Bertone BMW 2800 Spicup Concept
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Presentation Year: | 1969 |
Vehicle Expo: | Geneva Motor Show |
Class : | Concept |
Body design : | Coupe |
Engine: | Petrol: 2.8 Liters |
Length: | 4150 mm |
Width: | 1780 mm |
Height: | 1207 mm |
Wheelbase: | 2340 mm |
Empty weight: | 1330 kg |
The Bertone-BMW 2800 Spicup is a concept car that the Italian design studio Bertone developed and built on the technical basis of a BMW sedan in 1969.
History
The Spicup was completed in early March 1969 as a ready-to-drive exhibit. Shortly after the completion it appeared for the first time at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1969. The car was not shown at BMW, but on Bertone's booth. The car was painted in the unusual light green, the interior covered with olive and silver leatherette. Following the exhibition Bertone the last public presentation of the visually and technically unchanged car took place in September of the same year at the International Motor Show in Frankfurt am Main , after which the Spicup was sold.
In the 1960s, the Carrozzeria Bertone began to offer not only classic body design and the production of complete automobile bodies but also technical detail solutions for automobiles. These included an electrically operated hardtop for coupes, which Bertone had developed in 1968. This construction, described as a "lamellar roof", was originally designed for the successor of the Fiat 850 Spider.Already in the early development phase, however, it became apparent that the "lamellar roof" was very expensive due to its complex mechanics, so that a use in the small Fiat sports car, which should be offered as an inexpensive mass vehicle, was out of the question. Accordingly, the show car has car Bianchi runabout , the conceptual predecessor of X19 Bertone tried to establish his roof construction in a higher market segment. In the fall of 1968, the company decided in favour of a concept car based on a BMW equipped with the "louvered roof". This choice was based on the fact that Bertone had business relations with BMW since the early 1960s and, starting with the luxury class coupe 3200 CS , had designed or coached several BMW bodies in an advisory capacity. From this emerged in the first months of 1969, the Spicup.Contrary to Bertone's expectations, neither BMW nor any other manufacturer could be won over to take over the "lamellar roof"; even a hoped-for production of the Spicup in small series by Bertone did not materialize.
Design
The "lamellar roof", the most unusual design element of the Spicup, was based on an idea by the Bertone mechanic Enzo Cingolani. It was conceptually a further development of the Targa roof and was an attempt to use for the purpose of space saving existing safety reasons roll bar for housing the hard top. was the conventional Targa roof located between the windshield and the roll bar usually to remove manually located middle part; then it had to be stowed separately in the trunk or in the interior of the vehicle. In contrast, the electrically operated "slat roof" of the Spicup disappeared space-saving and almost automatically in the roll bar. The roof of the Spicup was above the passenger compartment of two different sized stainless-steel panels, which were arranged transversely to the direction of travel. The front, adjacent to the windshield smaller panel could be pulled by an electric motor in the rear, larger panel. Thereafter, both panels disappeared - the front in the rear - in the roll bar, thus freeing the space above the passenger compartment. As a result, the car was therefore either with a solid metal roof as a coupe and, open, as a convertible or spider.
Among the disadvantages of the concept in addition to the complex, cost-intensive mechanics, above all, the need for a wide roll bar, whose dimensions must be designed so that they can accommodate the panels more or less complete. In the case of the Bertone Spicup limited weather worthiness was added. Contrary to the representations in the advertising brochure from 1969 it was Bertone failed to seal the individual panels complete so regularly larger amounts of water arrived in rainy trips into the interior of the vehicle.
The French body manufacturer Heuliez developed the idea in the following years. With a similar concept was born in 1971 an Espace called Targa version of the Citroën SM , in which the panels were arranged parallel to the direction of travel and disappeared in a central bridge between windshield and roll bar. Heuliez produced two copies of the Espace, one of which was sold.
The Bertone BMW 2800 Spicup is designed as a two-door, two-seat notchback coupé with removable roof centre section. The design of the Spicup bodywork is a work of Marcello Gandini , the then chief designer Bertones. In the area of the front end Gandini oriented himself on the (also designed by him) Alfa Romeo Montreal, like this, the Spicup also has half-hidden headlamps, often referred to in the contemporary press as "bedroom views", and a forward-sloping front end. In the front fenders functionless ventilation grilles are embedded, which are reminiscent of a design feature of the well ten years older BMW 507. The front bumpers are broken by a stylized BMW kidney, the halves of which are not used as cooling air openings, but are closed with dark plastic covers. The wide, trapezoidal roll bar is coloured. In the upper part it is wider than at the base. This design was necessary to make room for the roof panels. The vertical rear window is electrically lowered. The interior was from Designed by Eugenio Pagliano . Numerous attachments came from the BMW series production.
Technology
The technical basis of the Spicup was a vehicle of the BMW E3 series . Specifically, it was a pre-production copy of the BMW 2500 without chassis number, which had been used in 1967 and 1968 in the factory as a test vehicle and had covered a total of nearly 100,000 kilometres. Bertone reduced the wheelbase by 350 mm to 2.34 m; the total length of the spicup is 4.15 m. Shortly before its completion, the Spicup was equipped with a 2.8-liter, 170-horsepower six-cylinder engine from the BMW 2800, which did not fit through its height under the low mounted bonnet. Gandini solved the problem with a so-called Shaker Hood: He cut an opening in the hood near the engine and installed a fixed, color-coded cover over the engine block, which broke through the bonnet.
