Imagine strolling into a 1970 auto show and coming face-to-future with a vehicle so low and sharp it could slice the bell-bottoms right off your leisure suit. In the 1970s, Italian design houses like Pininfarina, Bertone, Ghia, and Italdesign were in a feverish race to envision the car of tomorrow – and apparently, tomorrow was shaped like a doorstop. These concept cars took the idea of “cutting edge” quite literally, sporting bodywork drawn with more triangles than a geometry textbook. Back then, these wild wedges looked like the year 2000 on wheels; today, they look as ’70s as polyester leisure suits and feathered Farrah Fawcett hair. Yet for a glorious moment in time, the world’s car designers wore out their straight-edges and created rolling sci-fi sculptures that captured the cultural zeitgeist. This article takes a nostalgic (and slightly humorous) ride through the wedge design revolution – a futurist design trend that turned sports cars into spacecraft, influenced automotive aesthetics and pop culture, and left a sharp-edged legacy on wheels.
The Rise of the Wedge: Futurism Meets Function
By the late 1960s, the age of curvy, voluptuous sports cars was coming to an abrupt point – literally. A new design philosophy was emerging, one that swapped the swooping fenders of the past for flat planes and acute angles. This “wedge” design language hit the scene like a spaceship landing at a Woodstock-era love-in. Many credit its formal arrival to 1968 at the Paris Motor Show, when Bertone unveiled the radical Alfa Romeo Carabo concept. Penned by a young Marcello Gandini, the Carabo made a “sharp-edged break” from the notion that sports cars had to be all flowing curves. Instead, it was low, flat, and triangular – looking more like an F-117 stealth fighter (avant la lettre) than a Ferrari 250 GTO. In fact, the Carabo’s dagger-like profile was no mere styling stunt; it reflected contemporary thinking in aerodynamics: get the nose as low as possible to prevent lift, and rake the windshield sharply to create downforce that pushes the car into the road. This was form a
Why the obsession with wedges? The late ’60s and early ’70s were drenched in futurism. The space race was in full swing, jet fighters ruled the skies, and society was mesmerized by the idea of Tomorrow. Car designers, never slow to spot a trend, figured if low and flat worked for rockets and racecars, it would work for road cars too. On the track, engineers had learned that a wedge-shaped nose helped balance the huge rear wings providing downforce; the iconic Lotus 56 turbine Indy car of 1968 proved the point by sporting a true wedge profile. Translated to street machines, a wedge shape minimized frontal area and let air flow smoothly over the car, reducing drag. In an era facing oil crises and demanding efficiency, this was a big deal. As one design chronicler notes, “wedge design became popular for being a natural solution” – it made cars slippery through the air when lightweight materials and high-tech aero aids were still unavailable. In short, the wedge was the shape of the future: part engineering experiment, part visual manifesto
Crucially, the Italians led this wedge revolution. The famed carrozzeria – Bertone, Pininfarina, Italdesign, Ghia – were already renowned for the sensual Italian sports cars of the 1950s and ’60s. Now they reinvented Italian design with an edgy new vocabulary. The best way to introduce such wild new ideas was through concept cars: those one-off “dream machines” with no obligations to practicality or production. Car companies turned their designers loose to build futuristic statements unconstrained by things like cost, safety, or the fact that normal humans have to fit inside. The resulting prototypes were rolling art – outrageous, impractical, and utterly inspiring. Let’s explore how each of Italy’s major design houses interpreted the wedge theme and pushed the envelope of automotive design (often literally, into a triangular shape), all while winking at a culture that was hungry for the future.
