Early in his career, Callum worked at the Ford-owned design house Carrozzeria Ghia in Turin. “I think have respected art and design probably longer than any other country,” says Callum, vice president of design at Ford. The culture is also permeated by a reverence for aesthetics. “Just holding a pencil in this country makes you feel more creative,” says Bangle, BMW’s former design chief.įioravanti\’s berlinetta boxer. Directly translated, it means “to make a good figure” in practice, it’s more like, “make an effort to be noticed” or “nail the first impression.” This is the nation that took something as universal as an evening stroll and elevated it to la passeggiata, a daily ritual of well-dressed, leisurely flaunting and flirting. Style is part of the bedrock of Italian culture. “For me,” says Mitja Borkert, current head of Lamborghini design, “everything that we do relates to the design DNA that the Countach gave us.” It wasn’t just Lamborghinis: Gandini penned the first BMW 5-series and the Renault 5 Supercinq, too. Hard to believe, but the totem of 1980s angular excess debuted in 1971, just five years after the voluptuous Miura. It inspired the production Lancia Stratos, a slightly more practical automobile that dominated rally racing. Four years later, Gandini showed the most radical concept car in history: the Lancia Stratos Zero, a sci-fi wedge. It was the first road car with a mid-mounted V-12 engine, the original supercar. The next year, he rocked the world with the debut of the Lamborghini Miura. Gandini joined Bertone in 1965, after Giugiaro left. “He showed the world that a mass-market product can have attractive and iconic design,” says Ralph Gilles, head of design at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. He styled normal cars, too-he has called the Mk1 Volkswagen Golf of 1974 his best and most important design-in addition to Nikon cameras, Seiko watches, and Beretta firearms. He penned outrageous concept cars, such as the Bizzarrini Manta and Porsche Tapiro, exotics like the De Tomaso Mangusta and the Maserati Bora, and icons like the Esprit, the BMW M1, and the DeLorean DMC-12. Giugiaro apprenticed at Fiat, passed through Bertone and Ghia, and in 1968, founded his own design firm, Italdesign. “In general, engineers just don’t do creative, beautiful automobiles. “I’m still surprised that Fioravanti was an engineer,” says Welburn, former head of global design at General Motors. A partial list: the 1967 Dino 206 GT, the 1968 365 GTB4 Daytona, the 1975 308 GTB, the 288 GTO, the Testarossa, and the F40. Name a memorable Dino or Ferrari of the past 50 years and you’re likely to land on a Fioravanti design. He immediately started designing amazing machines. He trained as a mechanical engineer, focused on aerodynamics, and joined Pininfarina in 1964, straight out of school. ullstein bild Dtl.įioravanti is responsible for an entire generation of iconic Ferraris. How did this tiny triangle of Italian soil give rise to three titans of modern design? To find out, we asked the designers who’ve shaped some of our favorite modern sports cars, people like Chris Bangle, Ed Welburn, Ralph Gilles, Moray Callum, and more. It’s enough to make you wonder what was in the water. If your favorite car has two seats, a midship engine, and a profile like a doorstop, it likely owes its existence to one of these three men. Lamborghini Countach? Gandini’s gift to the world of motoring and the bedroom-poster industry. Lotus Esprit? A Giugiaro design so enduring, every subsequent face-lift and overhaul across 28 years of production maintained the same shape and style. Ferrari 512 BB? A Fioravanti masterpiece that defined that automaker’s golden era. This story originally appeared in the July 2019 issue of Road & Track. All were born in 1938, a few months and only 100 miles apart. Each point is the hometown of a founding father of the wedge-shaped, mid-engine supercar: Leonardo Fioravanti of Milan, Giorgetto Giugiaro of Garessio, and Marcello Gandini of Turin. You’d burn more ink connecting Portland, Bangor, and Bar Harbor, Maine, but when it comes to car design, this little area in Northern Italy might as well be the center of the universe. Plop a third dot on the village of Garessio, if you can find it. Now slide 60 miles south and a smidge east.
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