If you had asked us just a few days ago if Giorgetto Giugiaro was behind the design of any production Lamborghini, we probably would have answered, Sure, he must have…right? Wrong. Because none of Lamborghini’s road cars ever bore the famed designer’s lines.

Bertone styled a few, but those only came years after Giugiaro left for Ghia and then went independent with ItalDesign. Over the course of his later career, he did a couple of design studies for the Raging Bull marque – like the Marco Polo of 1982 and the 1995 Cala concept. But though the latter, it could be claimed, eventually lead to the Gallardo (with a very different design), neither of these ever reached production. But this one almost did. Or at least maybe it should have.

Back in the early 1960s, Lamborghini was still making tractors. But word on the street was that old Ferruccio was bent on showing up Enzo Ferrari with a sportscar of his own. So a number of design houses started submitting proposals, unsolicited. Pininfarina, Ghia, Vignale and Michelotti were among those who vied for the contract, but Carrozzeria Touring eventually won out with the 350 GT, based on the work of former Bertone stylist Franco Scaglione.

Now, some fifty years later, an original design submitted by a young Giorgetto Giugiaro, still working at Bertone, has surfaced. And not just in renderings, either. The designer’s son Fabrizio digitized his father’s sketches, milled them into a model, painted it yellow, detailed the body and put it on a set of period-correct Borrani wires.

The design, as you can plainly see, was way ahead of its time. If you’re thinking it reminds you of the Ferrari P3 or 250 LM, or like one of the Alfa Romeo BAT designs, think again, because none of those – nor anything like it – came along until years later. The result was presented to Giorgetto as a 70th birthday present, and is now prominently displayed at the company’s design headquarters in Moncalieri, just nine miles south of Turin. But if you’re not planning on visiting the area any time soon, you can check it out in our high-resolution image gallery.

Giugiaro’s original Lamborghini design unearthed and realized 50 years later originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The image of wafting around the Italian countryside in an open-air cabriolet is inextricably intertwined with our typical notion of Italian motoring. It’s somewhat surprising, then, that there wasn’t a single four-seat convertible on offer from Italy’s automakers until the relatively recent introductions of the Fiat 500C, Ferrari California and Maserati GranCabrio. But there nearly could have been, if only Alfa Romeo had given this project the green light.

This one-of-a-kind cabriolet prototype based on the Alfa GT was only recently revealed by Bertone. The relatively simple chop-job would have given Alfa a four-seat convertible in its range, and given Carrozzeria Bertone the lifeblood it so desperately needed. But instead, Fiat passed on its production and ended up buying Bertone’s coachbuilding operations as the latter comprehensively restructured.

In its place, Alfa opted to go with the Spider as a two-seat convertible version of the Brera, designed by Giugiaro and built by Pininfarina – Bertone’s two greatest rivals. And while that model may be the handsomer of the two, both its driving dynamics and performance in the marketplace never managed to keep up. From 2005 to 2010, Alfa sold less than 22,000 examples of the Brera, and from 2006 to 2010 only 12,000 Spiders, while the GT coupe has sold over 80,000 units from 2003 to 2010. Would a GT Cabrio have proven more successful? Impossible to tell now, but Carrozzeria Bertone might still be around if it had.

[Sources: AutoWeek, OmniAuto.it]

Alfa Romeo GT Cabriolet unearthed as the project that could have saved Bertone originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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