Design

Bentley Motors today has announced Stefan Sielaff as its new Director of Design. He succeeds Luc Donckerwolke who has been with Bentley since 2012. Mr Sielaff will join Bentley on 1st July 2015 from his current dual role as Head of Volkswagen Group Interior Design and Design Director at Volkswagen Design Center Potsdam. In his role at Bentley, he will report to Rolf Frech, Bentley’s Member of the Board for Engineering. He will also retain his position as Head of Volkswagen Group Interior Design, reporting to Director of Volkswagen Group Design, Dr. Walter de Silva.

You may think of the French as producing the most strikingly streamlined cars of the 1930s, in lyric teardrop bodies hammered out with doses of Italian style and German science. But in his book “Art Deco and British Car Design: The Airline Cars of the 1930s“, Barrie Down reminds us that streamline design was the rage among car buffs everywhere in the ’30s, even in upright, country-house, Evelyn Waugh Britain. Mr. Down reminds us that at the same time streamline cars were going on the market, ocean liners and trains were being streamlined, the better to compete with the nascent airline industry. His book also reminds us that the automobile industry of the time in Britain had yet to embrace mass production. Cars were sold to the few, and the sellers were coachbuilders as much as chassis or engine makers. […]

It may be owned by China’s Shanghai Automotive Industries Corporation, but MG Motor still has British blood running through it. The proof: The company is getting a new design studio at its factory here. The new studio will serve the 200-strong design and engineering staff of the company for the MG and Roewe brands, both of which are owned by SAIC, China’s largest car producer. Roewe is the relabeled Rover, since Land Rover retained the rights to the Rover nameplate. The studio will be the lead engineering center for SAIC’s own-brand products worldwide and for all MG and Roewe products. The team has already contributed substantially to the development of the Ford Focus-sized Roewe 550 and is creating an MG version of the same car. Roewe already sits atop the J.D. Power China Sales Satisfaction Index, which has been in […]

Not strictly British car content, but of interest to most British car enthusiasts. Autoweek is reporting that three special commissioners appointed Monday by a Turin, Italy, bankruptcy court have 30 days to evaluate if struggling Italian contract manufacturer Carrozzeria Bertone will have a future. Bertone stopped volume production in December 2005 and since then has been desperately looking for new work. In the past two months, two attempts to sell Carrozzeria Bertone failed, pushing the Turin bankruptcy court to appoint the special commissioners. The three commissioners are: — Antonio Bene, an engineer and former head of manufacturing at Fiat Auto. — Stefano Ambrosini, a law professor at the University of Turin, a bankruptcy expert. — Vincenzo Nicastro, a lawyer from Milan and a financial contracts expert. After the three commissioners complete their findings for Carrozzeria Bertone in mid-March, the bankruptcy […]