MICHELOTTI’S UNDERRATED TRIUMPH
WHEN we think of Triumph, we don’t really think of it as an Italian brand because it’s made in England, but the fact is, Triumph cars owe a lot of its heritage to the Italians. In fact, they owe it to an Italian, Giovanni Michelotti.
When we think Michelotti, most of us would wander to memories of quirky small cars and beach buggies, but this designer had a huge impact on some of the most influential brands on the road today.
Michelotti’s influence at Triumph is huge. If you remember any Triumph from the post war-era onwards, chances are he designed it.
Sadly for me, the one that I remember the most is the TR7.
I think this car has clunky lines, even if the proportions are acceptable. The TR7 is also the last nail in Triumph car’s coffin.
Michelotti didn’t design this. This was the work of former British Leyland designer Harris Mann.
Interestingly, their work will later come together in an important brand and their joint marks are visible today.
Leaving aside my prejudices, cars that Michelotti designed for Triumph include the Stag, which is a wonderful and elegant sports tourer, the 2000 series is a modern large sedan that still looks good to this very day, and my favourite is actually the Dolomite which is a gorgeous small car.
Michelotti also did quite a few Ferrari and Maserati specials and there was even an intriguing Bugatti prototype.
He dabbled in some Alfa Romeo ideas, like the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Veloce “Goccia”, which looks like the son of a Sprint who married an Alpine A110.
The A110 influence is not surprising since Michelotti was responsible for this
French sports car as well.
Because France has not been prolific in producing proper sports cars, the A110 is the main representation of what a French sports car would look like.
In fact, France also thinks this, and when Renault decided to come up with a new model for the brand, it didn’t take after the more dramatic, more French 1980s interpretation of the classic called the 310, which evolved into the 610 for the 1990s.
Instead, it went back to the original Michelotti design.
The A110 wasn’t born beautiful. The journey began with the A106, a car built around the Renault 4CV mechanicals for a Renault dealer in Dieppe, Jean Ridele, who had motorsports in his mind.
Then came the A108, which was built around the Dauphine chassis, bestowing on it a longer, more elegant low-slung body, before wrapping the A110 around the frame of the domestic and pedestrian R8.
Such is the power of a good designer that Michelotti willed a beautiful, lowslung, unique-looking sports car out of a tall, boxy and ungainly rear-engined family sedan.
Having defined what a French sports car should look like and unsuccessfully trying to influence the British motor industry to wear fitted suits rather than their usual frumpy woolen jackets, Michelotti went about leaving his mark on the Germans.
Before the 2002, BMW produced boring sedans and striking sports cars, like the 328 and later the 507.
BMW had a dash of driver cred, but no one would consider it a premium sedan brand after World War 2 because its designs were outdated.
So the company hatched a plan. They plan was to go horizontal, or rather, the grille had to go horizontal. Everyone was doing it and it had to as well.
Under the guidance of Wilhelm Hofmeister, who was the head of design and body engineering, the company took the cash injection from Herbert and Harald Quandt and came up with the Neue Klasse, or new class of cars.
The first product was the four-door sedan, unimaginatively called the 1800 and 2000, based on their approximate engine displacement.
It was an okay car, kind of large and featured the proto-BMW look that we have all come to know and appreciate, but it wasn’t a good-looking car. It had the bones of a good-looking car, but it needed to spend time in the gym.
BMW decided to hire Michelotti as the trainer and he took the doughy Neue Klasse and worked it hard, trimming ounces of fat, adding muscle definition on the hood and the flank and even the gluteus maximus.
A bit of nip and tuck around the wheel arches and gave the nose strong lines, thanks to that chrome body line that went around the car, strengthening everything.
That chrome line was such a defining characteristic of the car that BMW kept it throughout the 02’s life, even as it changed the grille from the sickly chrome to the more menacing black and enlarged the headlamps to give it more purpose.
While the Neue Klasse was a good step forward in terms of the design philosophy and engineering approach, the 2002 was really the car that refined the idea into something strong to hang a brand on.
The Hoffmeister kink could have disappeared had the 2002 not been such a popular car, giving it a foundation to build on.
At about this time, our British friend Harris was also doing consulting for the Bavarian carmaker, and he was tasked with helping the company to refine its design. He focused on panel gaps and bonnets and he suggested quad headlamps.
The Neue Klasse, like the 02, had single round headlamps and, as if lost in design, the four-door sedan adopted square headlamps, which made the face either forgettable or mildly repulsive.
Due to United States-type approval rules that prevented cars from having faired in headlamps, insisting on individual sealed beams or something, BMW had to fit four headlamps on its large coupe version of the Neue Klasse, which is different from the 02.
That was not a design intent.
The quad headlamp design intent first appeared on the E9 coupe, which became the Batmobile.
The 2002’s taut lines gave us the E21 3-series, which began to put BMW on the map and those bones evolved into the E30, which defined the modern BMW.
The E21 came with single headlamps if you opted for the 316, if I am not mistaken, while the rest came with quad headlamp arrangement and everyone knew then that it would be a design feature that would stick.
As you can see, Michelotti is an undervalued designer who didn’t just help Triumph make handsome Italiandesigned cars, but has had far more influence on modern car design than you thought.