Monday, August 16, 2010

Bertone Alpha Romeo Pandion.



Updated: With HiDef Video here and here. Plus a link to the Bertone Mantide I got last year.

I am going to gush about this car - and you are going to like it. You will. If circumstances were different I might have totally missed it myself.

Mr S. got a call from his dad while we were at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. He went off to find a place to talk to him away from the loud speakers which were blasting a bombing Jay Leno. More later.

I was busy trying to photograph, on the sly, a Cruella Deville look alike. Also - more later.

After a while I just started roaming when the back bumper of the Bertone caught my eye right away. It was like a magnet.

No one, but no, one seemed that interested in this car. For a good 5 minutes I hovered over it. I finally got the attention of one of the guys who seemed to be attached to it to see if he'd let me go over the chain to get better pictures. Which he did. I must have taken 50 pictures because I knew the bumper was going to be hard to capture. Took video. It was great.

Finally Mr S. caught up with me, and excitedly I asked him "did you see that car"? What car - he replied. That car! He'd come in from the other direction which is why probably a lot of people didn't think it was anything special.



I kept hovering over it. It was a hard shot. Grey day. Grey ocean. Grey on black car. And, I really wanted to make sure I got this car. Still, not that many people were interested. Some guy walked up and started talking to the designer about CAD. Either you know what it is, or you don't. So, I'm not going to go into it. I realised this guy was going to hog up a lot of time. So, I got the attention of the guy who let me get behind the rope.

How do you open it - I ask. I wasn't sure how much he understood me, so I put my arm up at an angle. This is where the most glorious thing happened. I'm not sure I should describe it, because it is probably some security thing. But, it caused the doors to open. Where my mouth promptly dropped. His reaction to my reaction was priceless. Immediately a crowd started to form, and I was pretty screwed about getting any more content. But who would have guessed it was so awesome inside?



None of you slackers have watched the video. You should. You don't see stuff like this every day.







Just a side note - I was really impressed with how accessible the designer was. He talked to pretty much everyone. The group that was with the car was gracious and accommodating. It really stood out to me, because a lot of people at Concours are couldn't give you the time of day sorts of people. It was refreshing.

2 comments:

  1. O.M.G. That car is all kinds of freakin' AWESOME!!! The only thing I'd change is the color of the seats... But then again, really, who cares? Your butt certainly wouldn't care about the color once it sat in that beauty. I wonder what the price tag would be???

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  2. I don't even know if there is a whisper number on that car.

    Yeah.. the seats not so much. But, from a photography standpoint the color was helpful. If the seats were black. That would have been a bummer. The day was so dark.

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