BERTONE
Car
Design History - Car Body Designer
"If the
car has a soul, the battle is almost won."
— Nuccio Bertone
Along with his student
Giorgetto Giugiaro and Sergio Pininfarina,
Nuccio Bertone, who died in 1997, is one of the greats of Italian car
design. He knew that the battles of the highly competitive automobile
market are often decided by a car's impact on the emotions. So his primary
goal was to overcome mediocrity, especially in sports cars. His Lamborghini
- the Miura, Espada, and Countach - Ferrari
Dino 308 GT4, Alfa Romeo Carabo, and Lancia
Stratos zipped along racetracks and roads like arrows, with extremely
pointed fronts and compact backsides.
Since the 1930s, Bertone had systematically turned the bodyshop opened
by his father, Giovanni, in 1912 into a modern company, styling such luxury
cars as the Fiat 2800 Cabriolet. His breakthrough came in 1954
with the modest but elegant Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, which
was originally designed for a limited series of 500 but went on to be
in production for thirteen years. Other classic Bertone designs |include
the 1964 Fiat Spider 850 and the low-slung,
sporty 1972 Fiat X1/9. In more recent years Bertone's company designed
the Opel Kadett Cabrio (1987), the Opel Astra Cabrio
(1993), and the Fiat PuntoCabrio (1994).
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