The Fate of the Bertone Collection
All human endeavors, sooner or later, inevitably come to an end. Some do so abruptly and unexpectedly, while for others, it’s a slow, protracted agony that’s painful to witness. And that’s precisely how Bertone ended.
Boom
Founded in 1912 as a traditional coachbuilding shop, it’s from the 1950s that the firm, thanks to the entrepreneurial skills of Nuccio Bertone and the extraordinary talents he nurtured, first Franco Scaglione, then Giorgetto Giugiaro and Marcello Gandini, that Bertone flourished into one of Italy’s great success stories.
The firm’s innovative designs were industry trendsetters from Detroit to Hiroshima, while Italy’s thriving automakers were more than happy to let Bertone manufacture the sexy car bodies it had designed for them.
Bust
Although the boom times of Bertone were arguably over by the time the last Miami Vice season first aired, it’s only in the late 2000s that the cracks in the company became large enough for everyone to see.
The Grugliasco manufacturing plant went to Fiat in 2009, while Bertone’s style and engineering business kept struggling for relevance in a changing world until its bankruptcy in 2014.
