It's been close to two years since the Volkswagen Group took a 90.1 per cent stake in Italdesign Giugiaro and exactly one year after the Italian company celebrated the marriage with the VW-branded Tex Coupe and Go! MPV concepts at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show.
The design house will return to Switzerland for this year's edition of the auto salon with a single concept model named the Brivido, which may not feature VW's logos on its hood, but its underpinnings and hybrid powertrain are sourced from within the German group.
"2012 will be an important year for us and for the Group, and with this car we want to continue to allow people to dream and to imagine the future," said Giorgetto Giugiaro. "This is an exercise to show a vehicle that delivers awesome sports car performance in an eco-friendly manner, to show great technological content, and above all to have superb comfort," he added.
The Brivido is a fully working concept model designed, engineered and manufactured in the Italdesign Giugiaro plant at Moncalieri.
It sports a hybrid powertrain comprising a 3.0-liter engine and presumably an electric motor (the company didn't elaborate) producing 360-horses, which allow the gullwing-door coupe to reach 100km/h (62mph) in 5.8 seconds and attain a top speed of 275km/h (171mph).
On the outside, the Brivido is defined by the use of aluminium, carbon fibre, and glass materials.
Inside, the four-seater prototype gets an impressive looking dashboard with interactive electronics and displays that were developed by Italdesign in cooperation with the Volkswagen Group Electronics Research Lab (ERL) in California.
Both the driver and passenger get their own instrument panels. On the driver's side, there are two LCD screens that display images from the side and rear cameras while the passenger side houses an integrated iPad system.
