Created by the design wunderkind Franco Scaglione for Bertone, the visionary B.A.T. cars disrupted 1950s automotive culture and became undisputed icons of twentieth-century design. The cars marked a turning point in automotive history. They were game changers much like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Atomium in Brussels and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York, each of which changed our ideas of what a building could be. They’re comparable to Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, René Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe and Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which fundamentally transformed our notion of art. And they can be likened to Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair, the de Havilland Comet, Marc Newson’s Lockheed Lounge and Apple’s iPhone with their enduring impact on the world of design.

Jan Baedeker
Editor-in-Chief