Bertone: The Cutting Edge of Creativity
If one company can be crowned king of the wedge era, it’s Bertone. As a contemporary observer quipped, “Bertone were the undisputed kings of wedge design.” With creations like the Alfa Romeo Carabo and Lancia Stratos Zero, this Turin-based studio turned the wedge into a bold new reference point in modern art and car design. Under design maestro Marcello Gandini, Bertone produced concept cars so extreme they made ordinary supercars look positively stodgy. It all started with the 1968 Carabo, that low-slung, emerald-green wonder that seemed to have beamed down from Mars. The Carabo (named after an iridescent green beetle, Carabidae, for its shimmering color) landed like an alien spaceship at the Paris show and left the automotive world “absolutely gobsmacked” . At just 990 mm tall – about shoulder height to a grasshopper – and with a ground clearance of only 99 mm, the Carabo practically hugged the pavement. Its wedge profile was so extreme that at first glance it hardly looked road-legal. Gandini even gave it outrageous scissor doors (the first ever), hinging upward like the wings of an exotic insect – pure theater that Lamborghini would later adopt for its flagship Countach. In one fell swoop, the Carabo established every ingredient of wedge-era cool: a nose like a knife blade, a cockpit slung low between raised fender lines, a tail abrupt and flat, and details like periscopic mirrors and louvers that made it clear this machine was more spaceship than sedan.
Bertone followed up this act with an even more radical show-stopper: the Lancia Stratos HF Zero in 1970. Often called “the ultimate wedge”, the Stratos Zero looked like a rolling piece of modern sculpture – or perhaps a doorstop designed by aliens with a penchant for origami. Painted in vivid metallic orange, it was essentially a flat wedge slice on wheels, sharp angles and a minimalist design language unlike anything seen before. At a mere 33 inches tall, the Stratos Zero was so low that the driver entered by opening the windshield upward and crawling in. Once inside, you’d find yourself almost lying on your back, peering out a sharply raked windscreen that also formed the car’s hood. It was built on a Lancia Fulvia V4 engine and chassis (albeit massively shortened), so it was not just a styling exercise but a running vehicle – one that could drive, albeit with the driver’s head at wheel-hub height! The Stratos Zero proved that Gandini’s wedge obsession wasn’t just a one-hit wonder; it revolutionized automotive design, inspiring countless cars to come with its pure triangular profile. In fact, the influence was so strong that Lancia commissioned Bertone to develop a more practical rally car inspired by the Zero – this became the production Lancia Stratos HF (1973), a rally legend that toned down the craziness just enough to win championships while still looking like a Star Wars prop. Bertone’s wedges didn’t stop there: Gandini’s 1971 Lamborghini Countach prototype took the wedge concept to the next level, marrying it with a brawny V12 and creating a poster icon for the ages. The Countach’s production version (from 1974 onward) proved that a wild wedge could indeed hit the road, albeit with compromises (hello, giant rear wing and fender flares) to appease regulations. By the mid-1970s, Bertone even toyed with smaller wedges, like the 1969 Autobianchi A112 Runabout concept – basically a speedboat-themed wedge that would morph into the Fiat X1/9 sports car. From tiny runabouts to V12 supercars, Bertone’s wedge era portfolio was nothing short of astonishing. The studio’s work “came to represent a new point of reference in modern art as well as on the international car design scene” – these cars were not just transportation, they were exhibits on wheels, heralding a new design age with a big, triangular exclamation point.
Pininfarina: Sculpting the Space-Age Wedge
Bertone may have owned “edgy,” but Pininfarina wasn’t about to be left behind in the futurism race. Long known for silky, voluptuous Ferrari bodies, Pininfarina pivoted sharply (pun intended) into the wedge game and delivered one of the most shocking concept cars of all time: the 1970 Ferrari 512S Modulo. If the Stratos Zero was a spaceship, the Modulo was a UFO – a saucer on wheels – and it looked ready to abduct some unwitting pedestrians. Designed by Paolo Martin of Pininfarina, the Modulo was a radical departure from any previous automotive design, even in the zany world of concept cars. It sat impossibly low and flat, with a completely smooth nose and covered wheels that made it seem like it was gliding above the ground. The cockpit was an enclosed bubble canopy – an all-glass dome that slid forward to allow entry, as if inviting two astronauts into a lunar module (hence the name). Painted in a stark white with black accents, the Modulo had a futuristic, almost antiseptic look, broken only by a series of vented slots over the rear engine cover that resembled the cooling fins of a spacecraft.
