A rare audience with Giorgetto Giugiaro

Sitting under a large marquee within an even larger English garden in a hidden part of rural East Anglia is not the sort of place you might expect to find (and interview) the world’s greatest living car designer. But there Giorgetto Giugiaro was, in early summer 2025 on a sizzling hot day at the Lotus Esprit 50th birthday event in the grounds of Lotus founder Colin Chapman’s family countryside home.

Immaculately dressed as always, in a navy jacket, cream slacks, comfy Prada kicks and tortoiseshell Ray-Ban sunglasses to hide the glare, Giugiaro was invited to bathe in the glory of his crucial involvement in the Esprit design among hundreds of doting aficionados and fans (including current and former Lotus designers Ben Payne and Julian Thomson).

Walking through the lawn-turned-visitor car park choc-full of classic and modern Lotus models, the inner grounds included even rarer models, including not one, but two amphibious versions of the Lotus Esprit – one on land and another amusingly submerged in the house swimming pool – in reference to the car’s iconic underwater role in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

Within this rather eccentric backdrop, Giugiaro held calm court. And kindly answered question after question, taking time to remember the smallest details from 100s of important projects and then provide considered answers in his high-pitched, sing-song-style Italian voice – ‘pro-getti im-por-tanti!’ – to be translated into English via an unofficial, but polite and patient interpreter.

What follows is a careful edit and sharing of that special day’s various conversations, safe in the knowledge that Giugiaro has now fully recovered from the serious car crash he suffered later that summer. Indeed, as of early 2026, he is still chairman of GFG Style. The initials stand for ‘Giorgetto Fabrizio Giugiaro’ to reflect the important role of his son Fabrizio in the company they set up together in 2015 – after Giorgetto sold the last of his shares in the Italdesign design and engineering firm he co-founded in 1968 to the VW Group.

And while the GFG business continues to offer automotive, architecture and industrial design services around the world and conceive new concepts, his PR does concede that Giorgetto now has more time to dedicate to his “great passion” for painting and clearly finds time to visit the occasional English country garden too (for which we’re very grateful)...

Car Design News: Where does the Lotus Esprit rank among your many car designs?

Giorgetto Giugiaro: The Esprit was important because it was a project I followed entirely. It was also the moment I moved into the British car environment and a completely a new architecture. It was a milestone in my career. There was also a human value to the project because I had the chance to get to know Lotus founder Colin Chapman, who was a hero in Formula 1 at the time.

CDN: Was the Esprit’s design development unusual or trickier than others? 

GG: In the beginning I was a bit stressed, because it was the first car I had designed in fiberglass, an idea imposed by Chapman. Lotus decided to start first with a small-scale model, then prepare the final concept for the 1972 Turin Auto Show. But before building the 1:1 model we designed a small model to study its aerodynamics. Some tuning was needed and as aerodynamics were very important for Chapman, he decided we needed to stop the project. But my Italdesign business decided to invest money to create the whole model to present at the Turin show anyway. At the event the concept was really welcomed by the public and Chapman was so surprised he said, ‘Okay, let’s continue’.

CDN: Why do you think the Esprit has stood the test of time (beyond its fame in several 007 movies)?

GG: It is the simplicity of the whole and the proportions. It’s the same with a man or a woman’s face, the proportion between the parts and the simplicity of the lines. This gives the beauty, the power to last. Looking at the car now, I realise it didn’t get so old.

CDN: You’ve worked with many visionary people – from Colin Chapman at Lotus to Ferdinand Piëch at Volkswagen – but how do you strike the balance between your creativity and these incredibly clever but focused engineers and executives with such strong personalities?

GG: Before I got to design the VW Golf Mk1, the top management of Volkswagen visited the 1969 Turin auto show and selected six cars that for them represented the future evolution of car architecture. Of the six they really liked, four were designed by Italdesign. That’s why they called me. It is not always like this, sometimes companies come to you with the CEO, marketing and finance and say, ‘you need to design it like this’. VW’s way was the opposite. There was more freedom. The challenge when you move across automotive brands is that everyone has their own way of doing things. The Japanese do it a certain way. And the Germans do it differently to the British – from tooling operations, pressing and moulding – based on their knowledge. 

CDN: You must be good at navigating cultural and technical differences? 

