Giorgetto Giugiaro's GG50 celebrates his 50th year as a car designer. Ford's J Mays says 'happy birthday'
It's easy to forget this car started life as a 612 Scaglietti - not by any stretch of the imagination a beautiful Ferrari... or even a beautiful car.
Giugiaro has kept the 612's 'hard points' - such as the door hinges, the touch-down points of the windscreen and the overhangs at the front - and left the vehicle 100 per cent driveable. Yet he still delivers lovely modelled surfaces, a shortened rear overhang and a pronounced kick-up to the window graphic.
Plus, he's given the GG50 a graceful profile the production car simply lacks. It's a rather unusual approach to a 2+2, but that's what gives the car its very real freshness.
Rewind the clock and you realise this car is but one in a steady stream of strong Giugiaro designs which date all the way back to when he first became a designer and turned Bertone into his own design house, with cars like the Ferrari 250 GT Bertone.
Beyond individual cars, though, Giugiaro's greatest contribution to the industry is teaching a generation of designers how geometric shapes and graphics fit together. Look at the '72 Maserati Boomerang and it becomes crystal clear where the design DNA of the VW Scirocco and Golf came from.
'Giugiaro has kept the 612 Scaglietti's "hard points" and left the vehicle 100 per cent driveable'
Even today, the work he pioneered in the Seventies remains influential. The constructed aesthetic Geoff Upex and Gerry McGovern evolved at Land Rover has, I think, really separated the brand from every other car maker. Geoff and Gerry are part of the 'Giugiaro Generation', like I am.
I've been following Giugiaro's career for 40 years. In each of those decades, he's had a slightly different point of view on design, culminating with the GG50 at last year's Tokyo motor show.
Tokyo lends itself to being viewed through a Lost in Translation lens, where wacky cultural twists and impressive technology coexist. And among all that craziness, Giugiaro's latest masterpiece sat tucked away on the Bridgestone stand.
With this car, I think we've seen him come almost full circle. If you revert to the cars he was doing as a young designer in the Sixties - the Alfa Romeo Canguro, De Tomaso Mangusta and Maserati Ghibli - they were all incredibly luscious.
The GG50 has a flavour of that as well, making a nice addition to the most enviable design portfolio in the business - period.
J Mays is Group Vice President, Ford Design
And for your homework today...
You've seen how the old school does it, now it's the turn of the next generation of car designers to have a crack at the next generation of Ferraris.
Four design schools from across the globe were invited to come up with concepts for future V8- or V12-engined Ferraris, the finest of which are featured in our gallery.
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