Underneath that sci-fi exterior, the Modulo was hiding serious firepower: it was built on a Ferrari 512 S endurance race car chassis and packed a mid-mounted 5.0-liter V12 engine good for about 550 horsepower. In theory, it could reach 220+ mph, though we suspect few test drivers were eager to prove it given the Modulo’s experimental nature (and the challenge of seeing out of the tiny slit-like windshield). Pininfarina unveiled this radical machine at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show, where it promptly won multiple design awards and dropped jaws to the floor. One journalist at the time likened it to “a visiting spacecraft among mere automobiles.” The Modulo’s design was incredibly clean: a pure geometric statement of wedge forms, circles (the wheel covers), and straight lines. This purity was intentional – Pininfarina wanted to showcase an advanced design without any ornament, almost a minimalist wedge philosophy. Despite its extreme looks, the Modulo was fully engineered; it even featured hydraulic suspension to lift the car a few inches for actually driving around, proving Pininfarina’s concept had some functional thought behind the flash.
The influence of the Modulo was immense. It showed that Italy’s coachbuilders could do more than sexy curves – they could do space-age avant-garde. The Modulo’s “radical design and advanced engineering inspired countless other designs in the years to come”, and it remains “one of the most important concept cars ever built”, as revered today as it was in 1970. Pininfarina followed up with other wedge experiments (like the Alfa Romeo 33 Cuneo and the Ferrari 512S Speciale), but the Modulo remains its wedge masterpiece. It was a design so ahead of its time that even decades later, it appears in video games and movies as shorthand for “futuristic supercar.” In a way, Pininfarina’s approach to the wedge was more artistic and holistic compared to Bertone’s ultra-aggressive wedges. The Modulo was less about adding wings and protrusions (it actually hid many mechanical elements for a smooth look) and more about a seamless geometric form. If Bertone’s wedges were rock ’n’ roll – loud, brash, and in your face – the Pininfarina Modulo was more like avant-garde art-rock: cerebral, experimental, but no less wild when it hit the stage. And yes, it proved that even Ferrari’s design house could have a sense of humor about the future: after all, this is a car that one observer joked looked like “a flying saucer that made a wrong turn and ended up in Turin.”
Italdesign: Angular Innovation Goes Mainstream
Meanwhile in Turin, a designer named Giorgetto Giugiaro was also exploring the wedge – and he would become the man who brought these edgy designs to the masses. Giugiaro had just founded Italdesign in 1968 after stints at Bertone and Ghia, and his very first project was a wedge concept car: the Bizzarrini Manta (1968). Debuting just weeks after the Carabo, the Manta was Giugiaro’s own take on the wedge genre – a low, wide machine with a one-piece windshield/roof and a peculiar three-seat layout (driver in the center) under a glass canopy (Giugiaro’s trademark design element). If nothing else, it proved the wedge craze had multiple fathers at the same time. Over the next few years, Giugiaro and Italdesign churned out a series of striking wedge-shaped prototypes for various automakers. Notably, the 1970 Porsche Tapiro was a Giugiaro design that wowed the Turin Motor Show with its sharp lines. It featured a low, angular nose and a distinctive wraparound windshield, and was based on a humble Porsche 914 chassis – showing Giugiaro’s knack for blending exotic looks with production underpinnings. The Tapiro even had dramatic gull-wing doors cut into its trapezoidal body. Though it never saw production (in fact, the only prototype was famously destroyed in a fire), the design “inspired countless other designs” and proved that even staid Porsche could envision a wedgy future.
Giugiaro’s wedge pièce de résistance came in 1972 with the Maserati Boomerang. The Boomerang was an extreme take on the angular supercar, looking like it was carved with a samurai sword from a solid block of metal. It sat on a Maserati Bora chassis (so it had a 310 hp V8 and was fully functional) and was unveiled at the Geneva Auto Show. The Boomerang took the wedge concept to new heights (or lows, literally) – its roofline was a flat plane just barely a meter off the ground, and the windshield was so steeply raked it seemed almost horizontal. The car had an almost polygonal appearance, with every corner coming to a point. Inside, it had one of the most bizarre dashboards of the era: all the gauges clustered in the center of the steering wheel. The Boomerang looked outrageous from any angle, like a concept sketch that escaped the paper. It was Giugiaro’s rolling manifesto of the wedge credo.
