The 2009 Pirelli Calendar is the best the company has ever produced, Pirelli President Marco Tronchetti Provera said Thursday.
Shot in Botswana by American photographer Peter Beard, the new calendar will be unveiled to the public at a gala dinner in Berlin on Thursday night.
''The Pirelli Calendar moves to one of the few places in Africa that remains wild and unspoiled, free of the ravages of war and with the highest concentration of wildlife,'' the company said.
It features seven models from Brazil, Poland, Canada, the Netherlands and Italy who have been snapped in the Okavango River delta and the Kalahari Desert.
Beard lived in Kenya for 30 years and is described by Pirelli as ''one of the world's greatest interpreters of the mystery and charm of Africa''.
As one of Beard's favourite subjects, elephants loom large in the calendar, with the girls cavorting with them as they bathe and even hanging from their tusks.
The 70-year-old photographer took 56 different plates for the calendar, which he has described as ''a living sculpture''.
The time-honoured Pirelli calendar was first launched by the Italian tyre manufacturer in 1964.
Although the first edition was a flop, within a few years it became a fixture, featuring glamorous scantily clad women against exotic backdrops.
