Albert Bertagnolli got bored one day and decided to do something just a bit different. Just a little bit … backward.
He flipped the front end of an old beater Dodge Ram pickup around to the rear, so that when he’s driving down the street, it looks like he’s going backward.
But the inside of the cab faces the bed of the truck, so the driver looks out over the bed while driving. The headlights and taillights also have been swapped.
He turns a lot of heads driving the contraption Lander, surprising other motorists to the point of honking their car horns at him when he’s driving past.
“You see a lot of thumbs up and a lot of people recording it, too,” Bertagnolli told Cowboy State Daily. “And a lot of people take pictures.”
The aerodynamics aren’t all that great for the turned-around vehicle, Bertagnolli said. Not too surprising, given that the flat rear window now faces front.
But it’s a head-turner for sure, Bertagnolli told Cowboy State Daily at his home garage in Lander on a recent, bluebird Saturday. A perfect day for a little spin up to Sinks Canyon.
Climbing into and out of the truck is a trick, with everything backward-facing — even the door handles. But driving it isn’t all that different from a regular truck.
The main thing, Bertagnolli said, is being aware that the front end sticks out quite a bit more than usual. That makes turning the vehicle seem a tad awkward. But one gets used to it quickly, he added.
“The frame and the running gear and the engine and all that is just like stock,” he said. “It’s just where you are positioned in the vehicle that has changed.”
There weren’t too many vehicles out on the highway during the short, little test drive. But there was one older gentleman in a truck of his own. He made no secret of his surprise. He was staring at the backward truck as Bertagnolli drove by, wide-eyed, with jaw dropped.
“Yeah, he’s wondering what the hell is going on,” Bertagnolli said, chuckling a little in amusement and waving hello as he went by.
The truck goes about as far as any regular truck its age would, Bertagnolli said. He’s taken it to Riverton so far and wouldn’t think twice about driving it to Rock Springs. Further than that, and he might think twice — as he would with any older truck.
Standing at the rear end of the truck, which looks like the front. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Climbing into the backwards truck is a trip all in and of itself. While the dashboard is where you expect it, the front window is on the back and the rear window is on the front. This means a little less leg room. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Driving the backward truck to Sinks Canyon isn't much different than driving any other truck would be. But it is a trip bound to turn the heads of any passersby. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Driving forward in the truck. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A backward-driving pickup that’s been turning heads in Lander was something Albert Bertagnolli did just for the heck of it. He swapped the headlights and taillights, moved the engine and looks out over the bed driving the thing. He faces looking over the bed in the turned-around cab. (Courtesy Albert Bertagnolli) 
A backward-driving pickup that’s been turning heads in Lander was something Albert Bertagnolli did just for the heck of it. He swapped the headlights and taillights, moved the engine and looks out over the bed driving the thing. He faces looking over the bed in the turned-around cab. (Courtesy Albert Bertagnolli) 
A backward-driving pickup that’s been turning heads in Lander was something Albert Bertagnolli did just for the heck of it. He swapped the headlights and taillights, moved the engine and looks out over the bed driving the thing. He faces looking over the bed in the turned-around cab. (Courtesy Albert Bertagnolli) 
On a backward truck, the engine sits in the truck bed, and the front-end lights swap to what used to be the rearend. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The rearend of the truck is actually the front. And it looks totally strange driving down the highway that way, which is why it turns so many heads wherever it goes. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Just To See If He Could
Mountain climbers say they climb mountains because they’re there. Bertagnolli has a similar reasoning for his backward truck. It was something challenging to do with his spare time during retirement. He got the idea after he saw a Facebook post of someone else’s backward vehicle.
“I got bored,” he said shrugging. “And I wanted to see if I could do that.”
It turned out to be easier than he’d thought.
“To reverse it, you just take it all apart,” he said. “It’s a two-wheel drive, but it sits high because the front of the truck’s frame is a lot lower than the back. So, when you turn it around, you have to raise everything.”
That makes it look a bit like a souped-up four-wheel drive.
There was a lot of rewiring to do, Bertagnolli said. That was probably the most challenging part. Some equipment had to be shifted around, too, so there was enough room for him behind the steering wheel — without bumping his head too much on what used to be the front windshield. That now slopes over his head from the rear, instead of over the dash, as it was designed to do.
“You end up with not having a lot of leg room in it,” he said. “But it still fits me pretty good.”
Bertagnolli isn’t quite finished with his backward truck. He’s still tweaking things here and there as he drives it around and notices things to improve.
“It’s nowhere near as nice as a new vehicle,” he said. “But it runs and drives and everything, just like a regular truck would.”
