Breaking: Frascella joins Audi as Lichte takes new VW Group role

Audi has a new chief designer. Exactly ten years after he took over at the helm of Audi Design, Marc Lichte has left the company and is replaced by Massimo Frascella, previously design director at Jaguar Land Rover.

Frascella, a graduate of IAAD in Turin, began his career at Bertone where he created the 1999 Bella concept. He then moved to Ford, where he worked both in the UK and in California on several brands. From 2005 to late 2011, he worked at Kia in Irvine/California, where he was responsible for a number of very successful vehicles, including the 2009 Sorento, the 2010 Sportage, the 2011 Rio and the 2013 Soul. He then joined Land Rover; his most notable vehicles are the currently-produced Discovery Sport, Discovery, Range Rover Velar, Range Rover Evoque and the Defender. In May 2021, he became design director of JLR.

The current generation Range Rover also won the coveted Production Car of the Year award in Car Design Review 9, which Frascella spoke to us about during a visit to the studio. “It’s quite possibly the most difficult vehicle to redesign,” he told CDN at the time. “You can’t change it too much because you lose the essence, but you have to change it enough to signify a progression. There’s a really fine line.” Arguably, Frascella had achieved everything any designer could wish for at JLR, and he will be seeking new challenges of equal significance at Audi no doubt.

Frascella is considered one of the world’s leading contemporary designers; his portfolio is characterised by timeless designs that convey precision, clarity and minimalism. He is taking over Audi’s design department at a challenging time: the company is arguably struggling to manage the transformation to electric vehicles, and there is a backlog of new models that will launch this and next year – such as the fully electric Q6 and A6 model lines, as well as the conventionally-powered A5 and A7.

Located in Ingolstadt, Frascella will be reporting directly to CEO Gernot Döllner. He will be overseeing a number of international studios, and will take over from 1 June.

Meanwhile, it is not goodbye entirely as Marc Lichte will move into a new role within the Volkswagen Group where he has spent his entire career; the FH Pforzheim graduate’s first major model was the fifth-generation Golf. He subsequently worked on the Golf Mk6 and Mk7, the Passat Mk6, Mk7 and Mk8, the second- and third-generation Touareg and the Arteon. His first model at Audi was the current A8, he designed the e-tron GT and has recently initiated the four fully-electric concept cars Skysphere, Grandsphere, Urbansphere and Activesphere.

Lichte has spoken passionately about the evolving face of automotive luxury in recent times, and in the tenth-anniversary Car Design Review book wrote about his desire to create objects that are “timeless” – just like an original Barcelona chair or Patek Philippe watch.

“It’s difficult on a car because it is produced for about six years and then there’s a new one. And the current business case is that a customer will buy a new car every two years. But honestly, is this sustainable?” he asks. ”If you reframe the idea of timeless design in sustainable terms, for example, you could design a car with flawless proportions that could be updated over a much longer lifespan. Designers must push the brand and the industry forward.”

Audi says that Lichte will take on new responsibilities within the Volkswagen Group. Whether that happens, we will have to see.