GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Controversial car designer Albrecht Goertz

THE BIOGRAPHY OF Albrecht Goertz, which he called You’ve Got To Be Lucky, seems never to have been published. He certainly penned his memoirs, in English, and in his customarily ebullient manner circulated copies to anyone interested. Through entirely fair means, I have a spiral-bound rough of it right here. Much as it gives the generally accepted version of his life, with its fairytale overtones, it also usefully relays Goertz’s assertive version of his biggest controversy: did he, or did he not, style the Datsun 240Z?

The New York-based German industrial designer decided in 1962 to visit Japan to hunt for new clients. He had no contacts or appointments, and spoke zero Japanese. Initially, he secured a contract with Fuji to design cameras and then, on his fifth visit to the country, he signed a one-year consultancy agreement with Nissan.

‘My first assignment was the Silvia coupé,’ he recorded, although he doesn’t claim full responsibility, stating that management didn’t like the existing design. Yet Nissan wanted to enter the US market with a sports car to rival Porsche and Jaguar, and asked Goertz to undertake its styling while it was under contract-development with Yamaha.

Nissan axed the car, however, so Yamaha began working with Toyota on what became its 2000GT – very different to the car styled by Goertz, the metal prototype for which Nissan retained. Goertz continued making clay models for other potential Nissans, and recognised much of his earlier work when the 240Z was unveiled in 1969. Which he didn’t hold back from telling German journalists, who then linked him with the car in print. That crossed the line for the Japanese. The principles of a united corporate front and no credit taken by individuals, especially foreigners, were sacrosanct.

Goertz was cold-shouldered in Tokyo, but later publicly expressed dislike of the subsequent 280ZX, prompting a Nissan spokesman to state in Automotive News that Goertz had nothing to do with the 240Z.

A public slanging match through lawyers was then in prospect until Nissan settled out of court. Goertz wrote that on 14 November 1980 he received a letter saying: ‘While it is our view that the 240Z was the product of Nissan’s design staff, Nissan agrees that the personnel who designed that automobile were influenced by your fine work for Nissan and had the benefit of your designs.’

So much for the chewy part of Goertz’s tale. What’s indisputable is his styling work for the famously gorgeous BMW 507 roadster, plus the 503 tourer. He created the lines of both in his East 36th Street studio in New York in 1954. The work was the result of a chance meeting with German importer Max Hoffmann at a car show. BMW had asked Hoffmann how best to conquer the US market, and he introduced them to Goertz, who not only had total design freedom (on the 507, he said the only visible part he had to re-use was an ashtray) but produced them in under a year for their 1955 Frankfurt motor show debut. Celebrated as the two cars are today, at the time they failed to stave off the near-collapse of BMW.

From then on, through the rest of his life until his death in 2006, the cosmopolitan and engaging Goertz worked across a vast range of industrial and consumer products.

His early life was frankly bizarre. Albrecht Graf von Schlitz genannt von Goertz und Freiherr von Wrisberg was born on 12 January 1914 into German aristocracy, inheriting the title of baron and count, and growing up at the family seat in the village of Brunkensen, Lower Saxony. He did poorly at various private schools, and only family string-pulling got him a job with Deutsche Bank in Hamburg. Being half-Jewish, he found 1930s Germany ever more threatening, and to escape he got a job at another merchant bank in London. Yet he absolutely hated finance, and in 1936 left for the USA, aged 22.

He ended up in Los Angeles, working in a car wash and then opening a custom shop off Rodeo Drive. He built himself a Bugattiinfluenced hot-rod based on a 1940 Mercury, called the Paragon, and after serving in the US Army he drove the Paragon acrosscountry to New York in 1945. One day, in a hotel car park, he met Raymond Loewy, who admired the Paragon so much he offered Goertz a job at his design agency. First he sent him to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to learn the industry disciplines before assigning him to Studebaker in Indiana for three years. After that it was back to Loewy’s New York HQ where, for no specific misdemeanour, Loewy fired him. That was the spur to go it alone.

And it was very alone. Unlike other designers, Goertz produced all his work without assistants. ‘A secretary for half a day, three times a week, is all I need,’ he once said. ‘If whole committees confer at the design stage then nothing good can come from it.’

‘GOERTZ RECOGNISED MUCH OF HIS EARLIER WORK WHEN THE 240Z WAS UNVEILED IN 1969. WHICH HE DIDN’T HOLD BACK FROM TELLING GERMAN JOURNALISTS, WHO LINKED HIM WITH THE CAR IN PRINT’