Auto Design

Can it just be a meaningless coincidence than 50% of the winners of the Car of the Century awards presented to top personalities of the Twentieth Century have been friends for almost 40 years and although both over 70, have a lot to share under the roof of Italdesign-Giugiaro?

Late in 1999, a jury of 132 professional automotive journalists from 33 different countries, under the presidency of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, awarded the title of Car of the Century’s to Ford’s T Model and the same awards to four top personalities in the car industry through the past century.

Their choice made up for a very impressive panel: Giorgetto Giugiaro was elected Car Designer of the Century, Ferdinand Porsche, Car Engineer of the Century, Henry Ford I Entrepreneur of the Century and Ferdinand Piëch Car Executive of the Century.

Those who are not familiar with the talent, drive and personality of Giorgetto Giugiaro and Ferdinand Piëch are fully entitled to assume that their role at the top of Italdesign-Giugiaro and Volkswagen is simply a honorary, non-executive, position. However, I am ready to bet (and with me I am sure many who are familiar with these two giants of the car industry world-wide) that they are going to have a lot of fun at developing truly innovative concepts for cars and mobility.

They no longer have executive roles to play day in and day out and are free to do what they like best, even though they will have quite a deal of “representative” work to do.

Ferdinand Piëch has officially left any executive responsibility at VW since 2002 but look at how the German Group has evolved ever since under the strategic direction of Dr. Ing. Piëch and you have just a glance of how constructive and far reaching has been his influence in the development of the group. His “career” in indeed far away from closing.

The grand-son of Ferdinand Porsche, Piëch has obviously inherited the talent and strong personality of the founder of Porsche and these qualities were quick to emerge. At Porsche, Piëch developed the technical department and create the unbeatable Porsche 906 and Le Mans winner Porsche 917.

When the family decided that none of his member would no longer have an executive job in the company he moved to Audi, after having established an Engineering Consultancy company (which design a 5 cylinder diesel engine for Mercedes-Benz) and spent few months at Italdesign’s engineering studios to “learn Italian and become familiar with unique Italian body engineering technique.”

His many achievements at Audi are simply outstanding: a new five-cylinder engine, with tubocharging, the aerodynamic record setting Audi 100, the four-wheel drive Audi Quattro, the first fully galvanised bodyshells for mass production, direct-injection diesel engines (TDI), the first Audi V8, with lightweight aluminium body construction (ASF, for Audi Space Frame, a high-strength aluminium frame structure) and such design icons as the Audi A2, the Audi TT, Spyder and Avus quattro.

There is no doubt that Piëch gave fresh power to Audi’s “Vorsprung durch Technik” claim and has steered the brand profile up market to make Audi the strongest and most successful  rival to the most powerful and successful competitors.

On his turn Giorgetto Giugiaro has never quit his role as the driving force of his company and the recent transfer of long term responsibility to VW means that he has no longer to worry about the orders portfolio for the next year(s) and the job security of his 800 employees.

At 73 and 72 respectively what sort of new ideas and contribution can they add to the history of the car industry? I do not have the answer, of course but look at their records and you too may come to the conclusion that together, and this is the key factor, they are going to really surprise us.

I remember an interview with Giugiaro Giugiaro some years ago, ehen he complained that “Italdesign has gotten a little too big. I have to spend too long time doing company business work when I would rather be designing cars”.

That was back in 1974, when the company employed little more than 100 people. (Car Styling issue # 8, Tokyo 1974). Already at that time Giugiaro was dreaming of a small team of four to five to work with.

Well, I am ready to bet that this is what he is going to do very soon. That will allow him to focus on his vision and concepts for the cars of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

His dream will come true with the complicity of another genius who has become a very good friends in the past four decades and who, is also much renowned as a car visionary by the name of Ferdinand Piëch. When the two met for the first time, Giugiaro did not really know who was the young Austrian engineer but being kind by nature he went to meet him at Turin’s airport and was rather shocked to see that Piëch had ridden his motorcycle from Germany and asked to be met at the airport only to pick-up his luggage, flown-in by his private airplane.

Consider this: very recently VW has introduced two very innovative and attractive taxi designs: the Taxi Milano and the Taxi Berlin. Well, Volkswagen could have revolutionized the design of taxi in 1976 to develop a new Taxi according to the briefing set by the Museum of Modern Art of New York for “The Taxi Project: Realistic Solutions Today.”  Fiala refused to do it “together” and did his own “Taxi Project” that – as far as design goes – was just another major failure. Giugiaro did it with Alfa Romeo and his concept did indeed open the way to the new MPV architecture which starter to take shape with his own 1978 Lancia Megagamma, long before the industry took notice.

Giorgetto Giugiaro reached maturity as a car designer when he (with a partner) established his first company as an indipendent designer. That was in 1967 and the company was Italstyling, with offices in Torino, at Via Giolitti. One of his first and major project was to design the new Alfa Romeo Alfasud for, and under the engineering guidance, of Austrian Ing. Rudolf Hruska. It was Hurska who took Giugiaro from car styling to body architecture, ergonomy, functionality and consequent car design.

Before that, under the leadership of Nuccio Bertone, Giugiaro just expressed his natural talent and natural sensitivity for perfect proportions and beauty to create emotional and attractive cars such as the Alfa Romeo Giulia GT, the Chevrolet Testudo, the Alfa Romeo Canguro through the Maserati Ghibli and the De Tomaso Mangusta (for Ghia) just to mention few among his many successful works.

As a complete car designer, Giugiaro “invented” new architectures and formulae for popular passenger cars, such as the 1967 Rowan Electric City Car, the minimalist Fiat Panda, the tall Fiat Uno, the innovative Lancia Megagamma (the seed of the Minivan). In other instances his job was just to stick to agiven architecture and make it look right.

That is what he did with the VW Golf. The VW Scirocco was born from his imagination and suggestion to VW via German coachbuilder Karmann.

In the “business as usual category” one can list the contributions to Hyundai and the Korean car industry (after many years of support to the young Japanese carmakers since the late sixties) and more recently China (starting with Brilliance’s Zhongua).

NEW CHALLENGES IN EXCITING TIMES.

Will Giugiaro and Piëch challenge their creativity and geniality with a revolutionary taxi anytime soon? Why not? It is easy to image what could come out from the application of the new architecture concept of the Proton Emas 3 and “Up!” to a vehicle  in the 4 metres length class.

If the future is written in the past, we must considering a short and quick review of Giugiaro and Piëch most significant achievements.

Obviously, millions of fans (and probably Giugiaro and Piëch as well) would love to see a new Porsche or a new Panamera designed by Giugiaro. However these are just a couple of rather conservative expectations. It is more realistic to expect something much more innovative and even revolutionary.

I would not be surprised if they will impress us with a new concept/show car at the Geneva Motor Show next March or the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show.