GG: A point I needed to underline to all manufacturers was that I wasn’t just a designer aesthetically. I had a technical engineering background. I knew what to take into account while drawing. When I went to work on the Golf project at Volkswagen, they had pictures of the Fiat 128 disassembled to analyse. While they were looking at the drawings, they turned towards me and were like, ‘Oh my god, they’ve sent us some young guy who will not be able to do anything,’ [Giugiaro was in his mid-30s at the time]. So, I understood the need to prove my knowledge and started asking technical questions.

CDN: You predicted over a decade ago that future cars would be more comfortable with easy-to-grasp functionality. It seems the first part of that prediction came true, but not the second. Why is so much of today’s car design user experience so bad?

GG: To ‘fish’ for a greater audience, car makers try to add more features. And for some, the user experience becomes worse. As a parallel, there are so many features in cars nowadays that we don’t have at home. So of course we are not used to them. The touch functions on a car can also be dangerous. The interaction between human and car is so much faster. Before, you needed to move a stalk or push a button. Now you move close [to a screen with your fingers] and you’ve already activated something. Looking at some futuristic interiors there’s no need to go to Disneyland because everything is already inside the car, with lights and more. There is too much.

CDN: You say good design needs to be ‘honest’ for the public to accept it. Do you think some modern EVs are not honest enough and that’s partly why they’re not being accepted?

GG: It is a commercial problem in that there needs to be financial advantages for the manufacturers. And [for consumers] there’s a shortage of information and a psychological problem: when you choose a product, you want it to say something about you. A car’s style has a psychological side and can be a status symbol.

CDN: Given the variety of powertrains to package today, plus greater safety legislation, do you think you ‘had it easier’ designing cars in the 1960s, 70s and 80s?

GG: [He chuckles] Contrary to what you think, the more rules there are, the smarter the product can be. You have to think harder. When aerodynamics started to be taken seriously, it was a problem for designing cars, but over time it helped to improve the product.

CDN: What do you think of Apple’s design work on the iPhone?

GG: This device made us lazy, so we don’t even remember the phone numbers of our friends and families anymore. And it removes our time to create, as we look at what other people are doing. And because it does everything.

CDN: …But you still have one!

GG: [Everyone laughs] It does help me talk easily with friends in other parts of the world. And it makes me think: if we have a device so powerful today, what will humankind be able to do in another 50 years?

CDN: What are your views on artificial intelligence?

GG: When technology is able to support your ideas, you can exploit it. Can artificial intelligence do better [than humans]? Maybe, but there always needs to be someone responsible. Design is not democracy. You need one person to decide. But I have to admit, that staying on the beach and pressing a button and the job is done [is appealing].

CDN: How many of your designs do you own?

GG: I have the Lotus Esprit, a DeLorean and one that is more forgotten – even if it’s important – the Fiat Panda, because it was one of the most difficult to design. It is not a hedonistic car. It’s a fridge with four wheels.

CDN: You’ve made many designs that became famous, but which ones do you wish were better known to history?

GG: The DeLorean was a simple car that became really famous [via the 1985 Hollywood blockbuster film Back to the Future]. The Maserati Ghibli wasn’t used so much in the movies but should be more important.

CDN: And in terms of your many concepts, which ones stand out for you?

GG: The 1963 Chevrolet Testudo shown in New York in 1964 surprised a lot of people because it was a moving [drivable] concept. At the time in America, concepts were just ‘still’. That’s why it became the queen of the 1964 New York Auto Show.

CDN: What about a concept that was a little bit more slept-on? I’m thinking about unusual vehicles like your 1992 Columbus MPV…

GG: The Columbus was originally designed for the Italian president to mark 500 years after Columbus discovered the Americas. It remained a concept because it wasn’t reinforced for bomb attacks and so on. You need to jump inside this kind of product to [fully] appreciate it.

CDN: You’ve influenced innumerable car designers across generations for decades. But who influenced you?

GG: Everyone looks around and can see many things. Films, museums, art. We absorb these inputs as humans even without knowing. And when we draw, when we design, we don’t realise that our creativity comes from the creativity of other people.

CDN: Sure, but maybe some people are better at ‘absorbing influences’ than others?

GG: Okay, the Citroën DS 19 is an example of a vehicle that nobody has been able to copy. Grazie Mille!