SA design has shaped the shapes of cars on Europe's roads for decades, even if the name has not become as well-known beyond the professional world as that of other star designers: Marcello Gandini. At the age of 28, he shaped the automotive world's idea of what a sports car should look like with the introduction of the Lamborghini Miura in 1966, a two-seat low-slung flounder with a transversely mounted engine behind the driver. Five years later, Gandini radically developed the idea again, creating the angular and wedge-shaped Lamborghini Countach, just 106 centimeters high. Even for the American car magazine Car and Driver, each of these two cars was enough to claim immortality in the car design world.
But Gandini didn't just draw expensive super sports cars, including later the world rally champion model Lancia Stratos and various Maseratis. The everyday car Citroen BX and the two-seater Fiat X 1/9 also came from his hand. For many models he provided design ideas and inspiration in the background, as often happens in the world of car design, without each source of ideas for the final form being named. The first five-series BMW belonged in this category, as did the Volkswagen Polo, as the design house Bertone worked on both cars.
As a student he did not buy the Latin book, but the work of an engineer
The self-taught design career of Marcello Gandini began in 1965 at Bertone in the role of chief designer, succeeding Giorgetto Giugiaro. In the motor city of Turin, Gandini, like other contemporaries, became interested early on not only in the shapes of cars, but also in the technology behind them. At the age of 16, Gandini reported, he was sent out to buy a new Latin book, but instead he purchased a book of engineering knowledge from the developer of the first Fiat 500.
Marcello Gandini
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On the death of Marcello Gandini
While Giugiaro, who was the same age, later founded a large design house himself, in 1979 Gandini retreated to a small studio in an estate in the hills west of Turin, from which he developed ideas not only for cars, but also for trucks and motorcycles as an independent draftsman. He preferred independence and freedom of thought, he said in an interview with the FAZ in 2007. It was always clear to him that drawing was not enough, but that form and technology had to fit together and also the path from the design to the construction plan for each Body part is still far away.
“In his designs, Gandini combined a deep understanding of technology with the fascination of creativity,” says Silvia Baruffaldi, editor-in-chief of the Turin magazine “Auto e Design”. “Behind his extreme reserve, a contrast to the general search for maximum media presence, there was a huge passion for cars.” In January, at the age of 85, Gandini received an honorary doctorate in engineering from Italy's most important technical university in Turin He said: “My father was a conductor and wanted me to become a pianist. When he sat in the Miura, he understood that I could make other notes sound.” Gandini died unexpectedly this week.
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