Yahoo Autos Remaining Bertone Concept Car Collection, Rights to Bertone Name Up for Sale
By Daniel Strohl. Photos courtesy SIVAG
The long and slow collapse of the Bertone coachbuilding corporation appears as though it will come to an end this month as Lilli Bertone, the widow of company scion Nuccio Bertone, has put up for sale the last vestiges of the company, including dozens of concept cars and the rights to the Bertone name itself.
Bizarre concept cars from Stile Bertone
After Nuccio Bertone’s death in 1997, the once Turin-based company - which included both a coachbuilding factory and a design firm - saw a variety of leaders, but ultimate control always rested with Lilli Bertone and her two daughters, Barbara and Marie-Jeanne. The manufacturing side of the company lasted only through the late 2000s before Bertone sold its factory to Fiat, and as Road and Track told the tale last year, that was when Lilli Bertone decided to focus on the styling house, Stile Bertone - first by securing the Bertone brand and trademark from a bankruptcy tribunal, then by attempting to purchase the entire assets of the Bertone Museum.
The tribunal, however, wouldn’t let her buy all 90 cars in the museum. Instead, it let her buy 84 of the cars for $3.4 million and it sent the other six to auction. Those cars - the 1978 Lancia Sibilo, the 1980 Lamborghini Athon, the 1974 Lamborghini Bravo, the 1963 Chevrolet Testudo, the 1967 Lamborghini Marzal, and the 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero - sold at RM’s Villa D'Este auction in May 2011 for a combined €3,640,000, or about $5.3 million, which went toward Bertone’s debts.
