Bertone Freeclimber: The BMW-Powered, Daihatsu-Designed, Italian-Built SUV I Never Knew I Needed

It almost sounds like one of those “walked into a bar …” jokes.

What was engineered by the Japanese, assembled by Italian coachbuilders, powered by a German diesel, and largely sold to rural Spaniards?

If you answered, “the Bertone Freeclimber, of course!” then you might be an automotive pub trivia champion. (Or you might have read the headline to this article.)

The Bertone Freeclimber—a bizarre amalgamation of Axis powers—is among the least-known rebadged Japanese SUVs from the height of an era that brought us such hits as the Holden Jackaroo, the Honda Crossroad, and the Chevrolet Forester. In the early years of the SUV boom that continues today, automakers were downright desperate to get something high-riding and vaguely rugged in front of buyers.

I have always held at least a mild fascination with rebadged cars. One of my favorite ways of testing automotive geekery is to ask a table full of car nerds to rattle off the names of every General Motors minivan. (How about the Opel Sintra?)

Few had as many names as the boxy, compact Daihatsu Rugger, which was sold for nearly three decades under a host of market-specific names. Here in the U.S., we called it the Rocky. Brits received one called the Fourtrak. One incarnation of Toyota’s Japan-specific business of various model-centric stores even received a version called the Toyota Blizzard. (The Land Cruiser Heritage Museum in Utah has three of them.)

I love obscure automobiles, though I’ve never owned anything truly rare. Sure, I’ve had some unusually equipped versions of cars that sold relatively well—my purple Porsche 911 was pretty neat—but I’ve never had the kind of car that will prompt, “What is it?” from every passerby.

Until now.

The Freeclimber Filled a Narrow Niche

For the first 75-or-so years of its existence, Turin, Italy-based coachbuilder Gruppo Bertone was certainly not known for off-roaders. The company built sleek, torpedo-style cars for Italy’s top marques like Fiat and Lancia prior to World War II, before truly coming into the limelight with Giorgetto Giugiaro at the helm in the early 1960s. Bertone-bodied versions of cars like the Ferrari 250 GT and Aston Martin DB4 GT established the coachbuilder as one of the world’s best. The Lamborghini Miura that rounded out the 1960s and the Alfa Romeo Montreal that ushered in the ’70s saw Bertone at the top of its game.

The company began working with more approachable brands like Volvo and Fiat in the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, it built some vehicles under contract at a plant in Grugliasco, a somewhat grubby, industrial suburb of Turin. It was from this plant that somewhere around 2800 Bertone Freeclimbers would emerge over a three-year (or so) run in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The idea behind the Freeclimber itself was nothing particularly revolutionary. No doubt Bertone had watched buyers snap up somewhat dressy versions of rugged off-roaders like the Range Rover, the Jeep Cherokee, and the Toyota Land Cruiser. The market had already begun turning toward vehicles that provided rugged capability—or at least the illusion of capability—in a vehicle comfortable enough to drive through the woods from, say, your pastoral sheep farm and into town for a Michelin-starred dinner.

Enter Toyota-backed Daihatsu, which mostly produced city-appropriate kei vans, small hatchbacks, and large delivery trucks. Buoyed by Toyota’s distribution network, Daihatsu had a relatively strong presence in Oceania and South America, and its trucks sold well in Europe. The two-door Rugger/Rocky that Daihatsu began building in 1984 was sized somewhere between the downright tiny Suzuki Samurai and the larger Mitsubishi Montero, two of the many squared-off models to come from Japan during its first SUV heyday of the 1980s. With its separate body and frame, its solid front and rear axles suspended by leaf springs, and its mere 145-inch overall length, the Daihatsu could be a plucky little off-roader. Like the Suzuki Sidekick, the roof section over the Rocky’s rear seat was available in either a folding soft-top configuration or with a weather-tight fiberglass roof. A panel over the front seats could be removed for a mostly al fresco experience.

