Bentley’s new design boss jumps ship to McLaren (inside three months)
After only three months as Bentley’s design director Tobias Sühlmann has joined McLaren as chief design officer
McLaren Automotive has (finally) found a brand-new chief design officer in Tobias Sühlmann. His appointment was announced today – Friday 21st April 2023 – and he starts his new role in September, which will be more than a year after the previous long-standing design director Rob Melville left it vacant for Middle Eastern pastures new – becoming chief design officer for CEER, a Saudi Arabian electric vehicle start-up business.
McLaren Automotive will be hoping Sühlmann sticks around longer than in his previous top-job role at Bentley though. He lasted less than three months as director of design at the Crewe-based brand, after a January 24th 2023 announcement and official February 1st start. To be fair, Sühlmann had joined Bentley back in October 2021 as head of exterior design and was described by its PR as “instrumental” in the creation of the Batur limited-run grand tourer. And he only gained the overall Bentley design director position after his former boss, Andreas Mindt was sent back to Germany to take over the design reins at Volkswagen passenger cars from the ousted Jozef Kabaň.
Perhaps the ruthless VW Group design jobs merry-go-round of the last half year didn’t sit too well with Sühlmann, or perhaps McLaren just made him a better offer. Either way, it’s an interesting move for the Pforzheim University transportation design graduate – see our summer 2003 show review for a picture of his cool fifth-semester Isuzu Supertruck project – who has worked for a number of high-profile German and British car brands over the last two decades.
After graduating from Pforzheim in 2005, Sühlmann started at Volkswagen in the same year, where he was credited with the design for the 2015 Sport Coupé GTE that previewed the elegant 2017 Arteon four-door liftback. While at VW he also worked on the 2016 T-Prime GTE concept and a later-generation production Touareg large SUV before moving to Bugatti in August 2017 as head of exterior design creative development, working for head of Bugatti design Achim Anscheidt.
Only nine months later, in May 2018, it was announced he was moving to Aston Martin as chief exterior designer, under the leadership of chief creative officer Marek Reichman, and as Miles Nurnberger got promoted to design director. After that spell, he then spent time as McLaren’s lead designer for special projects, where he worked on the limited-run Solus GT single-seat, track-only hypercar, based on the previous 2017 concept developed for Sony’s Gran Turismo Sport video game.
According to McLaren PR, Sühlmann will now oversee all brand matters and report directly to McLaren Automotive’s CEO, Michael Leiters. “We are delighted to welcome Tobias to the McLaren team. He is a highly experienced automotive designer with an existing understanding of McLaren having previously worked on our ground-breaking Solus GT project. Tobias will play a leading role in developing McLaren’s new design language across our developing product portfolio as part of our Future of Performance business strategy.”