Marcello Gandini 1938–2024: Miura and Countach Designer Invented the Supercar
The legacy of the man behind design icons like the Lamborghini Miura and Countach and Alfa Romeo Montreal.
The great Italian car designer Marcello Gandini has died, aged 85. If there were a Mount Rushmore of car design, Gandini for certain would be carved into it. You're reading this very sentence because of the power of his designs. Hand on heart, I can state that if it wasn't for his eternal masterpiece, the Lamborghini Countach, I wouldn't be writing this; I'd have another career. That single scissor-doored spaceship ignited in me an unquenchable passion for cars that still burns strong. I grew up liking, even already loving cars to some degree. But when I was nine years old, I saw an arancio (orange) Countach parked on the large, dark gray cobblestones of old town Montreal and my brain got rewired. Just look at it, ayeeeee! Or as they say in Bologna, countach! My father was cool enough to let me stand, jaw on the cobbles, and stare for half an hour. I've been chasing that moment ever since.
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The crazy thing about Gandini designing the Countach is that he'd penned the Lamborghini Miura seven years earlier. Wilder still is that the Miura was one of his first professional designs, as he was only hired by Bertone in 1965, yet the Miura debuted in 1966. Talk about moving from strength to strength. Yes, the Miura was so incredible that after glimpsing it on Lamborghini's stand at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show, L.J.K. Setright coined the term, "Supercar." True story.
Bit of a funny backstory with the Miura's design history: Gandini had applied to work at Bertone in 1963, but the company's senior designer Giorgetto Giugiaro was against the idea. Giugiaro left Bertone in 1965 and Gandini finally got the nod. Gandini designed the Miura in just three months, and controversy has followed ever since. After Geneva, a French journalist named Jean Bernadet wrote in L'Equipe that it was in fact Gandini's predecessor Giugiaro who designed the Miura. This was factually wrong, and L'Equipe went so far as to publish a retraction, but the damage was done.
Oddly, at the time Giugiaro denied the implication. However, as time rolled forward and more and more people felt that the Miura is perhaps the prettiest car design of all time, Giugiaro began claiming some credit, stating that the Miura was based on a Bizzarrini design sketch he left behind at Bertone when he departed for Ghia. I've seen a full-size model of the Bizzarrini concept made from the sketch Giugiaro drew in 1964 at Bertone. It looks as much as the Miura as you do. Perhaps worse is that Carrozzeria Bertone's owner Nuccio Bertone began taking credit for the Miura. Again, somewhat understandable, but not particularly cool. Mr. Gandini's take on it? "I did the Miura—and I did it alone—in just three months."
That said, and especially as his success grew, Marcello Gandini could be notoriously difficult to work with. Two examples that stick out. The first took place at Lee Iacocco's villa in Tuscany where Gandini presented a full-scale model of what was to be the Countach's replacement, the Diablo. It wasn't very good. I'm able to say so because a friend who was there showed me a photo of Lido side-eyeing the thing. Chrysler owned Lamborghini at the time, and the design team requested Gandini modify the would-be Diablo. Gandini repeatedly waved off any criticism, stating, "The maestro has spoken." A phone call was placed to Auburn Hills, "Hey guys—we're designing a Lamborghini." Sometime later the tooling for the Diablo's body panels got mailed to Sant'Agata from Michigan. Tom Gale is credited with the Diablo's final design.
What did Gandini's attempt look like? You may have seen it, the Cizeta-Morodor V16T, but with an uglier split wing. The other infamous story is about the stunning Bugatti EB110, and it's essentially the same story. Romano Artiolli hired Gandini to pen his Italian interpretation of Bugatti, a quad-turbo, mid-engine, AWD, carbon fiber wonder car. Artiollo and crew found Gandini's initial design too angular and requested changes. Perhaps uncharacteristically, Gandini made the changes. The Bugatti ragazzi weren't in love with it and requested more changes. Gandini refused, and so what has to be one of the most inexplicable decisions in car design history, Artiolli hired Giampaolo Benedini to complete the EB110. Who? Oh, you know, the architect who designed the factory. Talk about lightning in a bottle. It's the atrium of LA's Bradbury building but on four wheels. Benedini had never designed a car before or since. To be fair to Gandini, the windshield, doors, and door glass of the EB110 were his.
I mention the above just to add a little color to the man. He lived to be 85-years-old and no one hits homeruns every time all the time. He, like you and me, was human. But he was an exceptional car designer. The greatest ever? I could make that argument. I strongly feel that not only is the Lamborghini Countach his greatest accomplishment, but if you disagree, I think you're weird or up to something. Perhaps, if you added the Lancia Stratos to the Lancia Stratos Zero concept—two bangers that flowed out of his pencil—you might get a bigger total, but those cars, like the Miura, never had the breakout, mainstream hit on the collective unconscious that the Countach did.
The Alfa Romeo Montreal is fabulous, the E12 BMW 5 Series is wonderful, and the Lamborghini Espada is one of the coolest, funkiest four-seaters the world has ever seen. But none of those (all Gandini's, just to put a point on it) are the Countach, a car that has helped shape my life, and one that continues to do so. Thank you forever, Signore Gandini. Grazie mille.
When I was just one-year-old and newly walking, I managed to paint a white racing stripe down the side of my father’s Datsun 280Z. It’s been downhill ever since then. Moral of the story? Painting the garage leads to petrolheads. I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always had strong opinions about cars.
One day I realized that I should combine two of my biggest passions and see what happened. Turns out that some people liked what I had to say and within a few years Angus MacKenzie came calling. I regularly come to the realization that I have the best job in the entire world. My father is the one most responsible for my car obsession. While driving, he would never fail to regale me with tales of my grandfather’s 1950 Cadillac 60 Special and 1953 Buick Roadmaster. He’d also try to impart driving wisdom, explaining how the younger you learn to drive, the safer driver you’ll be. “I learned to drive when I was 12 and I’ve never been in an accident.” He also, at least once per month warned, “No matter how good you drive, someday, somewhere, a drunk’s going to come out of nowhere and plow into you.”
When I was very young my dad would strap my car seat into the front of his Datsun 280Z and we’d go flying around the hills above Malibu, near where I grew up. The same roads, in fact, that we now use for the majority of our comparison tests. I believe these weekend runs are part of the reason why I’ve never developed motion sickness, a trait that comes in handy when my “job” requires me to sit in the passenger seats for repeated hot laps of the Nurburgring. Outside of cars and writing, my great passions include beer — brewing and judging as well as tasting — and tournament poker. I also like collecting cactus, because they’re tough to kill. My amazing wife Amy is an actress here in Los Angeles and we have a wonderful son, Richard.Read More