"Besides its good proportions and carefully stated details, Farina did make one bold move: he dropped the hood to near fender-level, a featured picked up by many later designs. Here too there was precedent in certain prewar racing cars. So while Farina was not innovative on the Cisitalia, it was his outstanding design ability that allowed him to pull the various features into one place in an extremely tasteful manner."
Eleven years later, I've come across Internet sources that contradict what I wrote regarding the origin of the design. Unfortunately, there is not complete agreement regarding timing of the completion of first examples of various designs, so what I present here must be regarded as more sketchy than I prefer. That said, the general picture I paint here seems basically correct.
The origin of the 202's design was by Giovanni Savonuzzi, 1911-1988 (Wikipedia entry here, and more background on this car designs is here). He was a graduate mechanical engineer who worked in aviation pre- World War 2. He joined Cisitalia in August of 1945, working on racing car designs. His Cisitalia 202 CMM (Coupè Mille Miglia) was shaped using a wind tunnel at Torino Politechnio. Strong elements of that design are found on the Cisitalia 202 Berlinetta.
Potential chronology problems occur because work on the CMM and Berlinetta happened in 1946 and the first part of 1947, a brief period in the context of developing car designs. Internet sources tend to be vague regarding timing. That noted, I am pretty sure that the form of the CMM was developed first, then the design of the Berlinetta emerged, though there clearly was considerable timing overlap -- the idea of a road car Cisitalia being considered and then worked on while Savonuzzi was refining the CMM. The 1947 Mille Miglia race took place 21-22 June. The Barchetta was first shown at Turin's auto show 28 June, then at the Paris Salon de l'Automobile that opened 23 October. So both designs appeared in public at nearly the same time.
More information and conjecture is in the image captions below, while some background on the Cisitalia firm is here.
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One of the racing coupes. Some styling features appeared on 202 Barchettas in altered from.
Note the low hood and high fenders. These features and the oval grill opening are found, productionized, on the Barchetta.
Pinin Farina changed the fender design, adding a distinct rear fender. He changed the rear profile to a subtle S-curve and reduced the size of the backlight window. The grille frame became more oval. The door and its window were reshaped. Savonuzzi credited Farina with these changes, and Farina took total claim for the design. That's what design firm owners such as he and Raymond Loewy do, partly for marketing purposes.
This is either the original Barchetta Pinin Farina built, or an early one.
The "B" indicates a later production version where a noticeable difference is the one-piece windshield. Pinin Farina built many 202 Berlinettas, but Stabilimenti Farina and Vignale also made some. That in part was because these cars were hand-made, not productionized by the carrozzieri, as might have been the case in later years. The designs were essentially consistent across these carrozzieri.
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