Giuseppe Bertone

Giuseppe Bertone — a trendsetter in automotive design

Giuseppe Bertone, nicknamed “Nuccio” as a child (4 July 1914 – 26 February 1997), was born in Turin at the dawn of the automotive age. He was destined to become a classic figure in the automotive world during his own lifetime. The striking models he created as a designer and engineer in the twentieth century shaped the direction of global car manufacturing for decades to come.

Giuseppe Bertone’s father, a farmer and self-taught mechanic, opened his own workshop, Carrozzeria Bertone, in 1912 to build horse-drawn carriages. Just nine years later, Bertone senior successfully ventured into designing and building bodies for the SPA 9000 Sport and Fiat 501 Sport sports cars. Their attractive design and strong construction caught the attention of car manufacturers, major clients appeared, and the Bertone family business soon established itself in the rapidly expanding automotive world. After sitting behind the wheel of one of the first cars produced in his father’s workshop, Nuccio committed his life to the car business. His father began involving him in the work at the age of twelve and, when he was nineteen, entrusted his son, then a budding economist, with selling the company’s products. Nuccio soon realised that he was drawn not to paperwork but to “drawing” cars. By the mid-1930s, Bertone senior decided to retire and handed the growing family business over entirely to Giuseppe.

During the war, Bertone was forced to switch to producing military vehicles and ambulances. In the post-war years, the company survived only through occasional orders for sports racing cars. A breakthrough was needed to attract major clients, and Giuseppe Bertone achieved it in 1952 by presenting his own coupé and convertible designs on an MG 200 chassis at the Turin Motor Show. Two years later, visitors to the Turin show were captivated by the Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint. It brought its creator, Giuseppe Bertone, real fame and made collaboration with Alfa Romeo a priority for many years. For that company, Giuseppe developed the entire BAT (Berlina Aerodinamica Technica) series, distinguished by exceptionally low drag coefficients, as well as the 1900 Sport Spider, GTA, 2000 Sportiva and many other models.

In the 1960s, a team of talented automotive designers led by Bertone developed a number of successful Lamborghini models: Espada, Urraco, Countach, Miura, Mazral, Bravo and Diablo. The rivalry between Lamborghini and Ferrari also affected Giuseppe Bertone, who late in life regretted never having had the opportunity to collaborate fully with Ferrari. The only Ferrari designed within Bertone was the Ferrari Dino 308 GTB4, created in the early 1970s.

Giuseppe Bertone’s milestone hundredth design project was a Ford Mustang unveiled at the New York motor show in 1965.

Bertone did not restrict himself to designing cars for wealthy buyers. His interests also included vehicles intended for mass production. Tens of thousands of Simca 1200S Coupes, Daewoo Esperos, Volvo 780 Coupes and Citroen models — Berlingo, Xantia and BX — were sold around the world. Bertone’s proposal in the early 1980s to build the Citroen BX at the Soviet Moskvitch plant went unanswered.

In the 1980s, Giuseppe Bertone modernised production, introducing computers and industrial robotics. During those years, the designers, engineers and production specialists working under his direction created the popular Fiat Punto and Opel Astra models, produced in 70,000 examples. Admirers of individually crafted cars had begun to lose faith in Bertone, believing that he had switched entirely to the assembly line. Yet even at the end of his career, Nuccio had not lost his ability to surprise: in the early 1990s, he presented the public with the new Bertone Karisma concept on a Porsche chassis. One of his last cars to inspire widespread amazement was the cigar-shaped Bertone ZER, a masterpiece of design and engineering, for it was the first car in the world to exceed 300 km/h. Making the impossible possible was Giuseppe Bertone’s lifelong motto.

In 1996, Nuccio visited the Turin Motor Show for the last time, and he died the following year. The thriving family business is now in the hands of his daughter.