Auto Design

By Giancarlo Perini ©

If designing cars is your dream and you have got the talent and all it take to become a professional, you have a unique chance to prove your potential to Walter De Silva, Fabrizio Giugiaro, Alessandro Dambrosio and Filippo Perini, through almost one year of learning process and eventually receive an invitation to be part of the team that will create a new car (or truck) for one of the 11 brands of the VW “Konzern”. Let’s just remind them: Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Italdesign-Giugiaro, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat, Scania, Skoda, VW, VW Nutzfahrzeuge. Read the rest of this entry »

For many design enthusiasts the Geneva Motor Show has a major surprise in store. The top Italian design house Italdesign-Giugiaro will not present a somewhat spectacular Alfa Romeo dream-car as widely reported but a very rational and somewhat conventional “compact” car developed in association with the Malaysia manufacturer Proton (Perusahaan OTOmobil Nasional).

If its design is far from setting new trends, its package and architecture will certainly attract every design, engineer and market wiz visiting the show. Giugiaro, (who previewed the Minivan concept with its project for the New York Taxi in 1976 and the 1978 Lancia Megagmma and whose 1983 Fiat Uno revolutionised the “B” segment, made obsolete all its rivals overnight and set a new definition of the market segment) is now challenging the idea of market segmentation with a design that “goes beyond the traditional segmentation in the car market”, according to the designer himself.

The time is perfectly right for a revolution, as the Italian company calls the family of low emission cars based on a modern hybrid drive system engineered with the aim of optimising on‐board space and car access ergonomics in a all-round five-door, four seater, car that is just 3,550 millimetres long.

Listen to Georgette Giugiaro illustrating his vision of the rational car of the future and you clearly understand this is one of the many fruits blowing from a study of a rear-engined, A segment, small car developed few years ago by Italdesign-Giugiaro and proposed to a number of car manufacturers around the world. The same project that in more than a way relates to the early concept and design of the VW UP.

It is not clear yet whether the Geneva 2010 Proton Concept comes with its small engine at the front or rather (as I expert at the rear) but you can be sure that the interior roominess is outstanding in relation to the overall length of the car.

“This is the outcome of several years of study: the solution allows interior spaciousness on a par with that of a segment D saloon despite maintaining the exterior dimensions of a segment A car” explained Giorgetto Giugiaro, Chairman of Italdesign Giugiaro.

“You could say that it is a brand new type of car, a new automotive concept where looks are as important as function, ergonomics and comfort, not to mention environmental impact. It is higher than other compact cars to make the best use of interior space; the front seat H point is at the same height as the passengers’ hips: you do not get down into your car as in a coupé, you do not climb up as in an SUV but you enter in a natural way. Rear seat comfort when you enter and leave the car is absolutely unprecedented, the distance from the front seat is comparable to that of an SUV” added Giugiaro.

The platform, specially designed by Italdesign Giugiaro for this car family, includes a raised floorpan that    is able to accommodate the hybrid system’s batteries at the rear. The four seats are identical, independent and sliding, ensuring identical comfort to passengers and driver alike.

According to Italdesign-Giugiaro, this is just the first configuration of the family of compact car created by the Italian design company for Proton.

The news is not official yet, but within the designer’s circle of Southern California everybody seems to believe that Jason Castriota – a past student of the Art Center College of Design – will be the new director of design of Stilebertone.This would be confirmed by the fact that Castriota visited the Los Angeles Auto Show and attended the Automotive Designers Night there with Mr. Roland Martin, Sales and Marketing manager of Stilebertone. They travelled together from the Ghangzhou Auto Show to Long Angeles and if two plus two equal four, one has to come to the conclusion that Castriota has not resisted the temptation to take the position that Giorgetto Giugiaro, Marcello Gandini and Marc Deschamp had before establishing their own consulting businessIn a recent interview to our publication, Teresio Gaudio, CEO of Stilebertone has anticipated that the company is expanding its design potential with addition of three new designers and a new director of design. Jason Castriota, the most talented designers of Ferraris and Supercars in recent years. Castriota is credited for the design of the Pininfarina Maserati Birdcage, the Maserati Granturismo, the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano and P4/5. Most recently the Pininfarina Rolls-Royce Hyperion “fuoriserie”.Born in New York from Italian parents, Jason went to Pininfarina for a working-stage from Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California, but after the planned “semester” he did not return to the U.S.A. He wanted to stay at Pininfarina and learn by actually designing cars. At Art Center, Castriota was a student of Ken Okuyama who later became his boss at Pininfarina.The Pininfarina design studios in Cambiano are regarded by hundreds of designers as the “Best design school in the world”.

