The myth of Italian coachbuilders: Bertone

Just like Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance, Turin, already the capital of Italy in the 19th century, became the beating heart of automotive design a century later. It will be a journey through time that allows you to understand why collecting is so closely linked to the country of Italy.

Our journey begins with Carrozzeria Bertone, founded in Turin in 1912 by Giovanni Bertone to initially build horse-drawn carriages but, since its arrival, also for the new horseless carriages, known as automobiles. The first collaborations with car manufacturers date back to the 1920s, immediately after the end of the First World War, with coachbuilding for SPA and Lancia.

In 1934 Bertone exhibited the first car with the characteristic 'B' badge, which would soon become famous, at the Milan Motor Show. It was a Fiat Ardita named 'Superaerodinamica' due to its sleek lines that were decidedly unusual for the time. It was in that year that his 20-year-old son Giuseppe, nicknamed 'Nuccio', joined the company and would give the company a resounding international breakthrough after the war.

Bertone debuts at the 1934 Milan Motor Show with the Fiat 527 S Ardita 2500 designed by Mario Revelli di Beaumont nicknamed 'Superaerodinamica'.

In 1954 Nuccio did not hesitate to accept Alfa Romeo's proposal to set up a factory for the production of coachbuilding and assembly of the Giulietta Sprint. Even though, ironically, the bodywork was already defined and designed by Alfa Romeo with the contribution of several designers from the Centro Stile. So the company suddenly went from 80 to over a thousand employees. A gamble that turned out to be a success.

The Alfa Romeo B.A.T. cars designed by Franco Scaglione between 1953 and 1955 were the result of stylistic and aerodynamic research that gave rise to true works of art.

Nuccio, in addition to being a renowned coachbuilder had already become an industrialist, which allowed him to invest in the quality of the designers that he hired. Three names are enough to illustrate this: Franco Scaglione, Giorgetto Giugiaro and Marcello Gandini, all three talents that he discovered. In the 1950s, Scaglione drew the attention of the world to Bertone with the Alfa Romeo BAT 5, 7 and 9. In the early 1960s, Giorgetto Giugiaro projected the car directly into the future with the Alfa Romeo Giulia GT and the Chevrolet Corvair Testudo. In 1965 he was succeeded as chef designer by Marcello Gandini who, with the Lamborghini Miura and Countach, the Marzal prototype and the Lancia Stratos, revolutionized the automotive design paradigms.

Giuseppe 'Nuccio' Bertone poses with the Chevrolet Corvair Testudo designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and presented at the 1963 Geneva Motor Show.

Throughout its history, the coachbuilder Bertone collaborated with a large number of non-Italian manufacturers, very often directly with the companies' design centres. As with other Italian coachbuilders, however, the cycle of success gradually came to an end: In order to guarantee a 'family feeling', the manufacturers set up their own in-house design centres. In parallel, outsourced production contracts were also withdrawn. In the 1990s, Nuccio found himself without any more production contracts from the Fiat Group and was forced to cease operations at the Grugliasco factory. The work with manufacturers also lost its momentum and after Nuccio's death at the age of 83 in 1997, the company went into a crisis that ended in 2014 with its definitive closure. The painful end of a great story.

The Lamborghini Miura designed by Marcello Gandini is an absolute masterpiece in automotive history.