car design thread

My first thought was VW

 

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Whoa, now you're striking a nerve!
I was assigned to the Olds Studio when that car was being developed. The full size airbrush rendering done by the Assistant Chief Designer, caught Bill Mitchell's (Design VP) eye and it took off.
Problem was, no hatch and proportions not exactly great. The results that you posted lasted a whole 2 yrs then both Olds & Buick adopted the formal upper from the Pontiac & Chevy. Not a very successful outcome and an expensive one at that. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login



I did some support sketches, but the actual car was a dud.

For further entertainment:https://driventowrite.com/2024/10/08/never-a-dull-moment-part-6/#more-116072

 

Great article about design credit from Hagerty:

Media | Articles
Design, Opinion
The Myth of the Lone Genius Car Designer
Matteo Licata
11 August 2025
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Stefano Guidi/LightRocket/Getty Images


It’s a tale as old as civilization itself.

The lone hero, the unique genius. One extraordinary individual who, through a mix of outstanding talent and unflinching resolve, ends up completely changing the course of a company, an entire industry, or even the world as we know it.

Countless articles, books, and films have been based on this premise, and no doubt plenty more will be, as it’s just so satisfying on an emotional level. However, real life has a habit of being a lot more complex and nuanced than that, and car design is certainly no exception.

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Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro sitting in his office in front of a drawing board, circa 1987.Adriano Alecchi/Mondadori/Getty Images
As I grew up dreaming of becoming a car designer, I imagined them as almost mythical creatures. I worshipped the likes of Giugiaro and Gandini, picturing them as white knights in shining armor who drove entire companies to greatness through the sheer, unstoppable force of their genius. That was who I wanted to be, and yes, it was every bit as naive an idea as it sounds. But there was also little way for me to know any better before I got my first actual taste of the industry.

Until then, all I knew was what I could read. Which, as I soon discovered, wasn’t much at all. That’s because, then as now, most of what gets written about car design tends to present a distorted view of this field, and that’s unlikely to change. After all, this is a sector that is opaque and secretive by default. Car companies have no incentive to lay bare their inner workings, and even when former insiders speak up years later, the temptation for self-aggrandizement often proves hard to resist for car designers, who often come with egos large enough to have their own gravitational pull.

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But even if there are plenty of design professionals who like to paint themselves as one, the myth of the “lone genius” is just that. No vehicle currently on sale looks the way it does due to the input of a single individual. It doesn’t work that way, and that’s been the case for a very long time.

Generally speaking, the only person in a company’s design organization who typically speaks to the media is the design director. As a result, they tend to be given (and often happily take) credit for everything. But that is, at best, a massive oversimplification. That’s because, despite the crucial role a design director plays (and make no mistake, it is a crucial role), it’s a hands-off job. Instead, they foster a productive and creative environment, pushing and guiding the studio’s staff to deliver their finest work under a clear, coherent strategy—and a lot more besides. But the one thing they don’t do is draw cars. Not even a single line.

That task falls to the design staff, and at a major automaker’s studio, it involves a not insignificant amount of manpower. After all, the design of a modern automobile is a spectacularly complex endeavor. There are simply too many aspects to consider and such a wide range of components, each presenting its own set of challenges, that it would be impossible for a single professional to manage them all to a sufficiently high standard.

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Porsche
When it comes to exterior design, for instance, while one skilled stylist could indeed handle the overall sculpture and graphics without issue, that model will almost always be the result of a combination of inputs from various designers’ proposals. Meanwhile, other designers will take care of the styling of major components, such as lighting elements or wheels, all the way down to the last trim piece. Of course, the same applies to interiors and their components, and that’s before we get to the intangible yet critical matter of what goes on within each of the various screen interfaces, which is a whole thing on its own.

But was it any different in the good old days? No, not really.

The vast majority of our beloved classics were the product of a corporate design process that, albeit with very different tools and techniques, isn’t too dissimilar from the one I’ve just described. And there’s nothing wrong with that: Even though we can’t credit a single individual for the original Ford Mustang’s design, I’ve never heard anyone say it looks like a soulless appliance.

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Renault
The same goes for European classics as well. By the mid-20th century, most European automakers also had their own in-house studios, which, albeit on a smaller scale, were modeled after the template set decades earlier by GM when it established Harley Earl’s “Art & Colour” section.

