The Bertone Runabout Is A Brand New Manual Supercar With Pop-Up Headlights

When historic automotive brands mount a comeback, things can get weird. While some returns under new management, like Bugatti in the Ferdinand Piëch era, go smoothly, others don’t. Reviving Bertone, the styling house behind cars like the Lamborghini Countach and Miura, seems like a tricky balancing act, so the new owners are playing it safe in the best way, by going with heritage. This is the incoming Bertone Runabout, a stick-shift supercar with pop-up headlights, and if it looks a bit like a Fiat X1/9, there’s a reason for that.

At the 1969 Turin Auto Show, Bertone unveiled a stunning concept car called the Autobianchi A112 Runabout. Taking the transverse mid-engined layout of the Lamborghini Miura, shrinking it, and clothing it with a minimalist wedge-shaped body that featured fog lights in the roll bar, it was an instant hit among people who mattered the most. Fiat magnate Gianni Agnelli saw it, knowing that the Fiat 850 Spider was due for replacement, and contracted Bertone to continue developing the concept into an affordable sports car that would eventually go on sale as the Fiat X1/9.

While the X1/9 featured a modest price tag and a sensible four-cylinder engine to match, this reborn Bertone Runabout takes things a whole lot further. A mid-mounted V6 is expected to pump out 460 horsepower, and Bertone plans on mating it to a six-speed manual transmission. Although curb weight is a bit of an unknown, that sort of power and transmission sounds just right in a high-end sports car, potent enough to be fast yet not too fast for the road.

However, specs only matter so much on a €350,000 limited-run car from a famous design house. While that’s a lot of money, this thing doesn’t compete with Paganis and Koenigseggs, and customers will most likely be buying a Bertone Runabout for style. Good thing it has it in spades. Let’s start with the obvious, the offering of two different body styles. If you’re a bit nuts and want the closest thing to the original concept’s form, you can get a Bertone Runabout without a roof or side windows or even a full-height windshield. The tiniest of aero screens is all that exists to keep the bugs out of your grill.

Alternatively, if you wish to actually use one of these exotics when it’s raining or around vehicles that might kick up stones, you can spec your Bertone Runabout as a targa. In this form, it looks like the missing link between the 1969 concept and the Fiat X1/9 in all the best ways, with the pronounced targa bar meeting up nicely with a removable roof.

Regardless of the top situation, this Runabout thing is absolutely gorgeous, and I’m not just saying that because we’re in a drought of properly pretty supercars. Despite the angularity baked into elements like the engine cover and overall silhouette, the surfacing shows masterful use of curves, with almost fuselage flanks, a rounded nose, a dramatic hump over each front wheel, and even a soft transition from vertical to horizontal on the targa bar. At the same time, detailing like the gills and black band that runs the perimeter of the body are pure turn-of-the-’70s while doing their part to break up the extra mass of a modern platform. Also, pop-up headlights! What a feature to make a comeback in the 2020s.

Of course, there is one big caveat here: Bertone only seems to have shown off renderings, so some details are likely going to change once production starts up. However, the brand has a good track record of turning concepts into reality, and although only 25 Bertone Runabout models will be made, that lines up nicely with that GB110 hypercar that was being tested last year. If the production Runabout looks close to this, it might be the new supercar to have, not just because it should be fast but because it looks like a great deal of fun for McLaren 750S or Ferrari 296 GTS money.

Top graphic image: Bertone

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