WHAT A VINTAGE FOR DESIGN!

Post your wishes and your opinions, here.

Leonardo Fioravanti (link) -  Marcello Gandini (link) – Giorgetto Giugiaro (link)

Is it just a chance that the three most talented and creative Italian car designers were all born within a period of seven months?

Even more striking is the fact that two of them were born only 19 days apart. Giorgetto Giugiaro and Marcello Gandini were both born in August 1938, in Garessio and Torino, only 80 km apart.

One was named Designer of the Century and induced into the Automotive Hall of Fame, the other is credited with the design of the Lancia Stratos and Lamborghini Countach, just to name a couple of the most dramatic sports car ever built.

The third top designer of the same vintage, and born just some 130 km from Torino, is Leonardo Fioravanti, the man who has penned some of the most successful Ferrari among which we shall here name the Ferrari 365 GTB 4 “Daytona” and the Ferrari 365 GT4 Berlinetta Boxer (BB).

Car design seems to preserve these men and their creativity very well.

No one among them is thinking of retirement and they are all very busy and motivated at creating new car design. They are all having fun with it.

What has shaped their passion for sports car, their creativity, their approach to car design and to life? These are question that might have many different answer? Have you got one?

Would you tell me what you think and see how they are perceived, loved, criticized or appreciated around the world?

To start with, please vote your favourite designer.

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If you like, you can also post the name of the car(s) you love most among those they have designed.

• Leonardo Fioravanti (link)
• Marcello Gandini (link)
• Giorgetto Giugiaro (link)

Giorgetto Giugiaro is simply the most talented, productive and successful car designer of all times. The only one nominated “Designer of the Century” by an international Jury, he is celebrated by the Hall of Fame and has been awarded several Honoris Causa doctorate as an architect. With more than 50 years of very intense work as a car designer he is the president of a company that employs more than 1000 specialists and create cars from a white piece of paper (including the Chinese Brilliance Zhongua) and still enjoy himself at designing cars, as well as any sort of products. In his spares time he love to paint, ride his cross-country bike and crossing the Africa deserts.

About being 70, in a fast interview between two meetings he has answered our direct questions, with a smile. Here is his opening statement.

Mr. Giugiaro, you seem to be positively committed to follow the example of (the world-wide famous painter) Pablo Picasso, who at the age of 90 was still enjoying painting. You are still more than 20 years away from that age and – if we are right – you continue to personally design some of the cars created by Italdesign-Giugiaro. Is it really so? Read the rest of this entry »

BMW M 1 Hommage

By Giancarlo Perini © – Photo: Archivio Perini ©

From Car Styling magazine, issue 185 – July 2008.

The Concorso d’Eleganza di Villa d’Este is absolutely about elegant life-style, friendly personal relations, heritage and – under the BMW drive – design. Here automotive beauties from the past meet the concept cars and design studies of the future. In few words, Como, Villa d’Este and the “Concorso d’Eleganza” were the perfect backdrop for the unveiling of the 2008 BMW M1 Homage. On the other hand, it is only natural that the opportunity to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of the iconic 1978 BMW M1 was not missed by the German company that keeps supporting in every way the event. In fact, they did not miss the chance and unveiled, with a very surprising move, their BMW M1 Hommage design study.

Read the rest of this entry »