Consumer Guide praised the 1990 version for its better-than-Suzuki ride quality, but noted that “quietness is not one of Rocky’s virtues.” The American-market version cost around $12,000 back then, making it about 30 percent costlier than the cheapest Jeep Wrangler. It was relatively substantial, but certainly not luxurious. At least not until Bertone got involved.

To create the Freeclimber, Bertone didn’t modify the Rocky’s sheet metal, its dashboard, or its underpinnings. The Italians screwed on a new grille with four round lights and they bolted on a unique, stepped roof with sliding side windows under a pair of narrow fixed-glass panels. In profile, the Freeclimber is sort of like a Land Rover Discovery—if you squint. It helps if you’ve had a few shots of grappa. The 15-inch Ruote O.Z. wheels looked like something those of us of a certain generation would have cut out of a Tire Rack ad and then glued onto, say, a 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse brochure 35 years ago.

Bertone appears to have painted Freeclimbers in a host of gray and black hues, sometimes accented with properly rad green and purple pinstriping.

Inside, the low dash is straight out of the 1980s Japanese economy car playbook, down to the sliders for the climate controls and the clear, if bland, instrumentation. Bertone kept the trio of auxiliary gauges at the top of the dash, but it replaced no-name instruments for a Veglia voltmeter and clock flanking a Daihatsu-sourced inclinometer. So Italian. Overstuffed front seats with integrated headrests replaced the flimsy Daihatsu units, and Bertone wrapped them in gray leather and stitched on an oval badge with a very in-period stylized graphic of a rock climber.

The biggest change was underhood. Bertone ventured over the Alps to Munich. There, the Italians bought some BMW straight-six engines: both the gas-fueled M20 and the turbodiesel M21. You might be familiar with the M20, which powered BMW’s E30 3 Series and E34 5 Series. It’s a sweet engine, with easy parts availability. Less common here was the turbodiesel, which made it to the U.S. in the short-lived BMW 524td as well as, rather unusually, the 1984 and ’85 Lincoln Continental and Mark VII. Either way, the BMW-sourced engines were mated to a part-time transfer case and a five-speed manual transmission.

Bertone marketed the Freeclimber in a few European markets. Anecdotally, it seems that many went to Spain, which was also a relatively strong market for Land Rover. Those rural types who needed four-wheel drive but didn’t want to spend Range Rover money could park themselves in a Freeclimber. The model was successful enough that Bertone created an updated version, but it was powered by a four-cylinder BMW engine and it lacked the whimsical upper glass in its rear roof panel.

It Climbed into My Lap, Sorta

I was at least tangentially aware of the presence of a Bertone Freeclimber here in Colorado. I recall stumbling across it on Craigslist about a decade ago, and it was later listed on a few other enthusiast-oriented websites. I wouldn’t call it internet-famous, but the Freeclimber was far from a barn find. Its plucky, upright stance, squared-off lines, and BMW powerplant captivated me, at least for a moment. But that moment passed, and I soon forgot about the Freeclimber, until my friend Tyler posted a couple of photos of it to social media and announced that he was helping its current owner find it a new home.

Tyler put me in touch with the car’s owner, who turned out to be a fellow BMW 2002 enthusiast. She had also been vaguely aware of the Freeclimber for a while, and then she stumbled across it while walking through her neighborhood. She had to have it. Fast forward a few years and she needed the garage space. She offered it to me for what seemed like a reasonable amount of money for something like this, and I said I’d buy it as long as it passed a diesel emissions test. (Spoiler alert: It did, or else I wouldn’t be writing this article.)

These are not easy-to-find vehicles, so determining a value was a challenge. You will not find them, for example, in the Hagerty Price Guide. AutoScout24, one of Europe’s biggest car-shopping aggregators, lists dozens of obscure brands like Aixam (a French builder of quadricycles), Selvo (a German company that builds Toyota FJ Cruiser–inspired electric runabouts), and Jaecoo, one of Chinese automaker Chery’s myriad divisions. Not listed: Bertone. The coachbuilder that brought us the Lancia Stratos HF and the Lamborghini Countach is not searchable on its own.

But, at the end of the day, when will I find another Bertone Freeclimber?