Flipping Cars Since He Was 16
Working on cars has always been relatively easy for Bertagnolli, who recalls buying and fixing up his first junk car when he was 16. It was a used GTO with a shot engine. He rebuilt the engine,gave it a nice paint job, and made it feel new again.
Before too long, though, he was tired of it. So, he flipped the GTO, selling it for more than he had in it, to buy a spunky looking Corvette — and also establishing a lifelong habit.
Bertagnolli loves to buy an old car and fix it up right.
Once the Corvette got old, he sold that one, too. Though he admits, he kind of wishes he still had that one.
“It was a pretty good car, but, you know, you get other interests,” he said. “So, I sold it to buy a boat. And that turned into some jet skis. So, we just went from one thing to the next.”
Bertagnolli already knows he’ll do the same with his backward truck once its novelty wears off. He already has people asking him how much he wants for it.
“I’m really struggling with whether to invest money to paint it,” he said.
A paint job can cost upwards of $4,000 — more than he’s got in the whole vehicle. It’s a lot for an old beat-up truck, even if it’s backward cool.
“I think you could make it look really nice, and it wouldn’t get any more attention than it already does right now,” Bertagnolli said. “So, I don’t know, I’m gonna drive it around, play with it, have a little bit of fun. And then I’ll probably end up selling it to somebody.”
Like the guy who had come to look at it right before Cowboy State Daily arrived to see the vehicle.
“He thinks it’s the neatest thing in the world,” Bertagnolli said.
The Baby Blue Bomb that Albert Bertagnolli heard all about from his dad has been found again, and is now back home. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Albert Bertagnolli thumbs through a scrapbook he prepared about his Blue Baby Bomb. He takes it to shows all over the West and never comes home without a prize. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The seats of the Baby Blue Bomb have been taken out so that Albert Bertagnolli can work on tweaking a few things inside. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
This machine makes metallic signs, and it can make custom auto parts in a pinch, too. That's helpful, given that it can be hard to find parts for a 1934 Ford with a 1951 Chrysler engine. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Blue Baby Bomb lives in a nondescript garage in Lander. It belongs to Albert Bertagnolli. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
About That Baby Blue Bomb
The backward truck isn’t the only vehicle Bertagnolli is working on right now. He also has a beautiful 1934 Ford, 5-window coupe. It’s got a rebuilt 1951 Chrysler engine and a 1937 Columbia two-speed rear end from a Lincoln Zephyr.
It’s a classic hotrod, and he calls it the Baby Blue Bomb.
The Baby Blue is worth quite a bit more than the backward truck he built on a lark.
But it doesn’t turn nearly as many heads when he drives it to Lander for jalapeño burgers at the Dairyland with his wife, Angie. Still, it’s the one car Bertagnolli says he will never flip.
It’s not for sale. Not now, not ever.
That’s because it is a treasure from his childhood, one that he discovered by complete happenstance. His dad built the Baby Blue Bomb in his garage in the 1950s, and sold it in 1958, before Bertagnolli was born. The $1,500 from the car’s sale was a downpayment on a house for his dad Jack and his new wife — Bertagnolli’s parents.
The car may have been sold long before Bertagnolli came along, but he heard about it often while he was growing up. His dad would tell him stories about the car all the time, usually with a photograph of it in hand.
For Bertagnolli, the car was a legend. A legend he figured was gone for good.
Until, that is, he noticed a Facebook post in a Rock Springs history group one day from one Gus Hernandez. Bertagnolli didn’t know Hernandez, but he knew the blue car in that photograph. It was his dad’s Baby Blue Bomb.
Hernandez turned out to be the same guy who’d bought the car from his dad in 1958. He still owned the vehicle after all this time.
“It took me three years to convince him to sell it,” Bertagnolli said. “And I got it in September of 2018.”
Sixty years after the car had been sold, it was coming home again.
As Bertagnolli worked on his dad’s car, he soon discovered it wasn’t really as legendary as his dad had let on.
“He embellished a lot,” Bertagnolli said. “There were a lot of things that weren’t quite the way he said they were. I think it was just how he wanted it to be.”
Bertagnolli has remained true to those tales and legends that his father once told him, improving on the car’s original design, so it will more closely resemble those dreams his father once had.
He and his wife Angie take the Baby Blue Bomb to car shows all over the West, showing off the car his dad built.
It was a dream once given up in the name of family, but now it is a legend. A legend that’s back home, with family, in a little garage in Lander, where cars go into an ordinary garage and come out something more than they ever were.
Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
