The BMW “Spicup” or Spider-Coupe

GREEN ICON -This brash-looking car had long been given up for lost. It was only last year that was it rediscovered by a private collector in a barn in Holland. But it was undeniably the worse for wear. Orangey-red paint tried valiantly but in vain to hold the crumbling body together, the underpinnings could only be guessed at, and the green leather seats had been given a coat of black paint. It took around 2,000 hours to fully restore this one-off model, created by Turin stylist and coachbuilder Giuseppe Bertone in 1969 for the Geneva Salon. An open car, it lent itself to being turned into a coupé. Which also explains the name Spicup – a portmanteau of Spider and Coupé. The front end with its half-hidden headlamp eyes is typical of many Bertone designs. The designer cleverly integrated the obligatory BMW kidney grille into the Spicup, while the side contour line is reminiscent of the timelessly beautiful design of Count Goertz’s BMW 507. For the sliding top as well, Bertone came up with a neat solution: when opened, it completely disappears in the rollbars. The chassis, incidentally, was that of a BMW 2500 which Bertone cut from 269 to 234 cm, and the 170 hp engine hailed from a BMW 2800.