INSIDE BERTONE’S CRYPT

All that remains of Bertone will soon be sold. Massimo Delbò takes an emotional tour amongst four decades of show cars, styling models and technical drawings

When I was growing up in Milan during the 1970s, my exposure to the style of Bertone was quite intense. One of my favourite toys was a Bertone Carabo model; I was surrounded by people driving Alfa GT Juniors and GTVs; the friendliest neighbour owned a series of 1750 and 2000 sedans; and the cutest girl on my block was driven to school in an Innocenti 90 first and a Ritmo Cabrio later. That was the everyday stuff. Meanwhile, show cars and prototypes were of another world. I’d see them pictured in car magazines and, years later, at the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese or at concours d’elegances.

This is how the shapes created at Bertone, by such talents as Giorgetto Giugiaro and Marcello Gandini, became part of Bertone is intertwined with the motoring history of almost the whole 20th Century. It was founded in Turin in 1912 by Giovanni Bertone and, after the disruption of the First World War, carried on working with the most important Italian car manufacturers, building components for bodies and chassis. In 1934 the company moved to new, bigger, premises at Corso Peschiera and, just after the Second World War, Giovanni’s son, Nuccio, began leading the business – and its 150 employees – towards a spectacular future.

Nuccio’s drive, paired with the Italian economic boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, created an explosion in work and turnover. It was the beginning of a magical period that produced hits such as the Giulietta Sprint, the BAT prototypes, the Carabo, the Navajo and the Lancia Stratos Zero show cars, Fiat’s X1/9, the Alfa Romeo Montreal, Citroën BX, all the Lamborghinis from Miura to Diablo… At the same time, Bertone built niche cars for manufacturers, too, a smart move at the time but one that would later prove costly.

In the early 1970s, a new building at Caprie, outside Turin, became the headquarters of the Bertone Stile company and, later, its museum too. Legally speaking, while Bertone Stile was part of the overall group, it was separate from the other family business, and this would also have an impact on future events. In the 1980s, the manufacturing facility was heavily occupied with the Opel Kadett Cabrio, the Volvo 780 Coupé, the Bertone Freeclimber (based on the four-wheel-drive Daihatsu Feroza, with a BMW engine) and the Fiat Ritmo Cabrio, but the quality of finish demanded meant heavy investment on which the company would never see a return, and the manufacturing division started to drain resources.

‘Folder after folder, project after project… I’m on a rollercoaster of emotion’

In the 21st Century more car companies opened internal styling divisions and brought small-scale manufacturing in-house. The last two Bertone-designed cars to enter production were the 2002 Fiat Panda and the 2004 Alfa Romeo GT, neither of which was built by Bertone. The Alfa GT hit the company especially hard: Bertone was supposed to build it, and invested hugely in its production lines, only for production to go to Fiat’s Pomigliano d’Arco plant. And so cracks began to appear in Bertone’s already fragile financial situation.

Every year Bertone would launch a new show car, hoping to reverse its fortune, but it filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Already the family jewels had been put up for sale. An auction in 2011 disposed of the most exclusive prototypes, and another in September 2015 sold most of what was left in its museum: around 80 cars and a lot of documents.

It seemed as though the world was over for Bertone. However, Bertone Stile, existing independently within the group, had remained in stasis since 2013 when the Turin courts closed it. Some money was used to pay-off the employees and then every asset was listed for a public sale to raise the missing resources.

And so, at the beginning of 2018, the age-old Italian auction house Aste Bolaffi began preparing for its first classic car sale, to be held in May. An invitation to visit the Caprie premises followed, and on a cold winter day I enter this huge, well-preserved yet abandoned building. Immediately I spot 1:10 styling models of the most important cars designed by the company. Here is the wing of the ZER, which broke countless speed records in 1994; there is the model of the very first Countach, then a Miura, a Fiat Dino Coupé and a Stratos nearby. Only a couple of metres away is the door to Nuccio Bertone’s office, left as when he last visited in 1997. Then, at the end of a corridor, I arrive at the space used as Bertone’s museum.

Here I find the Ferrari 430-based Nuccio, which I’d last seen at the 2012 Concorso Italiano in Monterey, then the 2010 Alfa Romeo Pandion, the show-car based on the 8C Competizione. There are fullsize wooden and glassfibre models too, one of the Nuccio and another of the Mantide, the 2009 one-off based on the Chevrolet Corvette. An as-new BMW Z3 M, ready to be dismantled and used as a base for a prototype, is still complete: the project never happened. And, after taking the stairs down to the basement, I find dozens of 1:10 and 1:5 styling models of practically every car Bertone worked on from the early 1970s onwards.