What sets Italdesign apart is that Giugiaro didn’t stop at show cars – he translated the wedge language into production cars that people could actually buy (and drive without needing a chiropractic adjustment). As a period analysis noted, no other designer used the wedge form as broadly as Giugiaro, who applied it to everything from supercars to hatchbacks. Case in point: Giugiaro’s 1972 Lotus Esprit concept (initially shown as the Lotus “Silver Car” or M70) became a production reality by 1976, with surprisingly few changes. The Lotus Esprit was essentially a wedge on wheels for the road – sharp, straight lines, low nose, pop-up headlights – and it went on to be an icon of the late ’70s and ’80s (James Bond even drove one underwater). Likewise, Giugiaro’s influence touched more everyday cars: the Volkswagen Scirocco coupe and Golf Mk1 (both early ’70s Giugiaro designs) introduced crisp edges and wedge-like forward-sloping stances to the mass market, albeit in diluted form. It took less than a decade for Giugiaro’s wedge shapes to enter production en masse, proving that the wedge wasn’t just a designers’ inside joke – it had real-world legs. Italdesign even experimented with applying wedge principles to unusual formats, like a 1978 Lancia Megagamma concept (a sort of one-box MPV with a wedgy nose) and the 1976 Alfa Romeo New York Taxi concept, which humorously tried to make a van look cool and angular. Giugiaro’s genius was in tempering the wedge aesthetic to suit each project: his designs were dramatic but often feasible. Thus, while Bertone and Pininfarina built the wild poster cars, Giugiaro actually influenced the cars in people’s garages. Without his wedge concepts, production icons like the BMW M1 and DeLorean DMC-12 (both of which he designed in the late ’70s) or the Lotus Esprit might never have existed. An industry writer summed it up well: Giugiaro’s wedge cars “brought crisp body lines and a dramatic slope to the car design world,” ushering in a new aesthetic that defined the look of a generation.
Ghia: Wedges with an American Twist
Not to be overlooked is Ghia, the Italian coachbuilder that often served as a bridge between Italian design and American automakers. Ghia’s approach to the wedge was a bit different, infusing some transatlantic flair into the mix. In 1969, Ghia (under the direction of designer Tom Tjaarda) created the Lancia Fulvia HF Competizione prototype – a one-off concept intended to entice Ford into buying Lancia at the time. This sleek yellow coupe sported a low, wedged nose and pop-up headlights, and it “pointed the way to the ’70s wedge styling,” featuring innovations like a retractable rear spoiler and folding hidden headlamps. In many ways, it was a transitional design: not as extreme as the Carabo, but clearly moving away from the past and foreshadowing the sharp angles to come. While Ford’s buyout of Lancia never happened, the Fulvia Competizione proved Ghia could do edgy modernism too – it was an “interesting piece of Italian automotive history” that signaled the wedge revolution was in full swing on all fronts.
Ghia’s most famous wedge-shaped effort, however, arrived on the production stage. In the early ’70s, Ghia was owned by Alejandro de Tomaso and closely collaborating with Ford. The result was the De Tomaso Pantera (1971), a mid-engine V8 supercar with bodywork penned by Tjaarda at Ghia. The Pantera wasn’t a concept car per se – it was sold to the public – but it followed the burgeoning wedge trend for angular coachwork. Compared to a curvy ’60s Ferrari, the Pantera’s shape was downright futuristic: a pointed nose, crisp lines along the flanks, and a chopped-off tail housing a roaring Ford V8. It was like a wedge concept car that had miraculously made it past the prototype stage and into showrooms. American buyers in Lincoln-Mercury dealerships suddenly had access to an Italian wedge rocket, and over 7,000 Panteras were sold through the 1970s. The success of the Pantera showed that the wedge style had real appeal – it was aggressive and modern, and it made the driver look ready to blast off to Alpha Centauri (even if they were just blasting down I-5). Ghia’s work on the Pantera and earlier on the De Tomaso Mangusta (1967, another low, wedge-shaped coupe) gave it credentials in the wedge club. In fact, some historians note that the Mangusta and Pantera’s styling helped set the stage for Gandini and others – they were part of the progression toward wedge shapes, blending Italian mid-engine layouts with edgy lines.
