Nuccio Bertone, the great italian coach builder, unveiled the 1963 Chevrolet Testudo at Geneva Motor Show (3 March, 1963). the very advanced one-off prototype design was highly influential in numerous other designs and spawned a number of innovative concept cars. the schema was an early career highlight of young designer Giorgetto Giugiaro who was chief designer at bertone (Carrozzeria Bertone was founded in 1912 - grugliasco outside of turin, italy). It was a built as an alternative-body for the shorten/strengthen Chevrolet Corvair chassis. @ 81 bhp, 2,372 cc flat-six air-cooled engine with overhead camshafts and two valves per cylinder, two single-choke Rochester downdraught carburetors, four-speed manual gearbox, independent suspension with wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers and anti-roll bar at the front, semi-trailing swing-axles, coil springs, four-wheel drum brakes. the boxer engine of the Corvair was hardly a powerhouse, but its weight over the rear axle provided excellent traction and good balance under braking. ~ the Maestro, Giugiaro commented, “A car had two parts: one part was the side view and the other part was the plan view. In the Testudo, I broke down these two parts. This was my first attempt to avoid having two separate parts but rather to have one part blending into the other. […] That was a car with which I really felt I contributed to car design.”
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 18:57:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015