“The car is a dream, a desire, lasting for millennia” – Marcello Gandini

Never a person to court the limelight, Marcello Gandini is nevertheless recognised and celebrated as one of the greatest car designers of all time. Recognised by CDN with a lifetime achievement award, the list of his designs that have passed into automotive legend goes on and on: everything from the Countach to the Renault 5. Gandini’s Lancia Stratos Zero concept regular appears on CDN’s most read stories list and sums up his design philosophy: always look forward, be original and do not repeat the past. With permission from the Gandini family, Car Design News is happy to reprint the designer’s acceptance speech, which is typically future facing and has a strong message for young designers. 

”Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for being present at this significant and heartfelt ceremony for me. A place like this, a prestigious symbol of the education of hundreds of thousands of young people over the decades, brings me back to the context, completely different and far removed from the academic one, in which I was educated. 

The origins of my education lie in a family tradition that did not consider – we are talking about the mid-1950s, early 1960s – many deviations: the natural outcome was humanistic, literary, and classical studies. My father Marco had two degrees and was an orchestra conductor. 

Extract from limitations and impositions a strong, stubborn, and constructive sense of rebellion

The only possibility in the family was the classical lyceum first and then university. As a matter of course, I attended the classical lyceum and studied the piano. As a matter of course. All this classical culture, such a rigid and conservative context, the imposition of pre-established patterns immediately triggered in me an unconditioned passion for engines, mechanics, and technology, whether it be design, racing, or innovations. 

The first message I want to derive from these considerations and communicate to the future young engineers and designers gathered here today is: extract from limitations and impositions a strong, stubborn, and constructive sense of rebellion. In the first year of high school, with the money allocated to me to buy a Latin translation book, I bought Dante Giacosa’s “Motori Endotermici.” 

I read it, studied it, analysed it in every line. Shortly after buying it, I knew it by heart. At the end of high school, I became definitively a rebellious boy because I refused to enrol in university to follow my vocation: designing cars. In the family, this was not seen well. At that time, you couldn’t stay at home without following the rules and the will of the parents; I found myself living with a friend, with no money and many crazy ideas. I made small modifications to cars for hill climb races, sometimes even with bodywork changes. 

Small things, nothing that could give me a living. At the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, I realised that, to survive, I would have to be less selective and started to dedicate myself to other fields besides mechanics. In this period – I was 23 – I met my wife Claudia, who began then and continues to be today the key to my success and to the great results we have achieved together. 

I, the creative mind, and she, the ability to keep stability, solidity, to support me, to organise, to maintain relationships. The first person to whom I dedicate this recognition is undoubtedly her. I started drawing, in an era when the word “designer” did not exist in Italy. You could study to become an architect or an engineer, but there were no degree courses for what I wanted to do. I made drawings of anything, sketches for advertisements, cartoons, furniture, and gradually drawings of cars for small coachbuilders, with smaller or bigger modifications. Still too little to say I had a job, but enough for me to sense a direction. 

The second message I want to convey here today is: to design something new, you need to know everything – everything – that has already been done in the past in your field. Knowing the history of design and the history of innovations in general – let’s say from Leonardo Da Vinci onwards – is a mandatory requirement for every future designer. 

Even if it’s extremely difficult at the beginning, never stop looking for the right job for you, for the people who value you and put you in a position to express your abilities and talent

Returning to us, from then on, the path began to clear, or at least to appear less steep and impossible. As a self-taught person, I got used to drawing at full scale, even without ever seeing how it was done. I drew on tracing paper, on the floor of my room, without the wooden templates used at the time. Gradually, I obtained them so that I could create credible technical drawings. The first time I took my drawing to a modeller for bodywork, he, hanging the sheet on the wall, stayed silent for fifteen minutes, observing it. 

Then, shaking his head, he said, “I don’t understand anything.” I didn’t know what to say and how to explain myself. Then I understood: I had drawn in the opposite direction to the common practice of orienting the front of the car to the left. Fortunately, the drawing was on tracing paper; I turned it around, and the modeller’s eyes lit up: it was clear, and it was also – he said – quite decently executed! 

