Bertone's bet – the Arnolt MG TD

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It was a tough time for the traditional coachwork companies in the immediate post-WW2 era. In a short period of time almost every major manufacturer went from tried and tested separate chassis to complicated unitary construction. In Italy, the old guard of respected coachbuilders were folding on an almost daily basis.

Luckily, a few of the more traditional car manufacturers were persevering with the old separate chassis construction. MG were one, and it was their TD model that Nuccio Bertone, head of the eponymous Turin carrozzeria, chose as the basis of his showpiece for the 1952 Salon del Automobile. With his firm facing ruin, he took a huge gamble and gave the task of clothing the cars to a then-unknown young stylist, Franco Scaglione. The gamble paid off, and the transformation from stuffy British roadster to sleek Italian GT was dramatic.

In an amazing stroke of luck, passing by Bertone's stand at the car's launch at the show was none other than 'Wacky' Arnolt, the larger-than-life American businessman and car lover who was searching for a sports car to launch in the US market under his own name. He fell for Bertone's shapely MG and immediately ordered 200 replicas. These 'Arnolt-MGs' kick-started a fruitful relationship between Arnolt and Bertone that saw the American's grand ideas and generous custom almost single-handedly save the ailing Turin firm.

You can read PreWarCar correspondent Jeroen Booij's retelling of the full story of the Anglo-Italian-American hybrid in the latest issue of The Automobile, which is out now  

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