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
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
The Coolest Japanese SUV You’ve Never Heard Of Had A German Diesel Engine And Was Designed In Italy
-
Marcello Gandini Is Best Known For His Beautiful Sports Cars But He Had A Gift For Small Cars Too
-
One Exhaust Tip Per Pair Of Cylinders Sounds Fine Until You’re Working With A V16
-
With The Maserati MC20 Folgore Cancelled, Does Anyone Actually Want Electric Supercars?
-
This Ridiculous Sports Car Had A Legendary Duramax Diesel V8 Truck Engine, Claimed 57 MPG, And Ran On Cooking Oil
Please send tips about cool car things to tips@theautopian.com. You could even win a prize!
For such slim headlamps – it hardly seem worth the effort.
But if you’re going to bother – Might as well have a big black plastic housing just 8 small LEDs pushing into the wind….
This thing reminds me of a Hot Wheels car from the 60s – 70s. Can’t put my finger on it though the Silhouette pops to mind first. I like it!
If this car goes into the production, EU will say nope to the pop-up headlamps due to the pedestrian safety regulations. That is unless they figure out how to make the pop-up headlamps less “devastating” to the pedestrian.
Case in point: Mercedes-Benz spent six months redesigning the front turn signal indicator housings for its second-generation W463a G-Class.
Manual anything good…. but so violently hideous… don’t know what to think anymore
I guess the good thing about these uber expensive cars lacking windshields is they are so expensive that I won’t be selling the wife on the virtues of owning a windshield-less car.
You could sell the wife FOR the virtues of owning a windshield- less car.
The wheels and the color scheme are obvious nods to the late ’70s, but done oh so well. The brown tones would even be good at hiding rust, a further tribute to the X1/9 heritage.
I like it
The rear/taillights looks like they didn’t know how they should finish the car off.
There’s a little Soviet made toy A112 Runabout sitting on my desk and it’s a bit striking how they managed to translate the original into a modern car. That being said, I find it somewhat irritating that this is just gong to be yet another low production supercar instead of staying true to the X1/9 and being a readily available fun little 2 seater proto-MR2. And yes, I will gladly die on the hill that the MR2 is an X1/9 knockoff.
Am I the only person here who thinks pop-up headlights are dumb?
yes
Yes, but louder.
Pop-ups are a heavy, expense, potentially unreliable lighting solution that also not only increases drag but moves the aerodynamic balance of the car.
Objectively stupid. Also a great way to disembowel pedestrians. So stupid and selfish.
However, having had eight cars with pop-ups, there is something fun about having bits of bodywork suddenly pop-up in front of you when you turn the lights on. For nearly 20 years I had at least one car with pop-ups and I never got bored of popping them up at night. I miss them.
I drove hundreds of thousands of miles with popup headlights.
All were fully emboweled when I left them.
So yes but with more steps.
I had an ’86 (US) Accord with pop-up headlights. They were the only thing I didn’t like about that car. Flash-to-pass or alert oncoming drivers in the daytime when the headlights weren’t already engaged? Forget about it. Back when I owned it, I saw the headlight treatment of the Canadian and European versions and it just made me sad.
Jason had an article last week about the flawed logic of the US version’s headlamps. My Accord never suffered a catastrophic rock strike.
Many years later, I had ’90 Saab 9000 with gorgeous glass headlights. I feared for them as I-5 through Seattle was getting worn down (late 90s) and large rocks were getting liberated and kicked up. But somehow, they managed to survive unscathed until I sold it and bought a ’01 Jetta TDI. Its lenses were Lexan or some similar material. They were somewhat disappointing as far as the forward vision they provided at night, but back then, my night vision was still pretty descent.
Because it was not subjected to a lot of solar UV exposure, they still were pretty clear when it arrived with me in SE Texas. But before that, on the aforementioned stretch of I-5 in Seattle, doing ~60, I saw a rock big enough to see, coming into the windshield. It made a sound like a shotgun when it hit, but amazingly, really didn’t do any significant damage.
When I sold the Jetta in 2017 and replaced it with a ’17 Accord, and the headlights were incredibly better. And in 2018, we replaced a ’15 BMW X5 with an ’18 Acura MDX and its LED lights were the best I’ve ever driven behind.
Give the people what they want!
In this case a picture of the targa without the top.
Apart from that it looks about twice as a large as the original Roundabout, until I see a running prototype, this is vapourware.
What a fresh shape now that most sports cars look like robot vomit. Especially the exotic ones, so earth-shatteringly ugly I feel compelled to mock their owners in traffic.
Maybe I should keep my mouth shut and just be grateful for the pop-up headlights and exuberant design, but honestly this bums me out. The X1/9 was awesome because it offered Italian supercar style (and concomitant questionable build quality!) for the masses with a sticker price equivalent to around $30,000 today. That being said, a re-boot for the 1% at 10x the original sticker price feels very 2025 so no surprises there.
I’m getting strong Luke’s Land Speeder vibes from this, and that’s not a compliment. It just screams 70’s dystopian sci-fi movie car to me, very brutalist. Not feeling the styling on this.
Don’t get me wrong, I like some of the ideas at play here, specifically the fenders are interesting, but its a far cry from a Miura, Countach, or Fiat X1/9. I also cannot ignore the coolness of manual transmission, and hopefully lightweight nature this has.
AND POP UP HEADLIGHTS! All sins forgiven, great work all around!
I much prefer this 70’s version of the future to the one we actually got
To me it looks like someone is trying to put a Corvette in an insurance ad and trying to get around the Chevrolet lawyers.
Like that one drug commercial where they used a ’66 Mustang but used 3D software to give it the Sonny and Cher style square headlights and change the taillights to the ribless European ones. It also bothers me that they didn’t understand that the gas cap is the rear emblem and removed it, meaning that lady has no way of refueling the car.
Pedantic question: is it still a ‘Photo Credit’ if the image is just a 3D model photoshopped onto backdrop image?
‘Photoshop Credit’
Huh a cool ca- IT’S GOT POP-UP HEADLIGHTS WHOOOO!!!!
I think it looks cool as fuck. I’d like to know more about the drivetrain. And since they are only making 25 you can probably get whatever engine or motor you want.
Given that the GB110 was a rebodied Huracan, I bet this is using the 3L Twin Turbo V6 that’s used in the Macan GTS. It’s rated at 440PS in that application, 20hp is not a big jump from there.
(Assuming Bertone is just buying VW group engines)
Manual…popup headlights…targa…the want is strong with this one.
Is it me or does the line across the top of each headlight suggest a staggered setup?
Lots of space for the lights shown to drop down for something else (high beams?) to be sitting above/behind
Good idea to use Eddie Jordan to sell it (AI Eddie Jordan?).
Front reminds me of a duck or platypus bill.
Looks great…until you get to the back. Those lights are just too small.
I didn’t even notice the lights, I was too distracted by the mess of black plastics lumped up on top of what should be a see through, good looking engine cover, but I have no idea what is going on with the multi tier mess there.
I mean, if you’re going for a retro 80’s aesthetic, you can’t skip the rear window louvers. They’re just going ALL IN on them.
haha yeah it looks like they have a vertical rear window, but then all sorts of craziness after that.
It looks like a Lotus Europa back there, and that isn’t a good thing.
Not just pop up lights, but superfluous pop up lights! Those skinny LEDs could easily have been seated within the decorative DRL strip
*whispers* all pop-up headlights are superfluous