Marcello Gandini passed away at the age of 85 on March 13, 2024. To some of us, he was the most influential automotive designer in our car-crazy lives. Gandini created during a time when audacity and rule-breaking were uncommon traits, but desperately needed. Disruption—especially in Italy—was in the air, and Gandini was its agent.
Gandini—working for Bertone from 1965 until launching out on his own in 1980—was responsible for designs that etched themselves into the imagination of every car lover who had a pulse. We all know the most popular among them. His Lamborghini Miura was unsurpassable. But then came the Countach, which outdistanced its Raging Bull predecessor at every turn. His concept cars were greater still.
Gandini was as humble a person as I’ve ever met, yet his legacy, and his greatest automobiles, are titanic. I joined Lamborghini for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Miura, whose guests of honor were the men most responsible for the seminal model, Giampaolo Dallara, Paolo Stanzani, and Marcello Gandini. Only Bob Wallace, its development driver who died in 2013, was absent.
I sat at Gandini’s right side during dinner, and through an interpreter, he shared thoughts about his designs. What struck me was his modesty as we talked about the cars he penned. About the Miura, he remarked, “the wheels are set too far in.” I imagined Michelangelo apologizing for his David. A shortlist of Marcello Gandini’s masterworks follows. There are innumerable others, but these 10 examples—favorites of this enthusiast—amply illustrate his genius, one impossible to express in today’s automotive world. With 762 produced from 1966 until 1973—in three successive series of P400, P400S, and P400SV—the Miura is the quintessential low-slung, two-seat Italian sports car of the 1960s. Undeniably beautiful, it was the first road car to feature a transversely mid-mounted V-12 engine.