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Bertone goes bust

The famous Italian coachbuilder and designer Bertone may be on its deathbed. The company that penned the beautiful shape of the Lamborghini Miura has been facing financial hardships for months, and Autocar is reporting that the Turin, Italy firm has just declared bankruptcy. The last we heard from Bertone, it was showing the Jet 2+2 station wagon based on an Aston Martin Rapide at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. The Turin-based carrozzeria became famous for its wild designs like the BMW Spicup concept, Lancia Stratos and the initial shape of the Lamborghini Countach. In recent years, it had been limited to creating mostly one-off vehicles. The company has slowly been shrinking recently. It sold its small factory to Fiat a few years go and let go of 165 employees and 10 interns in December. Bertone has been shopping itself in hopes of finding a new owner. According to PistonHeads, even with the money problems, the business generated 20-million euros ($27.9 million) in revenue in 2013 and has been working on projects in China. A Turkish firm was rumored to be interested in buying it for just $2.7 million, and GT Spirit claims that there are also seven Italian companies potentially interested in purchasing it. Bertone has a long and proud automotive history, and it wouldn't be surprising if it were bought just for the value of the brand – perhaps we haven't seen the last of its stylized B logo. Featured Gallery Bertone Jet 2+2: Geneva 2013 View 10 Photos News Source: Autocar via Pistonheads, GTSpiritImage Credit: Copyright 2014 Drew Phillips / AOL Design/Style Hirings/Firings/Layoffs Plants/Manufacturing BMW Lamborghini Lancia Concept Cars Luxury Special and Limited Editions Performance Classics bertone lamborghini miura Lamborghini Countach

We visit the Lamborghini Museum at company HQ in Sant'Agata

Last week, Lamborghini invited us to stop by its Sant'Agata Bolognese headquarters to have a look around the factory and pick up a few technical tidbits about its new Huracán LP 610-4. It won't surprise you to learn this, but Lambo's foyer is pretty rad.
Rather than front its offices and factory with a gift shop and a reception desk, Lamborghini puts its amazing heritage on full display by offering up the corporate museum as a first impression to visitors. We had coffee in the morning and lunch after the press conference in this space, with stunning Italian concept cars and production models serving as an impressive backdrop to it all. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to share the Lamborghini collection with exotic-car crazed Autoblog readers (you know who you are), we did our best to capture everything we saw in the gallery here.
With some variation, the museum's two floors are separated by vintage: older models downstairs and newer up. When you walk through the front door, you're flanked by two of the coolest Lamborghinis in the marque's impressive history: a 350 GT to the left and a perfectly green Countach LP 400 on the right. Perhaps our favorite car in the whole joint, the Countach's Bertone body is still almost impossible to believe. Up close, we're reminded how design-driven this car is; the seats are so far inboard from the scissor doors that it's difficult to imagine that engineers ever agreed that the shape was a feasible one for production or actual driving.

Harry Metcalfe shows off his Lamborghini Countach

Harry Metcalfe may no longer be editing the Evo magazine he founded, but that doesn't mean he doesn't still have octane pumping through his veins – or that he isn't still producing world-class automotive content. In this latest video released on his YouTube channel Harry's Garage, Metcalfe shows off is 1987 Lamborghini Countach 5000 Quattrovalvole. The precursor of today's Aventador, the Countach was Sant'Agata's longest-serving mid-engined twelve-cylinder supercar, remaining in production from 1974 (after the Miura was discontinued) until 1990 (when the Diablo replaced it), and earned its place of prominence on the walls of so many childhood bedrooms. Metcalfe's was a later model from 1987 – the London Motor Show car from that year, in fact – packing the enlarged 5.2-liter V12 with the four-valve heads, those fantastical air vents and that giant rear wing. Harry even had the legendary Valentino Balboni to sign the interior. The video is a full half-hour long, but even if you've only got a few minutes, it's worth watching just the beginning to hear it starting up.