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BertoneGruppo Bertone is an Italian car styling and coachbuilding house, which also manufactures cars. Bertone styling is very distinctive, with most cars having a strong "family resemblance" even if badged by different manufacturers. Bertone has styled cars for Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Fiat, Iso Rivolta, Lancia, Lamborghini and Volvo Cars among others. In addition the Bertone studio were responsible for two of the later designs of the famous Italian motorscooter " Lambretta". The highly innovative and influential-if unsuccessful "Luna" range and the DL/GP -a makeover of the established LI Ser III design
The company is based in Turin. It was founded as Carrozzeria Bertone in 1912 by Giovanni Bertone, with designer Nuccio Bertone taking over after World War II. The company was divided into two units — the Carrozzeria building as many as 40,000 cars per year at its height, and the styling studio, Stile Bertone. The company is currently headed by Lilli Bertone, widow of Nuccio.
NUCCIO BERTONE
The Italian design and coachbuilding firm known today as Carrozzeria Bertone dates to 1912, the year Giovanni Bertone set up a carriage building and repair facility in Turin. Two years later, a son was born to the Bertone household, a son who would have a major impact on the, world of automotive design. He was Born in Turin on July 4, 1912.
Nuccio Bertone
However, Giuseppe "Nuccio" Bertone was not a designer, though he claimed to have styled a number of one-off cars in his early years with the family company. But the drawings, he said, were lost in a fire during World War II.
Giuseppe Bertone was nicknamed Nuccio. His father Giovanni founded Carrozzeria Bertone in 1914 after working as a carriage wheel-maker. Nuccio entered the family business while in his early twenties. Step-by-step, he transformed the small family workshop into a manufacturer of prototypes with an integrated design house. The company he built was able to assist car manufacturers with styling, models, engineering, prototype construction and production of up to 20,000 cars a year.
Nuccio Bertone, then 20, joined his father's business in 1934, the year the firm exhibited its special-bodied Fiat Ardita, the Superaerodinimica, at the Turin Auto Show. In the years following World War II, Nuccio Bertone raced Fiats, OSCAs, Maseratis, and Ferraris, an activity that taught him much about aerodynamics, cooling, and vehicle dynamics. At the 1952 Turin Auto Show, Bertone reached agreement with Chicago auto dealer Stanley Arnolt II to build 200 special-bodied MGs for sale in the U.S. Here the shape of the Bertone firm was determined: a combination of design and coachbuilding.
After the war, Nuccio became chief executive of Carrozzeria Bertone and called upon professional designers to run the styling center. Bertone and his team created some of the most important cars of the last century. He may have been the greatest nurturer of design talent in history.
His first chief designer was Franco Scaglione, a man who was already a well-known before joining Bertone. He was followed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Marcello Gandini. The two young talents discovered by Nuccio later achieved international fame. Giugiaro was a charter member of the European Automotive Hall of Fame in 2000.
But no matter who worked for him, Nuccio was never completely satisfied with a new car. He left the drawing board to professional designers, but admitted that "many times I drove their pencils." Nuccio's typical approach to any design discussion: "I am pretty satisfied with the final results. Well, nothing is perfect. For example, I have been fighting with my designers about..."
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