New models would result from an iterative process that began with a portfolio of different proposals from various designers, then gradually narrowed down to a single one, which was further developed and refined, all under the watchful eye of the design leader.

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Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz under Bruno Sacco was perhaps the epitome of this incremental approach. During Sacco’s tenure from 1975 to 1999, Daimler-Benz was making money hand over fist, and its products typically enjoyed a longer-than-average market lifespan. Mercedes-Benz’s design team could thus afford the luxury of spending years painstakingly refining its designs through a long process that involved a large number of full-scale models. Again, the very nature of such a meticulous and iterative undertaking makes it nearly impossible to credit, say, the W201 or W124 sedans to any single designer from Sacco’s team. Yet that doesn’t make them any less of a design classic. And that’s because, regardless of the number of people involved, there was only one single, clear, confident vision at the heart of the whole process.

But what about the great Italian masters, then?

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Stefano Guidi/LightRocket/Getty Images
I certainly will never be the one to describe the outstanding careers of individuals like Giorgetto Giugiaro, Marcello Gandini, and their peers as anything but a well-deserved reward for their exceptional talent. Still, there’s no escaping the fact that the outsized influence these creatives came to exert over this industry was also the product of a very specific time and unique, unrepeatable circumstances.

The 1960s and ’70s were, after all, the halcyon days of the Italian “carrozzieri,” when a handful of small firms, all based around Turin, served for years as high-profile style consultants for almost every car company under the sun. Yet for all their international renown, these family-owned businesses often had an organizational chart short enough to fit on a postcard.

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A young Marcello Gandini (right) designed many famous cars at the studio of Nuccio Bertone, 1976.Wiki Commons/Archivio Stile Bertone
It was the kind of environment that could offer promising young designers what, in retrospect, were absolutely massive opportunities. Like, say, that of a 27-year-old Gandini getting handed the job of designing what became the Lamborghini Miura as his very first assignment for Bertone. Still, this doesn’t mean these men worked in complete isolation. Gandini stayed at Bertone for 14 years, during which time he had assistants, underlings, modelers, and technicians working for and with him. The fact that some of their names have been lost to time doesn’t mean they weren’t there, nor that their contributions were inconsequential. And things only become more complex as we approach the present day. By the time Giugiaro saw the writing on the wall and sold ItalDesign to the Volkswagen Group in 2010, the company had grown to the point of employing around 1500 people. This, naturally, included many talented designers. And while it’s safe to say that nothing came out of ItalDesign’s door without the Maestro’s approval, the days of him personally tackling each and every one of the firm’s various commitments were long gone.

Even though it’s often impossible—or disingenuous—to give a single designer credit for a successful model these days, having the right people in the right places still matters. Outstanding automobile design is the result of a talented, motivated team working under clear, coherent, and competent direction, in conjunction with a proactive engineering department and with outside interference kept to a minimum. You’d be amazed how rarely all of that comes together, though, and that’s why it should be celebrated whenever it does, regardless of who did it.

***

Matteo Licata received his degree in Transportation Design from Turin’s IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in 2006. He worked as an automobile designer for about a decade, including a stint in the then-Fiat Group’s Turin design studio, during which his proposal for the interior of the 2010–20 Alfa Romeo Giulietta was selected for production. He next joined Changan’s European design studio in Turin and then EDAG in Barcelona, Spain. Licata currently teaches automobile design history to the Transportation Design bachelor students of IAAD (Istituto di Arte Applicata e Design) in Turin.

 

Cool! My sketches were 1977. Brilliant minds think alike or bad taste can be anywhere?

 

My first thought was that it looked like the latest Pininfarina SUV. I'd need to see them together. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

3rd Corvette Concept revealed. 2000 HP electric.
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Beauty makes a return.......

 

My 'old' pals were talking about egress/ingress.
It's just a concept car.

 

Yes, and that's a good place to start.
But I fear that it may be a bit late as the SUV, ugly ship, sailed long ago.

It hasn't been just the rules and regulations that have dumbed down design as of late. There is plenty of blame to go around. The 'design community' shares part of the burden along with shifting customer tastes. But that's a story for another time.