There is a 1:1 model of a truck cabin; a 1:10 of the Frecciarossa, Italy’s bullet train. I spot models of the Zero, the Sibilo, some of the Stratos and, of course, the Miura, plus at least one for each of the Lamborghini prototypes that followed. BMW, Skoda, Citroën, Tata, Aston Martin, Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Ferrari are well represented too. My knees go weak as I spy the Alfa Romeo Canguro as a 1:5 model – and then I leave daylight behind. From this point on, my journey of discovery proceeds underground.

In these archives, rows of grey metal drawers line the walls. Facing them are open shelves of models, parts, and materials I struggle to identify: eventually I realise they are moulds to create models. Each of them is a half or quarter of the car, ready to be modified or replaced

if needed. I spot a Lamborghini engine, half-covered by empty boxes, a front-mounted V12 and gearbox – maybe an Espada unit, but I could be wrong. What I’m sure is that the windshield and the frames stacked there, on a pallet, are from the Lancia Stratos.

Time to tackle the drawers. Most are unlabelled, others carry enigmatic codes, some have a name: Lamborghini, BMW, ‘Wolkswaghen’ and more. In each is a surprise: it could be empty, full of technical sketches, or there could be something amazing. I skim through some recent folders, mostly Alfa Romeo, including an Alfetta restyling and the 1990s Alfa GT; then, in an anonymous drawer, I find Miura, Espada, Urraco, Marzal, all together. I have to stop for a moment and look again, just to be sure, but why the Citroën BX shares a folder with a Lamborghini is not clear.

I find the technical drawings for the Miura, dated 20 December 1965, and recall Ingegnere Dallara telling me that the first time he saw a draft for the Miura – then still the Bertone P400 – was at Christmas 1965, when Lamborghini’s Sant’Agata factory had closed for the holidays. Everything adds up. There are details of the Miura Roadster, and the modifications necessary to build it; there is the Marzal, including a picture of it being made; and there is the Espada.

It is easy to spot the process of development from Marzal to Espada, and I recall Dallara telling me just how much he’d wanted to keep the Marzal’s gullwing doors for the Espada. There are many sketches here that illustrate exactly that. In the next drawer I hope to find drawings for the Countach and the Diablo, but instead I discover a facelift project for BMW’s E28 5-series, then the BMW-based Spicup and Genesis one-offs, and a wonderful ‘Lamborghini-BMW ’ – which became the M1.

The Fiat X1/9 and the special version designed for Dallara follow, plus several Alfa Romeo prototypes that didn’t make production. And one that did: the GTV. It is amazing, and highly informative about the development of its lines. The Fiat 131 Abarth is a surprise; I didn’t know it was by Bertone. I also spend time looking at a project for Jensen of an Interceptor coupé, very beautiful indeed, plus a restyled XJ for Jaguar.

Folder after folder and project after project make me feel as if I’m on a rollercoaster of emotion, and finally I arrive at another amazing

Below You want wheels? We got wheels, from Lamborghini to Fiat X1/9… place: the archive of press releases from 1972 to 2000. Here are all the pictures that were released in period, everything we’d ever seen in magazines. And yet here are also pictures that were never released, perhaps less beautiful but now so much more interesting because they’ve never been seen outside these walls.

There are photos taken during the making of prototypes, there are technical sheets, sometimes even notes made at meetings between the car manufacturer and Bertone. An entire folder is dedicated to Alfa Romeo and Bertone: it’s titled Contenziosi, which basically means arguments that haven’t quite got to the point of involving lawyers yet… That’s a fun read. Amid crates of spare parts I recognise old instruments for Lancia, Alfa Romeo and Lamborghini; there is a room full of wheels paired with original tyres, and spare glass commissioned for one-offs. Back in the light, I enter the plaster room where a 1:1 Aston Martin Jet model sits unfinished but mostly completed. What a wonderland.

And soon all this automotive history will be auctioned. If the lots end up in the right places, a new window will open on 40 years of style and craftsmanship. I can’t stop looking at the big ‘b’ insignia lying on the floor instead of being emblazoned proudly over the entrance to the building, and feel sad that my young son won’t grow up surrounded by Bertone design as I did. But what has been preserved here will become as important as – if not more than – the cars that graced Italian roads in the past. It’s fair to say that, on 23 May, in Arese, at the Aste Bolaffi auction of the Bertone archive, there will be a lot of excitement.