Lifetime achievement

Sponsored by Richard Mille

In one sleep-deprived week, he created a masterpiece: Leonardo Fioravanti shaped what became the Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona as a pet project, one that Enzo Ferrari was compelled to put into production in 1968. This brilliant Italian then bottled lightning a second time with the 365 GT4 BB – by which time he was in only his mid-thirties. And he was just getting started.

Fioravanti is inextricably linked with Ferrari. On joining Pininfarina in 1964, his first task was to reprofile the 250 LM’s roofline to make it more aerodynamically efficient. He followed up with the Dino 206 GT, and then the influential P5 and P6. Made director of design in 1972, he oversaw a staff of talented artists but was no mere manager: he alone penned the 308 GTB that helped establish Ferrari as a volume manufacturer.

A decade later Fioravanti became managing director of Pininfarina. During his time at the helm he outdid himself, styling the Testarossa and the 288 GTO,

and co-authoring the F40. It wasn’t all exotica, though. On his watch, the design house unveiled a raft of successful mainstream production cars, from the Peugeot 205 to the Alfa Romeo 164.

Then came an offer he couldn’t refuse. In 1988, after 24 years at Pininfarina, Fioravanti joined Ferrari as general manager and director of engineering. Two years later, he moved to parent company Fiat to head the Centro Stile studio before forming the Fioravanti SRL consultancy with his sons, Luca and Matteo, in 1994 – and adding product design and architecture projects to his to-do list.

Automotive design remains his first love, however. The Geneva Motor Show has routinely witnessed the arrival of daring Fioravanti concepts, cars that foretell the future without resorting to contrivance and hokum. Each of the many cars to wear his name over the past two decades has boasted some novel feature or other that has since filtered into the mainstream; he holds some 30 patents for his innovations.

It is easy to gush about the great man’s almost peerless body of work, but Fioravanti himself wears his status as a design giant lightly. He has never stood in the spotlight – his paymasters over the years have generally preferred it that way – but you sense that this is of no consequence to the man himself.

‘For me it’s all about ideas,’ Fioravanti explains. ‘You can teach design, and there are many good schools, but refining something that already exists doesn’t move anything along. You need to explore.’

‘Fioravanti bottled lightning again with the 365 GT4 BB – and he was just getting started…’