In memory of Marcello Gandini, the world’s most famous supercar designer

CNN
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Look at almost any modern high-horsepower supercar and you’ll recognize the work of automotive designer Marcello Gandini. Sharp lines, low stance, and doors that open upwards. All of these are influenced by Gandini’s seminal work, Lamborghini and his Countach.

The Countach and its predecessor, the Lamborghini Miura, are widely regarded as the first modern supercars and formed the template for a vehicle category that continues to represent the pinnacle of automotive performance and design. Gandini designed both of these cars. Even if he did nothing else, he would still be remembered.

However, in addition to his work at Lamborghini, Gandini produced cars for car manufacturers such as BMW, Fiat, and Ferrari. He designed his rally racing cars, his economy hatchbacks (such as the first Volkswagen Polo and the Renault Super Cinq, the successor to the Renault 5), his concept cars, and at least one of his helicopters. .

He died on Wednesday in Turin, Italy, at the age of 85. The city is where he was born and where he exercised much of his automotive design magic throughout his career at the Gruppo Bertone Design Studio and later at his own company.

Gandini’s radical, sharp-edged Countach was designed as a replacement for the Lamborghini Miura, a car with curved edges and a row of black “eyelashes” around the circular headlights. The Miura was considered one of the most beautiful cars of all time, but it wasn’t radical; rather, it was the culmination of sports car design up to that point. On the other hand, the Countach introduced at his 1971 Geneva Motor Show was as angular and sharp-edged as shattered crystal.

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but nothing more has been done since then,” Gandini said in an interview with CNN at the Italian National Automobile Museum in Turin in 2019. Told.

The Countach was preceded by the Lancia Status HF Zero in 1970. When you look at that sports car, you can hardly imagine that it’s actually a drivable car. Instead of a door, you enter the cabin through a windshield that swings upwards. While driving, rear visibility is provided by a temporary rearview mirror mounted on the nearly horizontal windshield. (Rear visibility on the first Countach models was through a periscope built into the roof.)

Start with bolts and nuts

Gandini’s interest in automobiles began with mechanics, not design. When he was five years old, his father bought him a mechano set (a metal construction toy known in the United States as an erector set). Children could build cars, planes, and machines by connecting thin metal sheets and bars with small nuts and bolts.

Gandini became a mechanic at the age of 18. A wealthy racing friend who owned a Fiat OSCA 1500S asked Gandini to develop an engine for it. Gandini also decided to modify the body of his car, and this project became his introduction to automotive design.

“I’ve always loved things that move,” Gandini said. “They’re not static objects. They never attracted me.”

In 1965, he joined the Turin-based automotive design company Gruppo Bertone, replacing the famous and influential Giorgetto Giugiaro. Gandini’s first project was a body covering the chassis and engine of a Porsche 911, which was displayed at his 1966 Geneva Motor Show. The car was sold for $1.4 million at a Gooding & Co. auction in Pebble Beach, California, in 2018.

“Gandini was more than just a designer. He was a visionary whose skill and creativity redefined the aesthetic standards of sports and luxury cars and influenced generations of designers and enthusiasts. ” Bertone wrote in a tribute posted on his official Instagram page on Wednesday.

According to Gandini, the starting point for all his designs was purpose. Each suited our needs.

However, the prototype, or concept car, was his favorite, he said. They gave Gandini the opportunity to create an entirely new form of automobile. He loved the opportunity to start with a clean slate. And in cases like this, what was needed was simple.

“When you’re talking about a prototype, the most important thing is to create a sensation,” he told CNN in 2019. As many sensations as possible. ”