Magnus Walker and Pininfarina Partner on Unique Battista Hypercar

In his 25,000-square-foot dual-purpose warehouse and garage in the Downtown Arts District of Los Angeles, famed Porsche collector and customizer Magnus Walker recently unveiled his latest collaboration. But it was not with the German marque he’s become synonymous with, nor was it with Hot Wheels, or MOMO steering wheels, or any of the other brands the 57-year-old automotive celebrity has worked with previously. It was with Automobili Pininfarina, the supercar-manufacturing offshoot of the 95-year-old Italian design consultancy, revered for penning vehicles for Ferrari, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo.

And, unlike the raucous, rough-hewn, gas-powered “Urban Outlaw” Porsches for which the lanky, dreadlocked, self-described “Beardo Weirdo” is best known, this collab is focused on Pininfarina’s Battista, an all-electric hypercar that costs nearly $3 million and delivers 1,900 hp. “I had to learn to elevate myself up to their level. We’re not going to give this car a $500 rattle-can spray-paint job,” says Walker, referencing a Porsche 914 he hand-customized for Mobil One at the 2019 SEMA custom car show.

The partnership with Walker occurred “organically,” according to Automobili Pininfarina’s chief design officer Davide Amantea. In August of 2022, Amantea was presenting the Battista to a small audience during the annual Monterey Car Week celebrations on the Northern California peninsula. Walker was in the audience and noticed that Amantea was wearing a pair of the custom red-white-and-light-blue SB Dunk High sneakers he had designed with Nike, and they struck up a conversation. Amantea invited Walker to Italy to test drive the Battista, and “after a lot of wine, beer, and food,” Amantea says, “we became friends.”

The following year, after another test drive in the mountains around Los Angeles impressed upon Walker the car’s capabilities, Amantea approached with a proposition. “We’d love to collaborate with you on a one-of-one Battista,” he said, a uniquely bespoke car which would be used to showcase the automaker’s customization capabilities, and would eventually be sold to an as-yet-unidentified customer.

Pininfarina left Walker with a scale model of the car, and he began “doing basic line drawings” of a livery for the Battista, using colored vinyl tape. “Everything I do is very analog,” Walker says. Arranging and rearranging constantly, he would occasionally send iPhone images of his ideas to Amantea, “and Dave would say if he liked them or not.”

There were challenges in this relationship. “The way Magnus knows how to do things with pinstripes and color, our painters couldn’t do,” Amantea says. “So we had to translate his vision.” A total of 10 painters and 20 engineers worked on building the car. Walker had to change too, compromising to ensure that the partnership persevered. In the process, he says, “I traded in my leather jacket for a pinstriped blazer.” He tugs at his lapel. Amantea concurs. “Magnus went from an Urban Outlaw to a Gentleman Outlaw.”

Amantea describes the final product as embodying “Irreverent Elegance.” Vertical lines on the supercar’s deeply scalloped door coves give it a sense of acceleration, even while standing still, and reflect the handsome bronze of the car’s custom wheels. A similar color-blocked motif, inspired by scannable bar codes, covers the roof and extends to a custom carbon-fiber panel at the rear.

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On the interior, specially embroidered Poltrona Frau leather covers the seat backs and bottoms, while a custom turquoise-plaid textile inlay provides the headrests with a brilliant pop of color. A striped hand-rendered pattern, similar to the one on the car’s roof, is painted onto the seats’ hard external shell, where few people will ever see it: a so-called “Easter Egg” to offer insider delight to the future owner and their passengers.

The process of working with such a venerable brand, and working to uncover means by which its skilled artisans could execute his vision without compromising the safety of its ultimate electric hypercar, helped Walker learn valuable new lessons. “I’m not a team player,” he says, “but I hope I’m maturing enough to see opportunity, to say ‘yes’ to things I want to do, and learning to play nicely with others.” He smiles at Amantea, and the images of their joint creation. “I just like doing cool shit with cool people.”

Click here for more photos of the Magnus Walker x Pininfarina collaboration.