As the 1970s progressed, Ghia continued to inject wedge futurism into American concept cars. A prime example is the series of Ford “Probe” concepts. The Ford Probe I (1979) was built by Ghia as a showcase of Ford’s aerospace-inspired design, and it looked like something out of Battlestar Galactica. With a ultra-sleek front end and a bubble canopy roof, the Probe I was a “striking wedge-shaped marvel designed to exemplify Ford’s aerodynamic expertise” . Its wedge nose was no mere styling gimmick – it was honed in the wind tunnel, achieving a drag coefficient 37% lower than typical sports cars of the day. This was the wedge concept taken to its logical conclusion: not just for show, but to cheat the wind in an era newly obsessed with fuel efficiency. The Probe I even had rear wheelskirts and a turbocharged engine tucked in, proving wedges could be about economy as much as extravagance. Ford and Ghia unveiled it at the ’79 Frankfurt Auto Show, just squeaking in before the ’80s, and it became a symbol of “forward-thinking design philosophy” at Ford. While the Probe concepts eventually led to the more mundane Ford Probe production car in the late ’80s, the original Ghia-built prototypes were pure futuristic fantasy. It’s a bit of irony that the Probe I itself met a dramatic end – it was tragically destroyed in a trailer fire in 2024 while returning from a Concours event, as if fate wanted to add one more dramatic chapter to wedge car lore. Ghia’s contributions might be less famous than Bertone’s or Pininfarina’s, but they demonstrate how pervasive the wedge trend was: even the transatlantic automotive world embraced it, from one-off Italian prototypes to American show cars and production hybrids. The angled and edgy automobiles of futuristic design had truly been brought to the present, as one author noted of wedge cars, and Ghia played a key part in that union of Italian style and global automotive culture.
Legacy: From Disco Dreams to Modern Machines
The wedge era of the 1970s may have been a short-lived supernova – by the mid-1980s, automotive fashions shifted to softer forms – but its impact on car design and culture was profound. For a start, the wedge-shaped concepts directly inspired a generation of production cars. Without the Carabo and Stratos Zero, there likely would be no Lamborghini Countach – the most poster-worthy wedge supercar of all time, which debuted in prototype form in 1971 and went on to define exotic cars of the ’80s. The Lancia Stratos HF (the rally car) was born from Bertone’s wedge experiments. The Lotus Esprit, BMW M1, and DeLorean DMC-12 all carried the torch of the Italian wedge into production – in fact, the DeLorean was designed by Giugiaro and is often cited as the most recognizable wedge car, forever immortalized as Marty McFly’s time machine in Back to the Future. Even economy cars felt the influence: the angular lines of the Volkswagen Golf/Rabbit and Scirocco, or the Honda Prelude and Accord of the early ’80s, owe a debt to the wedge era’s clean, straight-edged aesthetic. As one retrospective put it, these “dramatically different [wedge] cars influenced production models like the Lamborghini Miura and Countach, DMC DeLorean, Lotus Esprit, Fiat X1/9, Lancia Stratos, [and] Vector W2”, to name a few. The wedge was essentially the design avatar of the modern supercar era – people recognize a wedge-shaped exotic instantly, associating it with speed, technology, and a bit of 1970s glam.
