Touring Bertone – the styling house that made history

What started out as a strong desire to see the gorgeous Bertone B99 Jaguar concept in the metal, turned into something much more, when I was fortunate to be given a personal tour of the Bertone Collection by one of the people who designed the B99, former Bertone brand and design director, Michael Robinson.

Following the liquidation of Gruppo Bertone in 2014, the collection was bought by the Automotoclub Storico Italiano (ASI) and it now lives within the Stellantis Heritage Hub in Turin. This vast warehouse sits alongside the Stellantis Design Studio and everything from 1930s Lancias to modern Alfa Romeos are all proudly on display. While some of those Stellantis models are of course worthy of attention, it was the Bertone Collection that was the star attraction.

There are too many highlights to mention to be honest, but I’ll start with the car that lured me there, the B99, designed by Robinson and lead exterior designer, Adrian Griffiths. When it was revealed at the Geneva Motor Show in 2010, chairman of the Tata Group, Ratan Tata, described it as the most beautiful Jaguar he had ever seen, an opinion not shared by Jaguar design boss at the time, Ian Callum, who simply said; “it’s not a Jaguar.”

Callum told me recently that it wasn’t that he didn’t like the car, it was simply that they had no need for it, possibly because they were already working on something else. He does describe it today as “a very handsome car” and perhaps it could still provide some inspiration for a future Jaguar model, you never know.

“We decided to do a three-box design, very low and wide with modern proportions, but using traditional architecture,” said Robinson. “The idea was to create this jaguar animal approach, a leaper with very subtle muscles. The interior was also very clean, very simple with a waterfall centre console that washes down through the centre with wood and aluminium.”

There are fascinating details too, such as the instrumentation needles shaped like a hummingbird’s tongue, pixelated materials around the grille to look like atoms going into it and the extremely thin cameras in place of door mirrors, although being hewn from aluminium they would not pass pedestrian safety, even in 2010.

As a Saab owner, another car that particularly interested me was the 2002 Saab Novanta concept, which was built on the existing platform of the 9-5 and showcased a minimalist composition, for which the brand is well known. The interior featured bright materials and all its controls were operated via a drive-by-wire system on a pivot-arm control unit attached to the driver’s door.

Saab’s parent company, General Motors, had a long relationship with Bertone, including at one point, a five-year contract that saw some of its own designers based at the styling house. It’s therefore no surprise that there are plenty of GM models in the collection, including those that Bertone produced at its own factory in Turin, such as the Opel Astra and Kadett convertibles. Other Opel models were the 1996 Calibra Slalom, designed by Luciano D’Ambrosio and the 2001 Opel Filo with its vast glasshouse.

A car with an even bigger glasshouse was the Cadillac Villa of 2005, which had front and rear doors that opened upwards from the centre, requiring an overly complicated series of hinges. It also had a large screen in the dashboard, similar to those of today except that it relied on a projector mounted in the roof. Then there is the Chevrolet Ramarro, designed in 1979 on a Corvette chassis by Marc Deschamps, who also penned the Chevrolet Nivola of 1990.

Naturally there are a number of Lamborghini models in the collection, including the Miura, Espada and Countach, but it was the Espada that leant its chassis to something even more unusual than the LM002, the Lamborghini Genesis MPV.

“It has the Espada chassis, but they put the 12-cylinder engine right in the front with the two seats over the front tyres,” says Robinson. “That means your feet are right in the crash zone in an RV style, just one of many drawbacks in the design.”

A five-seater, it had gullwing doors for those in the front and sliding doors for back seat passengers. The three-seat layout at the rear was also unusual because the middle seat was placed slightly further forward and could be rotated 180-degrees.

Bertone also worked extensively with Porsche and one of the cars that intrigued me the most in the collection was the 1994 911 Karisma concept, designed by D’Ambrosio and Nuccio Bertone. Right down to the colour, it struck me as having similarity to Tesla’s early design language, but Robinson described it as the grandfather of the Porsche Panamera with its styling and four-seater configuration.

Another model that could easily predate a future design was the BMW Z7 Birusa, designed by Giuliano Biasio. It used the aluminium chassis and V8 engine from the Z8 roadster and featured carbon fibre gullwing doors, a retractable glass roof and a boot designed to accommodate a Segway scooter.

“Obviously designed to be a BMW, it has a beautiful glasshouse on it,” said Robinson. "Biasio did a wonderful job, it looks sleek, clean and very modern, although it is already 23 years old.”

While the collection contains concepts that might have inspired other models, there were also some that Robinson feels should have made it into production. Of course that includes the Jaguar, but he also cites not making the Alfa Romeo GT Cabrio as a mistake by Fiat.

“Biasio took the Alfa 147 and turned it into a coupé, then they did a cabrio version and that would have been the perfect project,” says Robinson. “Instead they decided to do the Alfa Spider based on the Brera and made by Pininfarina. Rather than have a four-seater cabrio, you had a two-seater which didn’t sell well and they lost millions on it.”

Alongside concepts inspired by the Lancia Stratos, production icons such as the Fiat Dino 2400 coupé and the X1/9, one other car of the 66 in the collection played a crucial role in the history of Bertone, the 2004 Aston Martin Jet 2. In part a homage to the DB4 GT-based Bertone Jet of 1961, it featured a shooting brake design by Biasio with an interior by David Wilkie. Ferrari was so impressed with the design that they asked to borrow it and had it for six months, not that anyone would suggest it might have been influential in the design of the FF of course,

It did however, inspire a private collector to commission a 2+2 version in 2013, which was designed by Robinson and was based on the Aston Martin Rapide platform. Aston’s chief creative officer, Marek Reichman, collaborated extensively on the Jet 2+2 and while it’s a great story, it was the closing chapter for Bertone.

In 2014 the design house went into liquidation, but Bertone and its designers not only made their mark on the history of the automobile, their designs continue to style its future.