Alfa Romeo BAT is a series of concept cars which were designed and built in a collaboration project that happened between Alfa Romeo and Bertone Studios. The project BAT resulted in the creation of 3 concept cars of them, were designed by Franco Scaglione. The 3 cars were unveiled each year between 1953 and 1955 at the Turin Auto Show. The BAT 5 was released in 1953, the BAT 7 in 1954 and finally the BAT 9 in 1955.
Design and Features
Built on the Alfa Romeo 1900 chassis the BAT were created in order to design a car with the lowest possible drag coefficient. BAT is an acronym which refers to the ‘Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica’ project which was collaboration between Alfa Romeo and Bertone Studios. The curved fin and the large bumper at the rear provided a design which was ahead of its time. The cars were successful of achieving the lowest possible drag coefficient of 0.19 which was remarkable even for today’s standards. All the 3 cars were powered by a 4 cylinder engine and a 5 speed manual gearbox and the maximum speed reached was 125 km/h.
Variants
- BAT 5 – Unveiled in 1953, the ‘Batmoblile’ shaped front eliminates airflow disruption and also controls the resistance generated by the turning of the wheels.
- BAT 7 – The 2nd BAT was a further refinement in the design of the previous one and featured an exaggerated, curved tail fin.
- BAT 9 – The final version of the BAT trilogy was unveiled at the 1955 Turin Motor Show and gave a more realistic and less exaggerated car design with the same drag coefficient.
- BAT 11 – the BAT 11 although not a true part of the trilogy, was unveiled at the 2008 Geneva Auto show. Although the car design was based on the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione, it shared many design asthetics followed in the older. Image Credits @ Beetlebomb