Land Rover Defender Designer removes every unnecessary detail from Audi

Italians seem to be born with an above average sense of style. The most famous design houses are Italian: Bertone, Pinifarina, Giugiaro. Maybe that’s why Audi in particular started browsing through card indexes with Italian designers.

The choice fell on 52-year-old Massimo Frascella, who is certainly no stranger to the world of cars. He joins from Jaguar Land Rover, where he led the design team since 2011. New came under his leadership Land Rover Defender and Range Rover. A defender is mainly a job; just try to draw a successor to a famous model that has been available for almost 70 years. As far as we are concerned, Frascella signed a new version of the old one.

Electric Audi 100?

Massimo Frascella is given a thankless job on paper. Technological innovations (AI, cameras, radar, autonomous driving) are increasingly influencing design. At the same time, the Italian must try to continue to draw recognizable Audis despite all these shortcomings.

We can expect cars from Frascella in the coming years without unnecessary frills: “For me, simplicity is the essence of design. I see it as my mission to create cars without unnecessary details, which do not just follow fashion. Our goal is to develop a design language that is not and time, optimized for Audi. If he also starts to paint modern versions of the famous classics at Audi, we have suggestions: the electric Audi A2, for example, or the beautiful interpretation of the updated Audi 100 C3 from the eighties. Or the first Audi TT or Audi Quattro…

In the Audi Sphere

However, we shouldn’t expect too many changes of course when Massimo Frascella opens his pencil case in Ingolstadt. His predecessor Marc Lichte also championed simplicity when he joined Audi in 2014. The Frascella will likely build on the concept of the Sphere cars that were developed under Lichte’s leadership: Actisphere, Skysphere and Grandsphere.

It is unclear what Marc Lichte will do now. Audi reports only that he will have a different role within the Volkswagen Group. Lichte was chief designer at Audi since 2014, before that he worked at Volkswagen, among other things, Volkswagen Golf 5, 6 and 7 and Arteon. His most important achievement is Audi Audi e-tron GTAn electric Gran Turismo and, according to Lichte himself, ‘the most beautiful car I’ve ever had the pleasure of designing’.