Concept cars over the decades
10/07/2020
Just as Frankfurt and Munich are in constant competition in southern Germany, the two metropolises of Milan and Turin rival each other for success and honor in northern Italy. While Milan has been regarded as an international center of fashion for generations, Turin has established a reputation as an international stronghold of car design. Leading exponents of this discipline from the 1950s onwards were the companies Pininfarina and Bertone. From 1968, they were joined by Ital-Design, a company founded by the renegade Bertone chief designer Giugiaro.
These three companies supplied design proposals to car manufacturers in Italy as well as in Germany, France, England, Japan and the USA. Pininfarina has since come under the wing of the Indian Mahinda Industrial Group, while Ital-Design was taken over by the Volkswagen Group.
Bertone, on the other hand, finally went under in 2014. This prompted me to dedicate an in-depth, systematically structured biography to this company. I had been in and out of Bertone - as well as Pininfarina and Ital-Design - for many decades, had followed all the developments and was able to test drive most of the concept studies.
The concept cars, as they were created in a regular cadence from the 1950s onwards, formed a core area of the Turin car designers. They paralleled the dream cars of the American automobile companies, which at that time in Detroit also helped to create a more or less realistic view of the future with attractive eye-catchers. However, while the focus in America was on momentum and power, in Turin the emphasis was more on elegance and style.
From 1952 to 2013, Bertone produced no fewer than 66 such futuristic one-offs. The fact that up to 24,000 working hours were spent on some of them illustrates the material value of these constructions. In addition to their sensational form, they always offered innovative technical solutions, many of which were incorporated into later series models.
The biography now published under the title "Bertone - Pioneers of Car Design"contains not only the concept studies but also all the series bodies designed by Bertone, prototypes for possible series cars and other individual pieces. A total of 320 car models are presented in words and pictures. This book also provides exciting and informative insights into the history of the automobile.
P.S. About the three designs shown: The Bertone BAT 7 (last picture) was created in 1954, designed by Franco Scaglione and technically based on the Alfa Romeo 1900 Sprint. The Bertone Carabo from 1968 (first picture) shows the drawing pen of Marcello Gandini based on the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale. And the Bertone Slalom from 1996 (middle picture) was designed by Luciano D'Ambrosio based on the technology of the Opel Calibra.
