The line comes first.
Most cars are packaged and then styled. The package is decided by the engine, the crash structure, and the battery, and a designer is asked to make the result look deliberate. Argence was started by six people who wanted to work the other way round.
The atelier occupies a former press shop on the eastern edge of Turin. It was chosen for the north wall, which is almost entirely glass, and for the floor, which is flat enough to judge a full-scale model without a spirit level lying to you.
Every car starts as a drawing at one-to-one on paper. It is milled in clay, judged in daylight, judged again under night lighting, and then taken apart. Only after the surface is signed off does the engineering brief get written around it. This is slower and it is the whole company.
A surface that only works in a render does not leave the building.
Six people signed the first drawing. Four of them still sign every one.
Argence has grown, but the sign-off has not been delegated. A car leaves the atelier when the people who drew it agree it is finished, which has delayed two programmes and cancelled one.
Materials are chosen for how they age
Aluminium is brushed rather than polished because polish shows every year of use. Leather is vegetable tanned so it darkens instead of cracking. Nothing in the cabin is specified to look best on delivery day.
