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In 1967 the idea of creating a dream car led to a collaboration between a British journalist, Jaguar, and a prestigious Italian design house. The result was the unique Jaguar Bertone Pirana Coupe

W O R D S A N D P H O T O G R A P H Y R I C H A R D T R U E S D E L L

Try To envision this. you work for a well-known magazine and you have lots of friends in the motor industry. you see these colleagues at industry events,

major car shows, and press launches of important new vehicles, typically at exotic locations in the U.S. and overseas.

Now picture a scenario where you invite your friends to a bar after the first day of the Geneva Auto Show in March. “Let's design a dream car”, you propose. And get

Let's set the stage. Although new to the UK weekend magazine scene, The Daily Telegraph Magazine already had a reputation of doing things ‘big’. In

1965 the magazine’s powerful and some say tyrannical editor, John Anstey had film of Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral flown to West Germany for printing – because it promised the best quality – and had the millions of finished inserts flown back to the UK, just in time for the Sunday edition, a week ahead of his national competitors.

In March 1967 Anstey and a group of motoring writers gathered at that year’s Geneva Motor Show where they examined what was then the state-of-the-art in automotive design, culling elements from Aston Martin, Ferrari, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Lotus, and Maserati to come up with their ideal grand touring coupe. Armed with a budget of £20,000 provided by The Daily

Telegraph's bean counters, Anstey formed an internal design group that included himself, the paper’s motoring editor; picture editor Alexander Low, and art director Geoffrey Axbey.

The design brief for what would be known as the Telegraph car, was a luxury grand touring (GT), two-seat coupe. It would be a fully drivable car, built mostly with off-the-shelf components that were or would be available in the near future. According to Anstey this was, “A fast and comfortable coupe with plenty of leg, head, and elbow room, a modern heating and air conditioning system of such advanced design and proven efficiency that we could cruise quietly at 100 mph or more – on Continental motorways of course – with the windows closed.”

The next step was to select an engine and chassis and the team agreed that the logical choice was the Jaguar E-type because of its

well-documented performance and well-demonstrated reliability. But Anstey wanted more and specified the use of wide-rim racing wheels – reported to have come from two different Jaguar D-Type race cars in the US and Australia – which would widen the front and rear track. To ensure a spacious cockpit, the team opted for the E-type's 2+2 chassis along with the 4.2-litre straight six. And surprisingly, Sir William Lyons enthusiastically backed the project, agreeing to sell Anstey a complete E-type 2+2 chassis.

But who would build the car, and complete it in time for unveiling at the Earls Court Motor Show in October? Anstey approached Nuccio Bertone of Carrozzeria Bertone in Turin, Italy. Like Lyons, he got on board the Anstey train and after the exchange of just two letters each way between London and Turin, an agreement was reached to build the car, initially known as ‘the Piranha’. (The

it built in less than six months, a drivable dream car, in time to be unveiled on a turntable in Los Angeles in November.

Sound improbable? Of course it is. But believe it or not, this scenario transpired 45 years ago. The journalist with the big idea was John Anstey, editor of The Daily Telegraph Magazine. The car in question would turn out to be the result of a collaboration between Anstey, Jaguar, and the Italian design house Bertone. This is the improbable story of the 1967 Jaguar Bertone Pirana Coupe.

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The Pirana was completed in time and was a certifiable hit of the 1967 Earls Court Motor Show, documented by a British Pathé newsreel (now available

on YouTube: see http://bit.ly/1967earls at the two-minute mark) and the enthusiast motoring publications of the day.

After its successful unveiling, the Pirana made appearances in Turin in 1967, and in

spelling would be changed to ‘Pirana’ due to Piranha being already in use.)

If the car looks familiar, it might be because its stylist, Marcello Gandini, already well known for his work on the Lamborghini Miura was also responsible for the Lamborghini Marzal concept car that had just been introduced at the 1967 Geneva Auto Show. With the Earl's Court Show now just five months away, Carrozzeria Bertone quickly went to work to turn the Telegraph ideal car into a reality. The overall package determined, the process moved forward with a clay model and then a set of full-size drawings. From these, a full-sized mock-up was constructed in wood and clay and critical surface details were refined. It was from this buck that the craftsmen

at Carrozzeria Bertone hammered out by hand the steel monocoque body that was fashioned from a combination of steel and alloy panels. In a matter of weeks, what would become the Pirana would take shape.