Here I can say that my career as a designer began. I did bodywork jobs, studied, drew on my own futuristic cars, often too extreme but certainly original and interesting to look at. I had put together a sort of portfolio, and with this, I presented myself at the meeting with Nuccio Bertone, who immediately proposed that I work for him. 

A couple more years passed for various reasons, and at the age of 26, I became his chief stylist. A job I always carried out with extreme autonomy, thanks precisely to Nuccio Bertone’s entrepreneurial foresight and courage. 

I think it is difficult today to imagine such freedom of action for an unknown twenty-six-year-old, but Bertone had a unique ability to recognise talent and, above all, to put it in a position to express itself at its best. 3 The third message I want to spread is: even if it’s extremely difficult at the beginning, never stop looking for the right job for you, for the people who value you and put you in a position to express your abilities and talent. 

The car is a dream, a desire, lasting for millennia. It is half a flying carpet and half a house

In this regard, I must say that I have also been extremely fortunate because the 1960s were an extraordinary period for a designer, a confluence of factors that had never occurred before, and, in the field of automobiles, has never occurred since. There was a desire for new things, an unstoppable energy, a mindset focused on the future, and the belief that anything was possible. Man went to the Moon. 

Something different was in the air, influencing the approach to almost everything, including automobiles. What is a car? We are in a Polytechnic, a place of research, knowledge, so I won’t dwell. The car is a means of transportation. But there are many means of transportation. The car is an industrially manufactured product intended for sale to an individual or a small group of individuals, for example, a family. But let’s go a little deeper. The car is an industrial object easily spread and consequently capable of influencing habits, creating fashion phenomena, acting on trends and public tastes. 

Here, we can then ask ourselves what design is in the field of the automobile, what its purpose is. It is the part of the design that introduces elements aimed at improving the object, promoting the success of a model. The design of a car is its first form of advertising. Design is communication. So far, everything is very true, and a bit boring too. What makes the car something extraordinary has nothing to do with all this. The car is a dream, a desire, lasting for millennia. It is half a flying carpet and half a house. 

It is the magical object that gives us the freedom to go anywhere we want in an instant, offering protection, shelter, space that moves with us. It is freedom. Individual freedom. This, for me, is the very essence of the car, to which many other emotional elements are added. 4 A car is the pleasure of owning a polished, seductive, important object. It is also an expression of the romantic side of mechanics: the psychological extension of physical possibilities, the continuation of us, of our desire for speed, strength, perfection. Of beauty. 

In an era where design suffers from too much standardisation, where everything seems to have already been done, perhaps we should rethink the object itself

Furthermore, the car is the object that exalts the only true invention of man, the only element not existing in nature that man has added: the wheel. The aeroplane existed in nature - birds; the ship - a floating log; electronics - the nervous system. The wheel, however, did not. There were round stones, a washer made of a tree trunk that could roll, but man added the pivot, and from there, he moved the world. 

How is a car born? The prerequisites for every project today are: 

• Marketing indications 
• Objectives to be achieved 
• Characteristics to assert in that model: performance or economy, innovation, or ease of acceptance by the public 
• Overall architecture 
• Good functioning of the model 
• Equipment (depending on the price range) 
• Safety (real or desirable)

The function of the designer in this process is:

• To extend the range of potential customers to the maximum 
• To highlight the technical characteristics, the brand image 
• To enhance the end-user with the character, the performance, the richness, or the essentiality of the fittings. 
• To have a clear knowledge of the project assumptions 
• To have a critical knowledge of his sector (historical and current) 
• To create different emotional solutions to a practical problem In this last sentence is the most important function of the designer: to provoke a feeling, a seduction, an emotional reaction. 

The designer must be able to ensure that the owner’s personality is represented by that model (in a positive sense often, sometimes less). Favouring this seduction action is the designer’s task. The car is a complex balance of balances. 5

For example, a city car will say: “I am easy, friendly, nice, I respect pedestrians, I inspire trust, I am kind, I am valuable, but I am possible, I make myself liked.”

An extreme sports car will say: “I am aggressive, powerful, fast, difficult, but I reflect my charm on those who own me.”

A large sedan will say: “I am elegant, my owner is an important, balanced, wise person.”

