In memoriam: Marc Deschamps (1944-2026)

The 2025 Car Design News Lifetime Achievement Award winner had been confined to a care home outside Turin in Italy after a serious fall in 2023 and took a turn for the worse last Sunday evening.

According to Eduardo Botero Robledo – his long-time friend and design collaborator – Deschamps was transferred to hospital with respiratory complications and died on the morning of Monday 4^th October 2026.

Deschamps cut his teeth working with Nuccio Bertone and Gandini in the early 70s, then after some years away, took over from the latter Italian legend as Bertone’s chief designer in 1979, after which he unleashed some of the greatest concept and production car designs of the 1980s and early 90s, from family cars for Citroën and Skoda, to dream machines for Lamborghini and Lotus.

Working for smaller independent businesses, often to create designs for bigger carmakers, he is part of that small but influential group of designers working in the 60s, 70s and 80s that got to shape so many varied brands from the outside, before the advent of big in-house design departments in the 90s and 00s. As he told CDN of that experience: “Back then we were just a few, not paid much, probably a bit crazy, but also very lucky.” Never one to blow his own trumpet – and because the firms he worked for most closely are now defunct, including Bertone, Chapron, Ligier and Heuliez – knowledge of his great skill and imagination has largely been the reserve of the historian.

Brilliantly (and accurately) described by Coachbuild.com as “one of the least known of the great car designers” CDN set about amplifying Deschamps’ legacy last year, tracking him down via major detective work to finally piece together and write his seldom-told life story for the Car Design Review 12 yearbook and culminating in his Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony at the 2025 CDN People Awards, last December.

Deschamps was born on 12^th July 1944 in Vincennes, to the east of the Paris Periphérique ring road and like so many of his generation was largely self-taught. His mother noticed and encouraged his early artistic talent, and on account of his father’s factory – which manufactured notebooks, sketchpads and paper – he was never short of drawing materials. To study car design further, he saved up to visit the local motor show and bought many magazines and newspapers. 

Starting his career via an internship at Peugeot in the late 1960s and then joining Simca – which briefly became Chrysler France before its closure in 1971 – his big break came in Italy a year later. After a rather forgettable three months at Ghia, he joined Bertone in January 1972 where his first standout design was the stunning 1972 Citroën GS Camargue two-plus-two hatchback with a delicate glass canopy. Created while working under Gandini – but designed pretty much on his own as Gandini was occupied with other projects at the time – it was made in just over a month and shown at the Geneva Motor Show that spring. Although his first stint at Bertone was short-lived, he remained on good terms with the famous Italian design house’s leader Nuccio, which would prove fortuitous in his later career.

By 1973 he was back in France, working briefly with Chapron on commercial vehicles and then on to sports and racing car maker Ligier, including a racing version of the JS2 road sports car, which finished second-in-class at the 1975 24 Hours of Le Mans. In 1976 he was recruited by Renault by then design boss Robert Opron and went on to create the now legendary exterior design for the 5 Turbo (with former colleague Gandini masterminding the interior).

But Deschamps’ golden period came after rejoining Bertone in September 1979 – when Gandini left to go freelance. Kickstarted by the low, angular and layered 1980 Lamborghini Athon concept, hit after design hit followed and for brands near and far, sporty and mainstream. These included the 1981 Mazda MX-81Aria concept, with a steering wheel replaced by a rectangular belt and argyle-style diamond seating; the flamboyant 1982 Lamborghini Jalpa production car; the shapely and space-age 1983 Alfa Romeo Delfino and the even wedgier 1984 Chevrolet Ramarro – shown just before the LA Olympics – plus the crisply defined 1985 Volvo 780 production coupé.

Then there was the sharply angled 1986 Citroën Zabrus with its highly inventive cabin; the wild 1988 Lamborghini Genesis ‘supercar MPV’ with diagonal gull-wing doors, plus the sensible, stylish and popular 1987 Skoda Favorit production supermini, which went a long way towards modernising the Czech brand’s then still Communist-owned approach and customer perception prior to purchase via VW. The end of the 1980s also saw the reveal of the 1989 Citroën XM, which won the prestigious European Car of the Year title in 1990.

Briefly switching to rival Italian design house Coggiola in 1991, he moved to French coachbuilder Heuliez in the same year and stayed there until 2000, creating numerous innovative vehicles throughout that decade, including the 1996 Intruder convertible and multi-spider-eyed 1998 Lamborghini Pregunta supercar.

Commercial vehicle design for Scania – the Series 4 and Series 5 – plus independent consultancy from 2009-2023 for a variety of Chinese brands continued to display the variety of his discipline and approach, before his serious accident in 2023 curtailed professional activities.   

Asked by Car Design News in late 2025 how he would like to be remembered he continued his humble stance and attitude, saying simply, “I don’t know, maybe it’s better if no-one remembers.” Here at CDN we’re so glad we didn’t allow that to happen and also knowing that Deschamps realised as much, after receiving his award in late 2025. But perhaps our favourite quote from our long email interview exchange throughout last year, was Deschamps’ advice to aspiring car designers, which was simply: “To be passionate and never stop dreaming.”

After his funeral next week, Deschamps will be laid to rest in Caprie cemetery, in the Susa Valley, west of Turin, fittingly where the Bertone design studio once stood.

Sweet eternal dreams Marc Deschamps (1944-2026)