Culturally, wedge cars became the ultimate symbol of futurism and cool. During the 1970s and early ’80s, they were ubiquitous in media portraying the future: from concept art to sci-fi movies, if a scene needed a “future car,” chances are it looked like a wedge. Children of that era grew up playing with wedge-shaped Hot Wheels and plastering their walls with posters of Countachs and Ferrari wedges. In the realm of auto shows, wedge concepts set a high bar for wow-factor – even today, concept cars that aim to appear futuristic often echo the dramatic proportions first seen in the wedge era. It’s telling that the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 2024 featured a special class for “One-Off Wedge-Shaped Concept Cars and Prototypes,” essentially enshrining these vehicles as rolling pieces of design history. Enthusiasts flocked to see the surviving examples of Gandini’s and Giugiaro’s 1970s fever dreams, treating them like the works of art they are. And indeed, museums and galleries have displayed wedge cars as art objects – the Museum of Modern Art in New York has exhibited a Lamborghini Countach, recognizing its design significance.
Why did the wedge fad fade? As the 1980s dawned, automotive taste swung back towards practicality and comfort. The very things that made wedge cars exciting – low-slung cabins, strict two-seat layouts, razor-sharp noses – made them impractical or even unsafe in the real world. Climbing into a car that’s knee-high is fun at a show, but not when you’re grocery shopping. Visibility in these cars was often terrible, and pedestrian safety? Let’s just say a wedge’s front end is like a knife’s edge (not exactly what you want to encounter at crosswalks). By the end of the ’70s, regulators and consumers started demanding more sensible designs, and automakers moved on to new trends – the angular wedge gave way to the rectilinear era (the 1980s love affair with boxes and straight lines), and later to the organic curves of the 1990s. The wedge had, in essence, done its job as a futuristic symbol and was retired in favor of new ideas. As one historian noted, “Italian Wedge rose to fame because of the context which surrounded it and lost appeal once that context began to change”. People had seen the future, and then they wanted something new.
Yet, the legacy of the wedge lives on. Sports car design never returned to the flowing voluptuous forms of the early ’60s; instead, the legacy of the wedge era can be seen in the sharp creases and aggressive stances that performance cars still have today. Lamborghini, for instance, never abandoned the wedge aesthetic – every model from the Diablo in the ’90s to the Aventador in the 2010s carries genes of the Countach and Marzal. The idea that a supercar should be low and mean owes itself to those Italian experiments in the ’70s. Moreover, wedge nostalgia has been making a comeback. In 2019, Aston Martin debuted a one-off V12 Vantage design that paid homage to the Bulldog concept of 1980 (a British wedge), and other neo-retro concepts have flirted with wedge lines. Perhaps the most bizarre twist is the Tesla Cybertruck: when it was unveiled in 2019 (for a 2023 production), people were startled by its triangular, flat-paneled shape. But to keen eyes, the Cybertruck was basically a wedge concept on stilts – a pickup truck channeling the spirit of a 1978 Italdesign prototype. As one publication pointed out, the De Tomaso Pantera and Tesla Cybertruck share “one overtly visual exception – they’re both wedge cars”, bringing futuristic designs of the past into the present. In fact, even the organizers at Pebble Beach noted that “vestiges [of wedge design] appear in the Tesla Cybertruck of today” , underlining how ahead of its time the wedge era really was.
In the end, the wedge-shaped concept cars of 1970s Italy were more than just styling exercises – they were cultural icons that encapsulated the optimism, creativity, and yes, the occasional absurdity of their era. They proved that car design could be art, that the future could be shaped in metal and glass, and that sometimes you have to go completely over-the-top to move the needle (or should we say, move the protractor?). We look back on them with a mix of awe and affectionate amusement: they’re funny yet fabulous, often impractical but endlessly imaginative. As wedge fever demonstrated, the future is an attitude as much as a timeframe. In the ’70s, that attitude was daring, idealistic, and unafraid to poke fun at convention – much like a wedge-shaped supercar that doesn’t even have doors. These Italian concept wedges may have aged into retro curios, but their influence on automotive aesthetics is indisputable and enduring. The next time you see a supercar with a low nose and mean stance, or even a funky electric truck that looks oddly geometric, remember the wedge pioneers. They truly put a fine point on the future, and in doing so, ensured that car design would never be the same after those disco days. In the world of automotive style, the wedge era taught us to dream big, sharpen our pencils, and never underestimate a car that looks like it could split the wind in two – because it just might split history as well, leaving a triangular mark for generations to admire.
