducati Multistrada motorcycle. Thanks to the injection of new blood in high-level executive positions at German marques these days, Winterkorn took Fabrizio’s idea to former VW Chairman Ferdinard Piech. Piech signed off on the project.

Actually, Piech had apprenticed at Italdesign during the summer of 1972, learning about engineering and design.

The project, including the design, engineering, and assembly of the Parcour Concept, was completed on March 3, 2013, and presented to the world at the Geneva Motor Show that same year. It would be just in time to celebrate the design house’s 45th anniversary in the business of crafting celebrated and iconic automotive marvels. The Concept’s name is a perfect description of its nature; “the sport of traversing environmental obstacles by running, climbing, or leaping rapidly and efficiently.”

Related: 10 Most Beautiful Cars Designed By Giorgetto Giugiaro

Does your idea of a no-nonsense individual include someone with little time to spruce up their appearance? We agree. It’s obvious on the Italdesign Parcour Concept car. It didn't try too hard to look good, not even on the inside. Instead, Parcour held on real tight to its rally racing inspiration.

The design features a genetic combination of GT, SUV, Crossover, and mid-engine sports cars. Blending these aspects in its architecture resulted in a coupe or roadster that’s as robust as it is slimline and lightweight, marked by sizable Vredestein custom tires. The tires on 22-inch rims are one of Parcour’s defining attributes, raising the car up to 330 mm off the ground.

As you can imagine, the rest of the aluminum and carbon fiber body was designed with careful consideration of aerodynamics, for example, the A-pillar detached from the windshield to act as a deflector channeling air onto the roof and sides. Meanwhile, the rear pillar conveys air over the bonnet and towards the rear retractable spoiler, a two-pronged approach improving stability and engine ventilation.

Parcour is fitted with the preppy 5.2L Lamborghini V10 mid-rear engine belting out 550 horsepower. The vehicle can do 60 mph from a standing position in 3.6 seconds, admittedly slower than the 1986 Ford RS 200 Evo we mentioned at the beginning of this article. At the same time, Parcour is unlike rally racing sports cars you’ve ever seen.

Supercars are mostly considered show cars that are home only on the tracks. There are supercars like Lamborghini Aventador and Porsche Cayman GT 4 Clubsport with impressive offroading manners. But Parcour is a supercar that delivers more than “manners” when the tires exit tarred roads.

Using the control device on the dashboard, the driver can literally adapt Parcour to its surroundings by selecting from any of the four different settings providing comfortable driving, off-road driving, winter driving, and high-speed track racing. The settings adjust the car’s riding height, behavior, and engine setup.

In Fabrizio’s words,

"Every time we approach a project for a research prototype, we always start with the same question, ‘what is missing from the world of cars today?’ These days, we demand a car that is a comfortable and high-performance vehicle, irrespective of its use and of the type of terrain, which is how the SUV came about: it is a vehicle that guarantees driving comfort even on rough and challenging terrains. We teamed this with the setup of the ideal mid-engine sports car, being able to count, as always, on Audi/Volkswagen group technology. In addition, we wanted to pay tribute to the historic Lamborghini brand, which, this year celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, using their 10-cylinder engine.”

Philip Uwaoma, this bearded black male from Nigeria, is fast approaching two million words in articles published on various websites, including toylist.com, rehabaid.com, and autoquarterly.com. After not getting credit for his work on Auto Quarterly, Philip is now convinced that ghostwriting sucks. He has no dog, no wife- yet- and he loves Rolls Royce a little too much.