“Alfa Romeo called us in and said, ‘Could you make a concept car – the “8C of the future” – for our 100-year anniversary?’” explains Bertone’s Brand and Design Director Mike Robinson. “We had an
opportunity to get away from the retro-oriented Alfa-Romeo-isms that have been going on for too long.” The guiding idea for the project was the curious paradox that the team detected within the Alfa Romeo logo: “On the left-hand side there’s the heraldic cross of Milan, which is the mechanical, engineering, performance side — everything that’s rational. On the right is a snake; and that, to us, was the sensuous part: beauty and aesthetics and emotion.” The designers set out to create a dynamic mix between the two by playing with the relationship between the car’s skin and its frame (‘telaio’ in Italian). One exploratory sketch (4) applied the design of Herzog and de Meuron’s ‘bird’s nest’ Olympic soccer stadium in Beijing to the outside of the car, as an exoskeleton.
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