Carrozzeria Bertone
Carrozzeria Bertone was established in November 1912 in Turin by Giovanni Bertone (born 1884 in Mondovì, Piedmont), initially as a workshop for building and repairing horse-drawn carriages. The company moved into automobile coachwork after the First World War, with early collaborations for SPA and Lancia in the 1920s. The transformation from a traditional coachbuilder into one of the most celebrated design houses in automotive history was the work of Giovanni’s son, Giuseppe “Nuccio” Bertone (1914–1997), who recognised that the future of Italian coachbuilding lay in the quality of the designers hired — and who hired three of the greatest.
Franco Scaglione (active at Bertone c.1952–1959) produced the B.A.T. series for Alfa Romeo — Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica 5, 7, and 9 (1953, 1954, 1955), concept cars built on the Alfa Romeo 1900C chassis to explore the limits of automotive aerodynamics. The B.A.T. 7 achieved a drag coefficient of 0.19, extraordinarily low for any vehicle of the era. The three B.A.T. cars are now among the most celebrated concept cars ever built. Scaglione’s Bertone also created the Giulietta Sprint — the commission that transformed Bertone’s scale of operations. In 1954, Nuccio accepted Alfa Romeo’s proposal to build a dedicated factory for series production of the Sprint body; at the peak of production Bertone was building thousands of Sprint coupés annually, which established the company as an industrial coachbuilder rather than a bespoke atelier. The Sprint became the commercial foundation that allowed Nuccio to invest in the designers who followed.
Giorgetto Giugiaro served as Bertone’s chief designer from 1960 to 1965. In that period he produced the Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT (1963) — universally regarded as one of the most beautiful Italian GT coupés of the 1960s, and manufactured at Bertone’s Grugliasco plant throughout the Giulia’s production life. He also designed the Alfetta GT (1974) before leaving to found his own firm, Italdesign. The GT and GTV range were also manufactured at Grugliasco under his successors.
Marcello Gandini succeeded Giugiaro in 1965 and produced some of the most influential car designs of the 20th century: the Lamborghini Miura (1966 — exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York), the Lamborghini Countach (1971), the Lancia Stratos (1970, rally car), and — for Alfa Romeo — the Carabo concept (1968), built on an Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale chassis. The Carabo’s scissor-opening doors and extreme wedge profile directly inspired the Countach’s styling and through it the entire language of the 1970s–1980s supercar. Gandini also penned the Alfa Romeo Montreal (presented at the 1967 Montreal World’s Fair as “the Dream Car” and subsequently put into series production with a Tipo 33 V8 engine).
At its production peak in 1960, Bertone built over 31,000 bodies in a single year — Fiat 850 Spiders, Fiat Dino Coupés, Simca 1200S coupés, Alfa Romeos, and Lamborghinis. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2014; the Bertone brand was acquired by AKKA Technologies in 2016.
Connections
- Alfa Romeo — primary client from 1950s; B.A.T. concepts, Giulietta Sprint, Giulia GTV, Alfetta GTV, Montreal, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo Giulietta — Bertone built the Giulietta Sprint body in series production from 1954, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo Giulia (1962) — Bertone designed and manufactured the Giulia Sprint GT (Giugiaro, 1963) and GTA, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo Alfetta — Bertone manufactured the Alfetta GTV body at Grugliasco, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale — Gandini’s Carabo concept (1968) was built on a 33 Stradale chassis; Bertone also did the 1968 Alfa Romeo Tipo 33/2 Coupé Speciale, source: wikipedia.org
- Pininfarina — primary rival for Alfa Romeo coachbuilding commissions; competed for Giulietta Spider (1955, Pininfarina won), source: wikipedia.org