Taking over the cariage manufacturing company ‘Carozzerie Bertone’ founded by his father after WII, Giuseppe ‘Nuccio’ Bertone moved to construction and design within the firm, after racing for Fiat, O.S.C.A., Maserati, and Ferrari (1).
Already his father Giovanni created bodyworks for several Italian car companies such as Lancia and Fiat. With the rising in interest for race cars after WWII, Bertone started to specialise in designs for race and sports cars (1).
Although Nuccio Bertone created his own designs, the official chief designer at Bertone became Giorgetto Guigiaro, who first worked as a designer for Fiat (1955 – 1959) and then switched to Bertone until 1965. In 1964 Marcello Gandini approached Nuccio Bertone, who was impressed by his zeal and wanted to apprentice him to Giorgetto Giugiaro. Giugiaro left one year later and Gandini took his place as chief designer. In 1965 the Bertone Group formed a partnership with Ferruccio Lamborghini. The first vehicle to come out of this partnership was the ‘Lamborghini Miura’ (1968) designed by Gandini who was to design also the ‘Lamborghini Countach’ later (1971) (2).
In parallel Gandini also designed the famous rally car ‘Lancia Stratos’ (1971), the prototype ‘Stratos Zero’ (1970) and worked also for other manufacturers such as Alfa Romeo, De Tomaso, Maserati, Jaguar, Volkswagen and many others. Bertone’s designs were thus also applied to utilitarian cars (1, 2).
Ref.:
Electric Watch Prototypes 