Giovanni Michelotti
Giovanni Michelotti ( born 1921 in Turin, † January 23, 1980 ) was an Italian automobile designer.
Life and work
Giovanni Michelotti began his career in 1936 at the age of 15 years in the body company Stabilimenti Farina. There he worked in a short time by an auxiliary power up to the leading designers. In 1946 he started his own business as a freelance designer in Turin.
Although he has always worked for various body farms, he worked mainly for his personal friend Alfredo Vignale. Most of the early 1950s built by Vignale Ferrari designed by Giovanni Michelotti.
In November 1954, at the Turin Motor Show 30 alone (some even speak of 40) different, issued solely on his designs based vehicles of different brands or body shop operations. Whether Ferrari, Maserati, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, their outer shell came often enough by Vignale, Pininfarina, Ghia, Bertone, Allemano and other body manufacturers.
Only in 1959 was founding a body repair shop instead of the previous pure office operation in the tenth floor of a high rise building, Michelotti led to improved confidentiality of its ideas and simplified direct cooperation with the automotive companies. Now he could even produce prototypes.
For the British company Triumph he was for a time worked as a house designer. He designed, among other things, the next prototype models TR 4, Herald, Vitesse, the model 1300, 2000, Dolomite, the Spitfire 4 and the GT 6 Next he designed for the Dutch company DAF Daffodil and also the subsequent models such as In addition, the 55th, he designed the Volvo 300 series, as well as truck cabs.
From the Michelotti Vignale Maserati 3500 GT karossierten Vignale Spider and Maserati Sebring come. A participation in the BMW 700 is guaranteed. Also in 1959, in Turin, BMW presented Michelotti Vignale 3200 comes from his pen. The threat it affect the overall body design is partially underestimated as a result of its operation hardly an originally signed by him car model bears a direct indication of the actual designer. Michelotti was responsible for a large number of designs, he designed a total of probably over 1000 bodies. Among his most famous designs include the VW 1200 Ghia Aigle, Fiat 1200 Allemano, Lancia Aprilia Vignale Coupe, Maserati 3500 Maserati 5000 GT or Allemano, Alfa- Romeo 2000 Vignale, Nardi 750 ND, Italia 2000 Abarth 2400, Alpine A106 and the Reliant Scimitar SS 1, probably be the last draft.
The design firm Michelotti was continued after Giovanni Michelotti death of personnel until the early 1990s. A re-opening was carried out by his son Edgardo, who has now joined forces with a descendant Alfredo Vignales for Michelotti Vignale &.
As a tribute to the extraordinary life achievements of his father, Edgardo maintains a website and organizes an annual meeting in Turin, whose participants come together from all over Europe, often originally designed by Giovanni Michelotti cars.