From the coverage of the era, car buff Anstey made several trips to Turin to personally supervise the project. These meetings included Bertone, Gandini, Bertone’s commercial manager Enzo Prearo, Jaguar's Bob Berry, and Brian Bishop from Smiths Industries. Bishop, then the assistant chief engineer for special products at Smiths, made several trips to Turin to supervise the project. Smiths was responsible for the development of the heating and air conditioning system. Heated air travels forward from the heater box behind the rear seat along ducts built into the door sills. The innovative system directs air to a perforated distributor mounted in the roof of the cockpit, to be cooled and sent into the interior. At the time of the Pirana's construction, Bishop had this to say: “This is a new idea. Warm air comes up from the bottom and cold air comes down from the roof.”

The system's condenser and compressor remained mounted up front in the engine compartment with cooling augmented with a second electric fan instead of a single fan used in the E-type. In addition to the gauges, a Smiths specialty, the company also contributed the Pirana's multimedia system: an in-dash AM/FM radio with a cassette player/recorder installed in a compartment between the seats in the center console. At a time when Steve Jobs was a boy growing up in Silicon Valley, this was what passed for state-of-the-art, in-car multimedia and was in fact one of the first mobile applications of the then-new Philips cassette.

The rest of the interior design, given its Bertone origins, is much more Italian than British, a clear upgrade from the Pirana's E-type origins. In fact, once you are situated in the driver's seat and look over the instrumentation, you would think that you were in a Ferrari 330GTC or Lamborghini

400 GT 2+2. Compared to an Aston Martin DB6 or even the then-new DBS, the Pirana's cockpit is far more luxurious.

The cabin was trimmed in bespoke materials. For the interior trim, the Pirana was fitted with leather from Connolly Brothers. Fred Connolly, head of Connolly Brothers explained that it was called Anela, suggesting an aniline finish but its rich hue was due in part to the special pigments that were used in the tanning process.

Other suppliers also contributed other new components to the Pirana, among them Triplex who supplied the special Sundym glass for the windscreen and rear glass. Sundym glass featured a thick vinyl interlayer in the laminated glass

that increased flexibility and resistance to penetration. Heating elements, a grid of thin wires, were built into the interlayer of the windscreen and rear glass to prevent condensation from forming on the inside of the glass. The rear window was hinged at the top to provide access to the luggage space that was heated by wires laid in the interlayer. Think of Sundym as the Sixties’ precursor to today's acoustic glass.

The rear glass, being virtually horizontal, obstructed the view to the rear. This issue was addressed with the louvered rear panel that Bertone referred to as a viewing aperture. The glass behind the panel can be lowered out of sight via an electric motor if extra ventilation is required to extract hot air from the cabin.

Safety didn't take a back seat with the Pirana, as Britax seat belts came standard with seat-belt reminder lamps and audible warnings. The Pirana also featured a speed-limit warning system with over-limit warnings, similar to that found on a modern GPS system.

Being a prototype, the Pirana was 300 pounds heavier than the E-type, which resulted in a small performance loss. Still, with its power-to-weight ratio, the Pirana would feature a top speed of 145mph, competitive with existing 2+2s from Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati.

New York and Montreal in 1968. Following this auto show run, it was sold in 1968, at an auction conducted by Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York where it fetched the princely sum of $16,000 – failing to recoup The Daily Telegraph's investment in its construction.

The car’s history is a bit sketchy from 1968 to 2010 but it seems that it was owned by a British national who had a second home in the mid-century Mecca of Palm Springs, California. Apparently around 1980 the Pirana was painted a shade of British Racing Green, a colour not well suited to its angular lines.

In Autumn 2010 the car surfaced for the first time in more than forty years when it was spotted for sale in an eBay ad but went unsold. This is where current owner Ed Superfon entered the picture.

