Reserved, precise, yet warm and humorous in private, the always exquisitely dressed Gandini was an enigmatic character, rarely seen at motor shows. He never sought attention and lacked the superstar ego of some of his famous peers. Yet he was without doubt one of the greatest designers in the history of the motor car.
Marcello Gandini was born in Turin on 26 August 1938, into a well-to-do and long-established Piedmontese family. He spent the Second World War at his parents’ summer residence at Valli di Lanzo, only later returning to Turin to attend school.
His French grandmother had been a supporter of Claude Debussy and had introduced the composer to Italian society. Gandini’s father Marco became an orchestra conductor and urged his son to study the piano.
Instead, the teenage Gandini spent many hours with a Meccano set. He rebelled, refused to attend musical college and had little time for the constraints of a university education. He took part-time jobs, tuned up cars and began accepting interior design commissions, not least for a nightclub.
By the late 1950s, he had a portfolio of his own car design drawings. A keen amateur car and motorcycle competitor, in 1957 he had modified a friend’s car for hill-climbing and in 1959 he re-shaped the bodywork of another car to improve its aerodynamics.
An intuitive designer who could think in 3D, he saw cars as sculptures, but also considered the hidden, under-the-skin engineering details.
Gandini secured his first job as junior design apprentice with Carrozzeria Marazzi in Milan, a small car design and construction company in the long-established “carrozzeria” or coachbuilder tradition.
In 1963, aged 25, the newly married young designer then submitted his portfolio to the famous Bertone design house, but despite impressing the industrialist Nuccio Bertone, he was not offered employment.
It later emerged that he was turned down in favour of the emerging car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, who was already employed by Bertone, and had designed models for Ferrari and Alfa Romeo. Upon Giugiaro’s departure in 1965, however, Bertone sought out Gandini and offered him the position of lead designer.
Gandini never looked back, not only creating dozens of car designs for Bertone’s clients, but also framing a style department at Bertone of international repute.
Many famous car manufacturers commissioned Gandini’s ideas, but it was for Ferrucio Lamborghini, the millionaire tractor manufacturer, that Gandini created true supercars (and the occasional tractor).
The cars included the perfectly proportioned Miura (the car portrayed in the memorable opening scenes of the original The Italian Job film), the Espada, the Urraco, the Marzal, and the angular and the sharp-edged wedge form of the famous Countach, with its upward-opening doors. The 1990 Diablo was his last Lamborghini.
The Autobianchi Runabout concept car, a prototype designed by Gandini while at Bertone, which became the basis for the Fiat X1/9, unveiled at the Turin Motor Show in 1969
Gandini’s other designs included the Alfa Romeo Carabo, and Montreal; the Bugatti EB110 prototype; the Ferrari GT4; the Fiat Dino Coupé; the Fiat X1/9; the Lancia Stratos; and the Maserati Khamsin, and Quattroporte. Gandini also created the Reliant/Otosan Anadol FW11 for the Turkish car market.
Leaving Bertone in 1980, Gandini went freelance and would work exclusively for Renault for five years. During that time, he designed a car for India’s Tata Motors, drew another Maserati, and penned the Cizeta V16.
Gandini had adored the technicality and shape of the original 1950s Citroën DS, and seized upon the chance to design the BX for the French Marque, and then the XM, which the critic Jonathan Meades described as the “last Gothic Citroën”.
A private pilot and glider pilot, Gandini designed the Heli-Sport CH-7 helicopter. He also designed motorcycles, including the 1968 Moto Guzzi V7 Sport and the 1983 Fantic Sprinter moped.
His last car designs were the Stola S81 and S86.
Despite his global fame, Gandini refused many interview requests from the media. But Gandini collaborated with author Gautam Sen on an authorised biography entitled Marcello Gandini: Maestro of Design, published in 2016.
In 2015, Gandini was awarded a lifetime achievement award by Car Design News and in 2019 Italy’s Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile celebrated his career with an exhibition entitled Marcello Gandini: Genio Nascosto (“hidden genius”).
Gandini restored a 17th-century colonnaded hillside villa at Almese near Turin where he ran his studio with his wife and enjoyed rural life, walking his four German Shepherd dogs and riding horses.
He is survived by his wife Claudia, and their son and daughter.
The Telegraph, London
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