The Chevrolet Testudo is a

concept car A concept car (also known as a concept vehicle, show vehicle or prototype) is a car made to showcase new styling and/or new technology. They are often exhibited at motor shows to gauge customer reaction to new and radical designs which may or ...

built by

Bertone Bertone is an Italian surname meaning "descendant of Roberto". Notable people with the surname include: * Alicia Bertone, American academic, researcher, and veterinary surgeon * Catherine Bertone (born 1972), Turkish-born female Italian marathon r ...

on a modified

Chevrolet Corvair The Chevrolet Corvair is a compact car manufactured by Chevrolet for model years 1960–1969 in two generations. A response to the Volkswagen Beetle, it remains the only American-designed, mass-produced passenger car with a rear-mounted, air- ...

Monza platform. The name comes from the Latin word for "Turtle". The car debuted at the 1963 Geneva Motor Show.

History

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

(GM) Vice President of Styling Bill Mitchell wanted to promote Corvair sales in Europe using locally styled versions. At least two major Italian

Carrozzeria A coachbuilder or body-maker is someone who manufactures bodies for passenger-carrying vehicles.Construction has always been a skilled trade requiring a relatively lightweight product with sufficient strength. The manufacture of necessarily ...

showed designs for the Corvair using cars believed to have been supplied directly from GM. Pininfarina showed the first iteration of their ''Corvair Speciale'' as early as 1960. In late 1962 a car arrived at Bertone. The

Vehicle Identification Number A vehicle identification number (VIN) (also called a chassis number or frame number) is a unique code, including a serial number, used by the automotive industry to identify individual motor vehicles, towed vehicles, motorcycles, scooters ...

(VIN) attributed to the finished concept - 20927W207657 - indicates that it started out as a 1962 Corvair 900 (Monza)

coupe A coupe or coupé (, ) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and two doors. The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the French past parti ...

built in the Willow Run plant. At Bertone the Corvair's

unibody A vehicle frame, also historically known as its '' chassis'', is the main supporting structure of a motor vehicle to which all other components are attached, comparable to the skeleton of an organism. Until the 1930s, virtually every car ha ...

chassis was shortened, reducing the wheelbase from the of the original Corvair to . Extra reinforcement was added. The car's design was done by

Giorgetto Giugiaro Giorgetto Giugiaro (; born 7 August 1938) is an Italian automotive designer. He has worked on supercars and popular everyday vehicles. He was born in Garessio, Cuneo, Piedmont. Giugiaro was named Car Designer of the Century in 1999 and inducted ...

, who was then at Bertone. He said that his goal was to create a shape that merged the two typical views of a car; the plan view and the side elevation. He wanted a shape that was a smooth visual blending of the two. Work on the car was completed in two months. The Testudo was driven to Geneva by

Nuccio Bertone Giuseppe Bertone, also called "Nuccio", (4 July 1914, in Turin – 26 February 1997, in Turin) was an automobile designer and constructor. He took over Carrozzeria Bertone from his father, Giovanni after World War II, growing the small business t ...

, where it debuted at the 1963 Geneva Motor show. Following the show it was driven back to Turin by Giugiaro. In 1965 the Testudo was involved in an accident while shooting a promotional film for Shell. This took place on the Parabolica corner on the

Monza circuit The Monza Circuit ( it, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, , National Automobile Racetrack of Monza) is a race track near the city of Monza, north of Milan, in Italy. Built in 1922, it was the world's third purpose-built motor racing circuit after ...

. The other car involved was also a Bertone concept car; the Alfa Romeo Canguro. The Testudo suffered significant damage, and as Bertone was not willing to divert funds to pay for repairs, the damaged car was left to sit for several years. In 1974 the still-damaged car was offered for sale at an asking price of US$10,000 but remained unsold. It finally underwent a complete restoration in the early 1990s under the direction of Luciano d'Ambrosio, Bertone's new chief designer. The restored Testudo was shown at the 1996

Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is an automotive charitable event held each year on the Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. It is widely considered the pinnacle event of its kind and one of the most prestigious car events in ...

. The Testudo influenced later Bertone designs like the

Lamborghini Miura The Lamborghini Miura is a sports car produced by Italian automaker Lamborghini between 1966 and 1973. The car was the first supercar with a rear mid-engined two-seat layout, although the concept was first seen in a production road car with Ren ...

Alfa Romeo Montreal The Alfa Romeo Montreal is a 2+2 coupé sports car produced by the Italian manufacturer Alfa Romeo from 1970 to 1977. Concept car The Alfa Romeo Montreal was introduced as a concept car in 1967 at Expo 67, held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Ori ...

, and

Fiat 850 Spider The Fiat 850 (''Tipo 100G'') is a small rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive car manufactured and marketed by Italian car manufacturer Fiat from 1964 to 1973. History Overview Its technical design was an evolution of the successful Fiat 600. The inter ...

