Nuccio Bertone probably would have chosen his favourite colour, green – or, to be more precise, the acid green used for a number of his most important concepts – for this car, especially given that its name Mantide means \u2018praying mantis\u2019. Jason Castriota, the new head of design at Stile Bertone since December last year, however, preferred red – not a Ferrari or Alfa red, though, but a much deeper red, \u201cto emphasise the Italian essence and the very race-car like character of this supercar, which has an American heart but has been dressed by an Italian tailor\u201d. The American heart he speaks of comes from the Corvette ZR1: a supercharged 6.2 litre V8 producing 638 hp, which propels the car from 0 to 100 Km\/h in just 3.2 seconds, to a top speed of 351 Km\/h, and on to secure the world\u2019s fastest lap time ever recorded by a production car at the N\u00fcrburgring (7 min. 26.4 sec). The Bertone skin has turned it into a truly extreme sports car, weighing 100 Kg less than the original car thanks to a liberal use of carbon fibre, with a Cd reduced by 25% from 0.38 to 0.298 and 30% more downforce, distributed equally over the front and rear axles.<\/p>\n
The Mantide is an incredible supercar, in true Bertone style. The fact that it has been created in these troubled times is significant: while Carrozzeria Bertone is struggling to survive, Stile Bertone, a separate entity currently managed by Marie-Jeanne Bertone (vice president) and Teresio Gaudio (managing director), is proving to be a healthy and competitive company. In this perspective, the Mantide is an act of courage and hope by the company\u2019s current management, which just happened to coincide with a personal dream of Castriota\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The article continues in Auto & Design no. 177<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>[images picture_size=”fixed” hover_type=”none” autoplay=”no” columns=”5″ column_spacing=”13″ scroll_items=”” show_nav=”yes” mouse_scroll=”no” border=”yes” lightbox=”yes” class=”” id=””][image link=”” linktarget=”_self” image=”http:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/1908200901_Bertone_Mantide-300×230.jpg” alt=””][image link=”” linktarget=”_self” image=”http:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/1908200902_Bertone_Mantide-300×242.jpg” alt=””][image link=”” linktarget=”_self” image=”http:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/1908200903_Bertone_Mantide-300×208.jpg” alt=””][\/images]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [images picture_size=”fixed” hover_type=”none” autoplay=”no” columns=”5″ column_spacing=”13″ scroll_items=”” show_nav=”yes” mouse_scroll=”no” border=”yes” lightbox=”yes” class=”” id=””][image link=”” linktarget=”_self” image=”http:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/1908200901_Bertone_Mantide-300×230.jpg” alt=””][image link=”” linktarget=”_self” image=”http:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/1908200902_Bertone_Mantide-300×242.jpg” alt=””][image link=”” linktarget=”_self” image=”http:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/1908200903_Bertone_Mantide-300×208.jpg” alt=””][\/images]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-design-story-en"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 16:24:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}