Gandini next to Lamborghini Miura, 85 years of legends/manufacturer site
Somewhere in the motoring paradise in the sky, the big names of the automotive world are surely now standing in a long line.
From Carl Benz, Henry Ford, Ferdinand Porsche, Andre Citroën, Carroll Shelby, Enzo Ferrari, Ferruccio Lamborghini, Giotto Bizarini, Jean Paolo Dellara and many others waiting to shake the hand of the latest entrant to this glorious order - Marcello Gandini , the legendary car designer passed away last night at the age of 85 in Turin, Italy.
The first generation of the BMW 5 Series, the birth of the best sports saloon in the world/manufacturer website
Born in 1938 and the son of an orchestra conductor, Gandini began his remarkable career in 1965 at the Bretona workshop he joined.
It wasn't the first time he approached it, he tried to get there back in 1963, but encountered resistance from Giorgetto Giugiaro, who was then the in-house designer of the workshop and only when Giugiauro left the workshop paved the way for his accession.
He joins and actually makes it one of the most influential on the way cars are designed and planned, whether they were folk like the first generation Volkswagen Polo to legends like the Lamborghini Miura supercar.
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Alfa Romeo Montreal, also his/her manufacturer's site
And that Miura may not have been the first supercar, but laid the foundations for what would define them for years to come - a rear-central V12 engine, uncompromising performance and a design that, even decades later, has not aged a day - was only the beginning of his activity in the field.
In fact, next to it, the other sports cars he designed and he designed for everyone, because everyone wanted a piece of his genius, are to this day huge icons of what a passion car should look like.
Names like the Da Tomaso Pantera, Lancia Stratos, Lamborghini Countach and Diablo, Maserati B-Turbo and even the Ferrari Dino 308/GT4, the first and last Ferrari designed by the Bertone workshop.
He is also the man behind the famous "scissor doors", which open forward and upwards and first appeared on the Alfa 33 Carabo concept car and were applied to the Kontas and Diablo.
Lamborghini Diablo and the iconic scissor doors/manufacturer site
But his fingerprint wasn't just on the top end of the dream machines.
He is also the one who signed the Autobianchi A112, the Renault 5 Turbo of 1980 and the second generation of the Renault 5 in 1984, the Fiat X1/9, the first generation Volkswagen Polo as mentioned, the first generation of the BMW 5 Series which founded the dynasty in 1972 The best sports-sedan-saloon in the world, Citroen BX and many others.
Renault 5 turbo, wild, stormy and one-off/manufacturer's site
What made him one of the giants of automotive design was his ability to move in his creations between the application of everyday and practical car building techniques, with an emphasis on functionality and usefulness, alongside the creation of cars whose entire essence was a dynamic sculpture that was visible in motion even when standing like the Alfa Romeo Montreal to cars that combined both things These are in the case of the Lancia Stratos - a car that began as a design exercise and turned against all odds into a crazy rally machine including the application of an almost panoramic windshield around the driver's cabin.
But also his ability to move between styles where the clear examples of this are the movement between the Lamborghini Miura on its sensual curves and the sharp, cutting lines of the Contash.
These are probably transitions and abilities that could only come from the combination of a design genius with a mechanical vision no less than an aesthetic one and no less than a person who lived in a time when the process of designing cars began and ended with a pencil placed on a block of paper without a computer dictating the angle of the windshield, the height of the roof or the tip of the tail.
Raise one in his memory.
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