. The

Ferrari Daytona The Ferrari Daytona, officially designated the Ferrari 365 GTB/4, is a two-seat grand tourer by Ferrari from 1968 to 1973. It was introduced at the Paris Auto Salon in 1968 to replace the 275 GTB/4, and featured the 275's Colombo V12 bored ...

of 1968 is said to reference the style of the Testudo. Designer

Dick Teague Richard Arthur Teague (December 26, 1923 – May 5, 1991) was an American industrial designer in the North American automotive industry. He held automotive design positions at General Motors, Packard, and Chrysler before becoming Vice President o ...

drew inspiration from the Testudo when shaping the 1975

AMC Pacer The AMC Pacer is a two-door compact car produced in the United States by American Motors Corporation (AMC) from the 1975 through the 1980 model years. The Pacer was also made in Mexico by Vehículos Automotores Mexicanos (VAM) from 1976 until 1 ...

. Designer Anatole "Tony" Lapine also said that the Testudo influenced his work on the Porsche 928 for 1977. Giugiaro says it was the first car he was ever given a free hand to design. He asked to have the car when he departed Bertone, but his request was turned down. Giugiaro revisited the tilting canopy concept in 2018 for the design of the GFG Sibylla. The Testudo appeared together with the Sibylla at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show on March 6. On 21 May 2011 RM Sotheby's offered the Testudo for sale at the Villa d'Este at Lake Como. The car sold for €336,000.

Technical features

Suspension

The running gear of the original Corvair was retained. The front suspension comprised an upper A-arm and two-piece lower A-arm with coil springs and hydraulic shock-absorbers mounted to a unitized subframe. An anti-roll bar was fitted at the front. The rear suspension was a

swing axle A swing axle is a simple type of independent (rear wheel) suspension designed and patented by Edmund Rumpler in 1903. This was a revolutionary invention in automotive suspension, allowing driven (powered) wheels to follow uneven road surfaces i ...

system made up of semi-trailing arms with coil springs and hydraulic shock absorbers mounted to a rear subframe, with drive taken from the transaxle to the wheel hubs through half-shafts that had a universal joint on their inboard ends and a rigid connection at the outboard ends.

Engine and transmission

Powering the Testudo was the rear-mounted

Chevrolet Turbo-Air 6 engine The Chevrolet Turbo-Air 6 is a flat-six air-cooled automobile engine developed by General Motors (GM) in the late 1950s for use in the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair of the 1960s. It was used in the entire Corvair line, as well as a wide variety ...

that came with the Corvair. This was an

air-cooled Air-cooled engines rely on the circulation of air directly over heat dissipation fins or hot areas of the engine to cool them in order to keep the engine within operating temperatures. In all combustion engines, a great percentage of the heat ge ...

six-cylinder horizontally-opposed

boxer engine A flat engine is a piston engine where the cylinders are located on either side of a central crankshaft. Flat engines are also known as horizontally opposed engines, however this is distinct from the less common opposed-piston engine design, ...

with a single camshaft in the block and

overhead valves An overhead valve (OHV) engine, sometimes called a ''pushrod engine'', is a piston engine whose valves are located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier flathead engines, where the valves were located bel ...

with two valves per cylinder. The cylinder block and heads were aluminum, but the cylinder barrels were iron. Descriptions of the particular engine used in the Testudo range from an version to a version. The engine code on the car sold by RM Sothebys was "TO213YN". Assuming this was the original engine, that code indicates a High Performance Engine (HPE) making built in the Tonawanda plant on February 13. The engine code also indicates that the engine was paired with a

manual transmission A manual transmission (MT), also known as manual gearbox, standard transmission (in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States), or stick shift (in the United States), is a multi-speed motor vehicle transmission (mechanics), transmission ...

. The transmission in the Testudo was the 4-speed unit with floor shift offered on the Corvair Monza.

Body

The car's shape was that of a long-nosed

berlinetta A berlinetta (from it, berlinetta; ) is a sports coupé, typically with two seats but also including 2+2 cars. The original meaning for ''berlinetta'' in Italian is “little saloon”. Introduced in the 1930s, the term was popularised by Ferr ...

. The bodywork was executed in thick steel, with the hood and some other panels of aluminum. Originally painted a metallic silver, it was later changed to pearlescent white. A prominent horizontal body line midway up the side of the car visually divided the body into an upper and lower half. This was evocative of a turtle's shell, and was reflected in the car's name as well as in the turtle emblem on the rear deck. The interior of the car was accessed through a single, front-hinged

canopy Canopy may refer to: Plants * Canopy (biology), aboveground portion of plant community or crop (including forests) * Canopy (grape), aboveground portion of grapes Religion and ceremonies * Baldachin or canopy of state, typically placed over an a ...

with a windscreen of safety glass. The wrap-around canopy did not include A-pillars. The top of the canopy was capped by a roof panel of tinted

Plexiglas Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite, ...

, and behind that was a large hinged hatch, also with a large curved tinted Plexiglas panel, over the storage compartment. Air intakes for the engine compartment were located on the sides just behind the canopy in what would normally be the leading edges of the B-pillar, a feature that would also be used later on the Miura. The taillights were made of polycarbonate — the first such application of the material. The lights were integrated into the rear bumper's shape so as to not disrupt the rear body lines. The exposed headlamps rotated up and forward to a vertical position when needed and then folded back flush with the bodywork when not in use, another feature that would appear on the Miura.

Interior

The interior of the car held two seats. Ahead of the driver was a rectangular steering wheel with rounded corners. The car's instrument panel was an "L"-shape rotated 180° with the instruments arranged down the long centre leg. Switchgear was placed on the horizontal portion ahead of the driver.