Feb 10, 2003 - The exotic “fuoriserie” is back at Bertone. The showcar the famous Italian coachbuilder will be unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show early next month is a sort of dream-car rather than a sophisticated concept-car.

The difference? The dream-car is designed to touch the hearts of the public and make it dream that it could buy such a car whereas a concept car is more a container of new ideas and is more directly aimed at stimulated interest from and business contact with carmakers. Examples? The Bertone Filo stimulated GM and led to the construction of the GM Hy-wire concept car.

Now the BMW Z8 is a dream car in its own nature but its aluminium frame technology (the same as applied to the Rolls Royce Phantom) and the construction technique make the Z8 a dream car also for designers and engineers who can easily change its bodywork to deliver a different sort of car. In this case a very exotic sport car with a brilliant 5.0 litre V8 at the front delivering 400hp at the rear wheels.

The new dress styled by Bertone is that of a sleek two-box coupe with the look of a true sports car. Bertone promises to show a stunning, beautiful car with a very impressive, sloping bonnet, a tapered, drop-shaped cabin, and a short, muscular rear.

The official unveiling is scheduled to take place on March 4, at 3:15 pm on the Bertone stand.

Very likely many people will ask Bertone and BMW if they have plan to reproduce the show car in a small series for sale to selected customers. Probably neither of the two companies will commit themselves to such a task at this time but we know and can tell you two things: the construction technique of the Z8 is such to make the job easy enough to compel both companies to think about it.

The other thing we can tell is that Bertone would certainly love to produce, again, a high performance coupe for BMW, just as they did back in 1961 when they produced the BMW 3200 CS through 1965.