Fiat Announces Lorenzo Ramaciotti as New Design Chief

2 Comments 26 May 2007

By Brendan Moore

05.26.2007

In what has to be considered very good news, Fiat has announced the appointment of Pininfarina veteran Lorenzo Ramaciotti to the position of Styling Head, effective June 1, 2007, reporting directly to Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Group.

Ramaciotti, 59, recently retired from his position as Head of Design at Pininfarina after 32 years at the famous Italian design firm. In the 17 years he headed Pininfarina styling, he spearheaded over 125 design projects for Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean carmakers. He also developed approximately 20 concept cars for Pininfarina, many which garnered international acclaim when shown, and not incidentally, he developed the current Maserati Quattroporte, as well as some of the wonderful and stunning recent Ferrari models: the 550 Maranello, the 360 Modena, the Ferrari Enzo, and the current Ferrari F430 and 612 Scaglietti.

The heads of Fiat’s three styling centers (Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo brands) will report to Ramaciotti, who also will take on individual styling responsibility for the Maserati sports cars. Ramaciotti says he intends to gather young talented designers around him at Fiat Group in a bid to change the company’s styling in the near future to reflect a bolder and more dramatic design brief.

Fiat is pushing hard to improve sales from 2.1 million vehicles in 2006 to 3.5 million units worldwide in 2010. To put this in starker contrast, this ambitious goal comes after a near-death experience in recent years in which Fiat seriously flirted with bankruptcy. Fiat will be relying on Ramaciotti’s keen design sense to help them stay in the current positive direction.

« What Makes a Car “Loaded?”

BMW to Buy Volvo? »

Your Comments

2 Comments so far

nnnnope says:

May 26, 2007 at 01:38

This is great! I can’t wait to see the new cars out of Fiat in the future. Although I’ve got say that I love the new Grande Punto and the new 500.
SMastrangelo says:

May 26, 2007 at 14:43

Please, please let the rebirth of Lancia be part of the design plan over there at Fiat.

Share your view

What we do

We love cars and the car business, no matter where that takes us - United States, Japan, Germany, France, China, Brazil, Australia, India, the U.K, etc. You get the idea. No subscription fees, no sign-up, no sign-in - all you have to do is just show up and start reading. We provide both opinion and information. We have two writers in the EU, one in Asia, and five in the U.S. We focus on the United States (because we're here), but we want our readers to have the benefit of seeing a global picture regarding automotive products and industry. We hope you enjoy the site.