STEPHEN BAYLEY
The Aesthete
‘ALTHOUGH EVERYONE ADORES HIS JAGUARS, I DO NOT THINK WILLIAM LYONS IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS A DESIGNER’
I have been compiling a list of the greatest-ever car designers, excluding the dross, the momentary celebrities, and trying to get down to the absolute essence. I mean: who are the very few people in the past century who have given astonishing shape and enduring meaning to the idea of the automobile?
And the astonishing thing is: there’s not a single Briton on my first draft. This is extremely strange because, despite the comic and tragic vectors of Britain’s industry, we are still one of few countries (add US, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Japan) for whom the car is an expression of a singular culture.
Let’s define terms. I have been worrying about ‘design’ for so long, it may be time to give up. Maybe there is no such thing as design, but there is certainly such a thing as a designer. These are individuals who are part artist and part technician. While they may understand the machinery, they are not engineers, but visionaries who see the world in a certain way and are determined to make meaningful contributions to it.
The shortlist is not difficult. There could be no debate about (Nuccio) Bertone, (Flaminio) Bertoni and Pininfarina being on it, nor Giugiaro and Gandini. I could easily defend Bill Mitchell, Giovanni Michelotti and Robert Opron. Mitchell’s Oldsmobile Toronado was the last great American car; Opron’s three great Citroëns (the SM, GS and CX) plus the very odd Renault Fuego are eccentric genius.
On Michelotti I would confer a special award for bizarre range: from the Triumph Herald to the Alpine A110 is a long journey. I would include Patrick le Quément for the cute Twingo and clever Scenic, which changed the shape of cars forever. Possibly Virgil Exner: no-one who has seen a 1957 Chrysler 300C will forget it.
The difficulty comes in considering supremely talented individuals whose output had slight influence: Gordon Buehrig’s Cord 810, Sixten Sason’s various SAABs. Similarly Ercole Spada and Piero Castagnero: the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato and Lancia Fulvia Coupé remain exquisite, but were never popular nor successful (those two qualities are attributes of design).
Another methodological problem is those extremely influential individuals who were more inspirational managers than lonely visionaries. Do we include people who have never picked up a pencil on a list of designers? There are a lot of them: Harley Earl of GM, Wilhelm Hofmeister of BMW, Leonardo Fioravanti and Lorenzo Ramaciotti of Pininfarina, and Uwe (Sierra) Bahnsen and Jack (Mustang) Telnack of Ford. I think we do.
So what happened to the Brits? For some reason I kept on excluding William Lyons. Although everyone rightly adores his beautiful Jaguars, I do not think Lyons identified himself as a designer. Self-awareness, not to say rampant ego, is a defining characteristic of this tribe.
Sure, Frank Feeley and Walter Belgrove deserve honourable mentions for the Aston Martin DB 1 and Triumph TR2, but these cars are pleasant idiosyncrasies, not industrial events of world historical importance. And from today, Ian Callum and Gerry McGovern do excellent work at Jaguar and Land Rover, but the solemn Muse of History is not yet admitting them to the All Time Hall of Fame.
I wonder if I am being biased. There was a moment during recent history when British designers were doing unique work: Bill Towns at Aston Martin, David Bache at Rover, Harris Mann at the chaotic amalgam that eventually expired as BL. The great Italians we love because they make us think la dolce vita; American cars are rock music and everyone loves rock music; the great German cars were positive expressions of the Wirtschaftswunder when everyone got rich; French cars evoke images of either sumptuous luxury or elegant chic.
But Towns, Bache and Mann had the misfortune to be working at a historical moment no-one much liked at the time and no-one wants to recall later. Their culture was industrial malaise, cultural stagnation, political impotence and economic calamity. And yet they worked against it with designs of great optimism and originality that, people will eventually see, constitute a unique British contribution to this most evocative subject. The hopelessness makes it the more touching.
Their efforts were compromised by dim management and poor execution, but isn’t it only snobbery that prevents us seeing the Rover-BRM gas-turbine racer as the most sensational Le Mans car of its day, the Austin Allegro as ingenious, well ahead of its time, and the Rover SD1 as a unique reinvention of the traditional saloon? Yes, it is only snobbery. I shall revise my list.