Volkswagen Group’s design chief is looking forward to the “challenge” of competing with the Group’s recently acquired Italdesign Giugiaro design studio.
Giorgetto Giugiaro, who heads the design studio that bears his name, was named as the car designer of the 20th century and his company is responsible for some of VW’s most iconic designs ever, including the original Golf and Scirocco models.
“I think that competing against a true living legend of automotive design such as Giorgetto Giugiaro is a fantastic challenge for any VW group designer,” said VW Group design chief Walter de' Silva.
VW Group has taken a 90 per cent stake in the design firm and Giugiaro and his son will continue to design with the company. De' Silva believes the extra competition from such a respected design studio will allow the rest of the Group's designs to become more competitive.
“Italdesign will compete with all of our design centres because competition enhances creativity and VW never wants to be second best when it comes to design,” he said.
VW Group is currently working on 140 design projects and Giugiaro is expected to take some of these on, including the VW Up! family of cars.
Join the debate
Add your comment
Re: VW design 'to be more creative'
The Alfa 159 in both saloon and estate form are pretty widely recognised as being stunning recent production cars, let alone good looking. I would risk reproachable subjectivity in saying this were my comments not widely shared across much of the motoring press. Giugiaro's hall of fame is immense so, good move VW, combining Germanic engineering integrity with Italian flair is a close to nirvana as you can get although, personally, I'd like to see this blend achieved by an Italian brand - something that hopefully Alfa are getting close to right now...
Re: VW design 'to be more creative'
This is like Ford taking over Ghia. This is a trophy purchase – a bad mistake. IMHO Giugiaro have designed too many swoopy concepts but no good looking PRODUCTION cars for a while. They are into designing Football stadiums, tyres and pasta!
Re: VW design 'to be more creative'
Well it wont take much to be more creative than the present crop of bland boxes . Lets hope we can see some flair at last .