Aware of the car’s provenance, after purchasing it Superfon had the BRG paint stripped off and replaced with a shade of silver metallic that very closely approximates its 1967 Earls Court premiere. At the same time the front hides were replaced and all the mechanical details –

a four-page brochure was produced to explain the Pirana's backgound, engineering, specifications and design

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STYLING EVOLUTION OF THE JAGUAR BERTONE PIRANA COUPE

Engine: 4,235cc, DOHC in-line six,3 x SU HD8 carburettors

Drivetrain: disc front and rear

Brakes: vented disc (front); inboard vented discs (rear)

Front suspension: independent, torsion bars, wishbones, anti-roll bar with telescopic dampers;

Rear suspension: independent, twin coils with telescopic dampers

Dimensions L: 183.6 in, W: 104.7 in, H: 48.0 in

Weight: 1386kg

0-60mph: 8.0 secs (manual transmission fitted)

Max power: 265bhp @ 5400rpm

Max torque: 283lb ft @ 4000rpm

Price when new: £20,000

1967 Bertone Pirana

lights, wipers, switches – were refurbished, including the imaginative HVAC system.

For the first time in almost 45 years the Pirana was displayed publicly, at the 2012 Concorso Italiano during Monterey Classics Week. Back in southern California, on secluded two-lane roads in the hills outside of Los Angeles, we were able to appreciate the uniqueness of this historic one-off concept. Behind the wheel, the driving position is typically Italian: classic ‘arms out’ pose as would be found in a then-contemporary Ferrari or Lamborghini. The first surprise was finding the selector for the three-speed automatic. This was a unit supplied by Borg-Warner and used on a wide variety of cars from the era. We really expected to find a four-speed manual (as seen in period photographs) but over the years, this was replaced by the Borg Warner unit that was first used by Jaguar in the Series 1 2+2s. It didn't dim our enthusiasm one iota. (Superfon has located a correct four-speed manual and at this time he's considering swapping it for the Borg-Warner automatic.)

On twisty roads in the canyons just east of Malibu, the Pirana was tight with few rattles. If your experience of E-types has been limited to manual versions, the autobox might seem sluggish but when putting the pedal to the metal we have little doubt that it's capable of a 0-60mph sprint in under nine seconds. The car's feeling of tightness comes as little surprise given that the Pirana's odometer registers just over 16,000 miles. Superfon assumes this to be correct based on his research of the car's history.

I’ve driven more than a dozen million-dollar manufacturer concept cars and I can say without equivocation, the Jaguar Bertone Coupe drives as well as any and better than most. I would have no hesitation taking it from coast to coast or say from London to Rome. That would be the kind of grand adventure that John Anstey had in mind 45 years ago when he envisioned building this truly unique GT.

The first thing that comes to mind when viewing the Jaguar Bertone Pirana Coupe is, “I've seen that look before.” And thinking it over, it usually results in the assessment that the Pirana bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1968-1980 Lamborghini Espada, another car penned by Marcello Gandini.

But if one looks at the Pirana in the context of its time, it is in reality the transition step between two Gandini-designed Lamborghinis, the previously mentioned Espada, and the Marzal, which premiered at the 1967 Geneva Auto Show. It was the Marzal that set in motion John Anstey's quest to design and build the Pirana as The Telegraph Magazine's ideal car.

The Marzal's packaging was unique in that Gandini designed a 2+2 GT with half of the Miura's V12 set transversely behind the back seat. The engine, a two-litre, 175-horsepower inline six makes a great deal of sense when you think about it (no bank of cylinders nestled up against the bulkhead separating the interior from the engine compartment), much more than any V-engine design.

As a concept, the most interesting design element was the use gull wing doors that featured almost 50ft² of glass glazing. Strip away the gull wing doors and the unusual glazing scheme, and the proportions and especially the sheet metal forward of the A-pillars clearly influenced both the Pirana and Espada that followed. A close look at the sheet metal aft of the doors shows obvious Miura influences.

Over the years, like the Pirana, the Marzal kept a relatively low profile. One appearance was soon after the 1967 Geneva Show when it served as the pace car for the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, driven by Princess Grace and Prince Rainier. It next appeared at the 1996 Concorso Italiano after which it returned to the Bertone Design Study Museum in Italy. In 2011 it, along with several other Bertone concepts were offered for sale at the Villa d'Este by RM Auctions. The Marzal moved on to a new owner for 1.3 million Euros.

lamborghini espada

The Marzal concept from 1967