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(from Bertone Press Release) Bertone presents the Barchetta concept car in celebration of its 95th anniversary. Based on the floorpan and mechanicals of the Fiat Panda 100 HP, the Bertone Barchetta is an open-topped strictly two-seater sports car that calls to mind the Italian racing cars of the 1950s. In this case, the design explicitly cites the Fiat 500 with Barchetta bodywork created by the young Nuccio Bertone in 1947 as a one-off for his personal use in races. The decision to celebrate the company’s 95th anniversary with a minimalist yet sophisticated model is perfectly in keeping with the Bertone philosophy. Since its very earliest days, the company has interpreted cars by Italian car makers with an elegant style that emphasises their personality and technological content, with an unparalleled passion for sportiness. Bertone’s choice of the Fiat brand to celebrate its 95th anniversary was both natural and emotional. Natural because Fiat is the Italian brand par excellence. Em...

GENEVA — The legendary Italian design studio Bertone introduced its Barchetta concept at the Geneva auto show, with a design that harks back to happier times in the company's history. Giovanni Bertone set up a body shop in Turin in 1912. Nuccio, his son, transformed the company into a styling studio and then expanded into manufacturing. Nuccio died in 1997 and the company has been losing important clients during the last couple of years, increasingly relying on work from China to keep afloat. But here in Geneva, Bertone showed the old spirit is still alive with the Barchetta. The barchetta (Italian for "small boat") is a typical Italian body style, sitting somewhere between a windshield-less spyder and a roadster. Barchettas were very popular in Italy during the late 1940s and '50s; the first Ferraris were barchettas. Nuccio also created a barchetta off the minuscule Fiat 500 in 1947 for his personal use. This prototype was the inspiration for the current Barche...