Giorgetto Giugiaro
Giorgetto Giugiaro was born on 7 August 1938 in Garessio, in the Cuneo province of Piedmont, into a family of artists — his father and grandfather were oil painters. At seventeen he showed his drawings to Dante Giacosa, Fiat’s chief technical director, who offered him a position at once at Fiat’s Special Vehicles Styling Centre in Mirafiori. None of his Fiat designs reached production, but the apprenticeship ended the day Nuccio Bertone saw his portfolio at the 1958 Turin Motor Show. In December 1959, at the age of twenty-one, Giugiaro was appointed head of the Bertone Styling Center — the youngest person ever to lead a major Italian coachbuilding studio. His first production design at Bertone was the Alfa Romeo 2000/2600 Sprint coupé (1960), which entered manufacture immediately.
In six years at Bertone, Giugiaro created more than twenty significant designs and established himself as one of the defining voices in Italian automotive design. The Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT (1963) — angular yet fluid, a four-seat coupé built on the Giulia’s 105-series platform — is universally considered among the most beautiful Italian GT cars of the 1960s; Bertone manufactured it in volume at Grugliasco throughout the Giulia’s production life. He also created the Alfa Romeo Canguro concept (1964), the Alfa Romeo Giulia SS Bertone Prototype (1965), the Aston Martin DB4 GT Jet concept, the Ferrari 250 GT Bertone, the Chevrolet Corvair Testudo, the BMW 3200CS, and the Fiat 850 Spider. In 1965 Giugiaro moved to Ghia — constrained by its management, he departed after two years. In 1967–1968, with engineer Aldo Mantovani, he established Italdesign near Turin.
Italdesign became the most prolific independent automotive design studio in history. The output for Alfa Romeo alone was exceptional: the Alfasud (1972, landmark front-wheel-drive compact for Alfa’s Pomigliano d’Arco factory), the Alfetta GT (1974, rakish coupé manufactured by Bertone), the Alfasud Sprint (1976), the Alfa Romeo Brera concept (2002, Compasso d’Oro winner), the 156 facelift (2003 second series), the 159 and 159 Sportwagon (2004), and the Brera production coupé (2005). Beyond Alfa, the scale was extraordinary: the Volkswagen Golf and Scirocco (both 1974 — the Golf became the definitive modern hatchback template, with more than 35 million sold across generations), the Lotus Esprit (1976 production), the DeLorean DMC-12 (1981), the Fiat Panda (1980, Compasso d’Oro, widely considered a masterpiece of functional minimalism), the Lancia Delta (1979), the Saab 9000 (1984). An estimated 60 million production vehicles bear Italdesign’s design work. In 1999, a jury of more than 120 international automotive journalists named him Car Designer of the Century; the Automotive Hall of Fame inducted him in 2002. In 2010, the Volkswagen Group through Audi acquired Italdesign to secure Giugiaro’s continued involvement. He retired from Italdesign in 2015 and founded GFG Style in Turin with his son Fabrizio Giugiaro, where he continues to work.
Connections
- Alfa Romeo — designed Giulia Sprint GT (Bertone 1963), Alfasud (Italdesign 1972), Alfetta GT (Italdesign 1974), 156 facelift (2003), Brera (2005), source: wikipedia.org
- Bertone — chief designer 1959–1965; first production car was Alfa 2000/2600 Sprint, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo Giulia 1962 — designed the Giulia Sprint GT coupé (1963), manufactured at Grugliasco, source: wikipedia.org