The limited-edition Bertone Runabout brings a historic automotive concept to life

Bertone have brought their new Runabout to life at Paris’s Rétromobile 2026, showing it alongside the original 1969 Runabout concept and the other car in the company’s current stable, the Bertone GB110. Originally shown as a concept back in 2024, the Runabout is part of the Italian company’s push to return to bespoke high-end manufacturing.

Since the design was first revealed as a contemporary update to Nuccio Bertone’s 60s-era special, the design has been refined and readied for production, albeit in a limited series of just 25 units. Describing the car as a ‘vision of Italian Neo-Retro Modernity,’ Bertone have deployed the Runabout as a distillation of the company’s long history of coachbuilding.

There will be two body styles of the limited series, the open-topped Barchetta and a Targa version with a removable roof panel. The Runabout is a purist wedge, with a hint of forward lean that characterises many of Bertone’s most iconic designs. There are also elements taken from nautical design, in particular the classic Italian speedboat with its wraparound windshield and flat deck.

The other tell-tale bit of Bertone design is the coda tronca, the cut-off rear tail that gives the car an aerodynamic advantage and exaggerates the dramatic triangular wedge of the profile view. The ultra-low frontal area also helps – note how the wheelarches peep over the edges of the low bonnet.

Inside, the modern Runabout will offer a feast for each customer’s personal preferences, with leather-trimmed seats featuring aluminium detailing and four-point seatbelts. Whatever colour you like is up for grabs, as one would expect. Other details include the gated manual gearstick, exposed mechanical elements and a minimalist digital dashboard.

The Runabout’s carbon fibre body panels sit on a bespoke bonded aluminium chassis with a 3.5-litre supercharged V6 providing the 475 hp. It should go as good as it looks, although the car’s rarity value will probably see most of the 25 stashed away as investments.

Andrea Mocellin, the man who led the Runabout project, describes the project as an way of bringing the 1969 original back into contemporary relevance. ‘The process didn’t start from styling but from spirit: the nautical inspiration, the playfulness, and the purity of purpose that defined the original,’ he explains, ‘Rather than treating history as a set of shapes to copy, we approached it as a set of values to reinterpret. The 1969 Runabout was audacious, experimental, and refreshingly simple - those qualities became our north star. We carried the spirit forward, not the styling.’

Bertone has been integral to Italy’s auto industry since its foundation in 1912. Bertone employed legendary designers like Marcello Gandini and the company oversaw key models for Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia, Ferrari and Lamborghini, as well as countless other brands around the world. Its portfolio of exotic concept cars, including the runabout, remains highly desirable.

Bertone Runabout, from €390,000, Bertone.it, @Bertone_Official