PPG shares Italian supercar passion

Apart from being legendary Italian-made supercars with breathtaking styling and performance, what do Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati have in common? They are all finished with PPG coatings.

For more than three decades PPG has been a trusted partner to Lamborghini and, according to PPG Italy's Matteo Carraro, it hasn't just been about PPG coatings helping to create the exotic, premium image. The spectacular Lamborghini appearance must also hold up under extreme conditions.

"These cars move super fast and are built very close to the ground"Carraro said. "The paint has to be very strong to withstand stone chipping and still look great. These aren't just beautiful cars – they're works of art that move at 300km/h, though I'm sure no one drives them that fast."

Recently PPG and Lamborghini teamed up to develop a dramatic matt paint finish which has now become a fully fledged automotive fashion trend. Claudio Nannetti, quality manager with Lamborghini, said that all the company’s matt and special finish cars are hand-painted, which meant finding a product that produced the aesthetic qualities the designers were looking for, as well as meeting Lamborghini’s high overall performance standards.

"PPG supported us once again, as it has done throughout the years of our collaboration during all the development stages – from product engineering to quality tests and training programs for our customer support," Nannetti said.

"The Lamborghini/PPG partnership is extremely successful and has led to excellent results. In over 20 years, we developed many painting processes for a range of different materials, from aluminium to composites and countless finishes. Today, we are ready for new challenges and new research projects."

Since 1940 Maseratis have been built at the company's production facility at Modena, Italy, but these days the striking, high quality paintwork is applied at Ferrari's factory paint shop in nearby Maranello (the famous brands have been stable-mates since the late 1990s).

When Ferrari opened its new hi-tech paint facility in 2005, PPG was already the company’s sole OE paint supplier online. Thanks to the strong partnership, Ferrari also decided to choose a premium performance clearcoat, PPG CeramiClear (the super-hard, new age, mar- and scratch-resistant clearcoat), to ensure its premium performance models, such as the newly launched 458 Italia, maintain their high gloss appearance for even longer.