Jozef Kaban is the newly appointed head of design at BMW. In 2012 we sat down with the designer while he was at Skoda to find out how his experience with the Veyron helped him define Skoda's then-new design language.
Jozef Kaban works for Skoda, in the Czech Republic. Growing up in a part of Czechoslovakia that falls in modern Slovakia, his parents drove Skodas, and now his own family does too.
Bugatti Veyron designer and Skoda design chief Jozef Kaban joins BMW
At the age of 18, he came second (to a professional car designer) in a Skoda design competition run by new owners, VW Group. As Skoda’s design chief, he’s the man leading the brand’s design revolution that starts with the Rapid saloon-profile hatch that goes on sale later this year. But he’s penned a few jalopies in the past, too, including one Bugatti Veyron.
Joining VW after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Kaban was involved in projects including the Seat Arosa and VW Lupo superminis. A more recent stint at Audi culminated with Kaban being made exterior design chief, and he then became head of Skoda design in 2008.
He has an MA in Automotive Design from the Royal College of Art in London, where he won the Giorgio Giugiaro award for innovation; Kaban now counts the Italian master among his VW Group colleagues.
But it was 1999 when the call came to create the Veyron’s exterior, which he saw through to production. A single wheel for the world’s fastest production car costs the same as Skoda’s new 999ccc Citigo urban terrier; a routine Veyron service buys two.
The free tax disc won by the cleanest Skoda Citigo is an alien concept to the Bugatti, which serves up over half a kilo of carbon dioxide every 1000 metres: that’s more than the average man’s weight within 100 miles. As for power, it’s a 20:1 ratio in favour of the Veyron in Super Sport trim.
Yet for all their technical differences, perhaps the design philosophy differential between these two is no more than that between the Rapid and the elegant but distinctive, Skoda-sketched wine glasses that Kaban shows us at the company’s Mladá Boleslav design centre outside Prague.
For parallel extremes, see the late Ferdinand Alexander Porsche’s original Porsche 911, and his equally functional everyday creations such as pens and sunglasses. Or Gordon Murray’s McLaren F1 of 1993 and his prototype T25 and T27 city cars of today – all lightweight three-seaters.
Kaban says he was able to draw on his experience with the Veyron to define Skoda’s new design language, which he calls “elegant, to the point and practical”.
“There is similarity in the simplicity… both are reduced to the minimum,” he says. It’s an ethic that aligns with his former charge, Audi (which he describes as “proud and motivated – a perfect brand to work for”), too.
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