And so on. 

The designer is the one who makes a car speak. A designer can also choose a non-style (which is still a style), a way to avoid comparison: a deliberately disharmonious, massive, somewhat ugly car tells us, “I am unique, I have my charisma, it will be chosen by those who do not want to conform, those who are not afraid to be different. ” The car has a social and cultural role, it is a significant part of the urban and general context, an object that defines people, renewing and updating an ancient dream. 

From these considerations begins the conception of the car, with the initial designs being an irreplaceable way to fix ideas, and then develop them on CAD, models, and prototypes. The fourth message I would like to emerge from these words is: use technology for what it is, a means to implement ideas. But don’t stop writing, drawing, calculating, creating sketches on paper. The pencil is an extraordinary means of connection between the brain – ideas – and reality. Starting a project from a sheet of paper and a pencil means there is an idea. If there is no original idea, no technological wonder can create it for you. 

There is also a role of the car that deserves special attention, which has been a common thread throughout my career and is perhaps at the root of the recognition I receive today. The car is a constant engine of innovation, technological, engineering, and functional research. In an era where design suffers from too much standardisation, where everything seems to have already been done, perhaps we should rethink the object itself. This is what I have always focused on and with even greater commitment in the last twenty years. 

Today more than ever, the car must be thought of and designed as a whole, while often the interior, exterior, and mechanics are still considered separate parts, almost separate between form, technique, and construction methods. 6 In the profession and teaching of design, trends are seen more than ideas. Style chases itself, trying to endlessly repeat successful cars. Where can innovation be then? We must find the courage to change. 

The car is still the only industrial object for which the shell is built first, and then, with a thousand operations, the functional mechanical parts, instrumentation, furnishings, little pieces and coverings are added. A bit like ships in bottles. My research in recent decades has focused precisely on this problem. 

The last message I want to convey to the young is: dare. Fight to never do what someone has already done, do not even repeat yourselves, find solutions, perhaps difficult, but new.

Simplify, reduce to a few units the number of pieces that make up the architecture of a car, use materials that are structured and finished at the same time. Working with composites, sandwich structures, with pre-assembled mechanics completely and partly foamed in the structure itself, I managed to create not just a ship built in a bottle but a type of bottle to which the ship could join already complete. 

A design and construction method that allows a drastic reduction in the necessary industrial operations, and therefore, overall costs. Back in the 80’s, a new engine, entirely designed and built according to my idea, was presented with the mechanics on one side and the shell next to it, assembled in 15 minutes by two workers, obtaining a complete and running car. This project and prototype, covered by various patents, were acquired by a large French automotive company. More recently, a very articulated evolution of this research has been developed for a large Indian automotive company, with new patents and extremely interesting composite materials. 

Also in this case, the presentation was made with the car disassembled. Some elements on one side, others on the other, and in ten minutes assembled, started to invite the company’s Number 1 to climb on the passenger side and go for a ride together. Creating the same functions with very few elements is the challenge of the future. 

The last message I want to convey to the young is: dare. Fight to never do what someone has already done, do not even repeat yourselves, find solutions, perhaps difficult, but new. I know it’s not easy. I see today’s automotive companies, especially those dealing with luxury products, indulging in the temptation to make products that are always the same, infinite replicas of their own past, while the right path should be, to respect that past, never 7 to copy it, to avoid ruining it and at the same time to show entrepreneurial and creative courage to look ahead, to support true genius, innovation, and avant-garde. 

I wish for an era as close as possible where change and courage are a mandatory voice in the business plans of companies and in the strategy of every CEO. I am on your side. I also want to dedicate this degree to Mariella Mengozzi, whom I will always remember for her radiant direction of the Mauto in Turin and for her great humanity and kindness. 

Thanks to all present, to the owners of the cars exhibited here today, for being so kind to bring them. Thanks, finally, and especially, to the proposers, for the great support and for their friendship: Alfredo Stola, Gautam Sen, Claudio Beccari, Flavio Manzoni, Mike Robinson, Giuseppe Menga, Paolo Paloschi, Mariella Mengozzi. 

Thank you all.”

Marcello Gandini