Marcello Gandini, the Italian car designer who pioneered the use of “scissor doors” in luxury sports cars and drew the sleek outlines of several eye-catching designs for manufacturers including Lamborghini, has died aged 85.
Gandini, whose designs for fast and furious machines like the Alfa Romeo Carabo, the Lancia Stratos, or the Lamborghini Countach and Miura adorned millions of teenage bedroom walls, died suddenly in the Rivoli municipality of Turin on Monday, Italian state broadcaster Rai said.
Born to an orchestra conductor father in Turin in 1938, Gandini showed an early passion for engineering and design, coming up with his first concept car when he was only 20 years old and joining Italian industrial design company Gruppo Bertone aged 27.
During his 14 years at Bertone, he rose to become the company’s style director and signed off more than 100 projects, many of which are now considered classics of automobile design.
Wedge-shaped outlines became a trademark of his style, as did the experimental use of scissor doors, which open upwards rather than outwards, and which he was first to introduce with the Alfa Romeo 33 Carabo concept car that premiered at the Paris Motor show in 1968.
His 1966 Lamborghini Miura was the first supercar with the engine moved to a mid-rear position behind the driver’s seat, setting a standard that other racing-car makers would follow thereafter. Other manufacturers such as BMW, Ferrari and Lancia also sought out Bertone specifically to draw inspiration from Gandini’s creative mind.
Form and function could never be separated, he said in one interview. “It is perhaps one of the most important aspects of design, and the most exciting of forms always follows function,” he said.
In 1979 Gandini stepped down from Bertone to start his own company with his wife, Claudia, its name Clama Srl formed from the first few letters of both of their names. Initially working exclusively with Renault, Clama later also worked with carmakers such as Maserati, Nissan, Toyota and Subaru. As a freelancer, Gandini was also hired to design more practical and boxy cars for mass-production, such as the first-generation Volkswagen Polo, the BMW 5 Series, the Citroën BX and the second-generation Renault 5.
Industrious even late in life, he collaborated with Indian carmaker Tata to create the TaMo Racemo sports car, which was shown at the Geneva motor show in 2017. In January, the Polytechnic Institute of Turin awarded Gandini with an honorary degree in mechanical engineering.
