The History of Bertone: Turin's Coachbuilder and Design House

Bertone at a glance

Giovanni Bertone and the carriage years

Giovanni Bertone was born in 1884 in Mondovì, Piedmont, and trained as a carriage wheelmaker. In 1907 he worked for Diatto, a Turin maker of railway equipment and cars. In November 1912, at the age of 28, he opened his own workshop for building and repairing horse-drawn carriages, with three workers.

The move to car bodies came after the First World War. In 1920 the firm moved to a new plant in Turin with 20 employees. In 1921 it built its first car bodies on chassis from SPA (Società Piemontese Automobili), including an open tourer body for the SPA 23S. A friendship with Vincenzo Lancia brought work for Lancia and Fiat, and a competition body for the Fiat 501 helped build the firm's name.

Nuccio joins and the firm survives the 1930s

Giuseppe "Nuccio" Bertone was born in 1914 and joined his father's business in 1933, at the age of 19. By then the company had about 50 staff and had moved to Corso Peschiera in Turin. Its work in the 1930s included luxury bodies such as the Fiat 527S Ardita 2500 of 1934. The old version of this page also named Fiat 505 and Itala 51S limousines among the early special bodies.

The Depression of 1929 ruined many small Turin coachbuilders, but Bertone survived. During the Second World War demand for luxury bodies fell to almost nothing; the old version of this page noted that the firm turned to ambulances based on the Lancia Artena. After the war Bertone split into a manufacturing company and a styling company, and in 1950 Nuccio took over the business from his father.

Scaglione, the BAT cars and the Giulietta Sprint

The first great postwar designer at Bertone was Franco Scaglione, chief designer from 1952 to 1959. For Alfa Romeo he drew three aerodynamic studies, the BAT 5 of 1953, the BAT 7 of 1954 and the BAT 9 of 1955, whose curved tail fins became famous at the Turin show.

The commercial breakthrough was the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint coupé of 1954. Alfa Romeo planned about 1,000 cars; nearly 40,000 were built between 1954 and 1965. In 1956 the Bertone-bodied Abarth 750 Record set ten world speed records, and orders such as the NSU Sport Prinz from 1957 pushed the firm towards series production.

Grugliasco and the move to series production

To build bodies in volume, Bertone opened a new plant at Grugliasco near Turin in 1959, with 550 workers. It turned the firm from a craft shop into an industrial supplier that styled cars and also built them for the large makers.

The Fiat 850 Spider, launched in 1965, showed what this meant. Bertone built about 13,000 bodies in 1966 and nearly 30,000 in 1968, and the total reached about 140,000 by 1972. By 1970 the company employed 1,500 people on a site of 267,000 m². The old version of this page gave "more than 30,000" for the 850 Spider, which was one year's output, not the total.

Giugiaro and Gandini: the golden years of design

Giorgetto Giugiaro was chief designer from 1959 to 1965, followed by Marcello Gandini from 1965 to 1979. Their work made Bertone a reference for wedge-shaped and mid-engined design. Their profiles are on our pages for Giorgetto Giugiaro and Marcello Gandini.

The Lamborghini Miura is the design most often linked with Bertone. The rally-winning Lancia Stratos grew out of the Stratos Zero concept, and the Autobianchi A112 Runabout of 1969 prepared the X1/9.

After Giovanni: the X1/9, Volvo and convertibles

Giovanni Bertone died on 10 May 1972. The same year the Fiat X1/9 went into production; it was built until 1988 and reached about 160,000 cars. The old version of this page credited these 160,000 sales to the Runabout concept, which was a single show car.

In the 1970s and 1980s the firm worked increasingly for foreign makers. The Volvo 262C coupé was shown at Geneva in 1977, and a joint venture with Volvo led to the Volvo 780 coupé from 1985. The Citroën BX hatchback of 1982 was styled at Bertone under Gandini's influence. In 1986 an agreement with GM Europe gave Bertone the production of the Opel Kadett Cabrio, and from 1993 it built the Opel Astra Cabrio and the Fiat Punto Cabrio at Grugliasco. The old page also listed the Freeclimber off-roader, based on a Daihatsu with BMW engines.

By our calculation, these three cars alone account for about 340,000 bodies, and the X1/9 averaged about 10,000 a year over its 16 years.

ZER and the last years under Nuccio

In 1994 Bertone presented the ZER, or Zero Emission Record, a streamlined electric car with a drag coefficient of 0.11. It covered 199.822 km in one hour and reached 303.977 km/h, breaking the 300 km/h mark for an electric vehicle. The same year the company received ISO 9001 certification.

Nuccio Bertone died on 26 February 1997, on the eve of the Geneva Motor Show, where the firm had shown its work for decades. His widow Lilli Bertone took over. Customers kept coming for some years, but fewer makers needed an outside body plant as they moved production of niche models in-house.

Decline, bankruptcy and the revived brand

The 2000s were difficult. A transfer of the Grugliasco plant to the Keiber Group in 2008 was contested in court. By 2009 the plant and manufacturing business had been sold to Fiat, leaving about 300 people, mostly engineers and designers. Lilli Bertone tried to relaunch the styling side, Stile Bertone, with designers such as Jason Castriota (2008–2009) and later Mike Robinson, and some concept cars were sold in 2011.

The rescue failed. Bankruptcy was confirmed in March 2014, when about 100 employees remained, and Stile Bertone was declared bankrupt on 4 June 2014, ending 102 years as a family business. The name then changed hands: AKKA Technologies bought the brand in 2016 for more than €2.6 million, Flymove acquired it in 2019, and in 2020 it passed to the brothers Mauro and Jean-Franck Ricci. They launched the GB110 supercar in December 2022, showed it at Top Marques Monaco in June 2024, and have since added a modern Runabout limited to 25 cars.

Bertone compared with Pininfarina, and which Bertone to buy

Bertone and Pininfarina were the two great Turin design houses, and they worked in different ways. Pininfarina is best known for its long relationship with Ferrari, while Bertone worked for many brands at once and was more radical in shape, from the BAT cars to the wedge. Pininfarina survived as a design business, while Bertone did not. The rival's story is on our page on Pininfarina's history.

For collectors, the most accessible Bertone cars are the Fiat X1/9 and 850 Spider, which were built in large numbers. Our size comparison tool shows how compact such classics are next to today's cars, and the compare section helps with modern alternatives. A Giulietta Sprint is the classic choice for Alfa fans, while a Miura, Stratos or BAT car is a museum-level purchase.

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