Michael Vernon Robinson

Michael Robinson is an American automobile designer and currently Brand and Design Director of Gruppo Bertone, based in Caprie, Italy.

Previously, Robinson held the position of Design Director at Fiat and Lancia, and worked as a designer with Ford in Dearborn, Volvo in Gothenborg, Sweden, Open Design, Ghia, and Fiat in Torino, Italy. Several of his more prominent styling contributions have been the Ghia TSX-4 concept car, the Fiat Bravo/Brava, (1995 European Car of the Year), the Lancia Dialogos Concept Car, the Lancia Giubileo (Pope’s personal limousine based on a stretch Thesis), the Lancia Thesis, the Lancia Nea Concept Car, the Lancia Ypsilon, the Fiat Ducato, the Bertone Alfa Romeo Pandion Concept Car, and the Bertone Jaguar B99 – B99 GT Concept Cars.

Background

Michael Vernon Robinson was born in Whittier, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, on May 2, 1956. At age 16, while studying architecture in High School in Kent Washington, he discovered a poster of the Lancia Stratos Prototipo Zero by Bertone. He was so heavily influenced by that magnificent concept car that he decided to not only become a car designer but to emigrate to Torino, Italy where the best car design in the world was taking place.^[1][2][3] He received Bachelor's Degrees in both Fine Arts (1978) and in Industrial Design (1979) from the University of Washington.

When I saw that 1970 Bertone concept car a light bulb lit up in my head because it was not only the most beautiful car I had ever seen, it also the most innovative car I had ever seen. At just 83cms tall with a cab-forward, monovolume architecture, it used the front windshield as the entry door, opening up crocodile-style, erasing all the terrible taboos tied to what was considered modern car design in America at that time. The Italians, I discovered, were light years ahead of the rest of the world in car design. So I fixed my sights on that and made it my personal mission in life. I wanted to go where the very best designers were.

Career

In 1978, Robinson spent the summer before his final year in college at the Ford Design Center in Dearborn, Michigan, doing a student internship. The 150 professional designers working there were some of the most talented people he had ever met, but were forced to design the most horrible cars. Designers in Detroit in the 70’s suffered heavily from the 1973 oil crisis which transformed the powerful, very American muscle car era of the 60’s into the absolute worst periods in the 100 years of car design history. With his heart set on the creative freedom of the Italian coachbuilder world, Robinson returned to college in Seattle heavily disillusioned and vowed to never work in America again as a car designer. A year later, after graduation, he set out to visit every single automobile manufacturer in Europe, with the goal of comparing German, French, British, even Swedish design to his beloved Italian design. Thanks to the Frankfurt Auto Show, Robinson was able to obtain the business cards of every design director in every company across Europe. Each visit was a fascinating experience, especially after spending time in Ford in Dearborn. There were no American designers working in Europe at the time so everyone was curious to know more about why he was the only one travelling around looking for a job. When he finally arrived in Italy, he found his dream come true, visiting coachbuilders like Bertone, Pininfarina, and Ital Design, and manufacturers like Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati. He accepted a job as a designer at a tiny design studio called Open Design run by Aldo Sessano, designing cars, trucks, buses, and industrial design projects. A year later he decided to open his own freelance studio, working primarily for Renault. In 1983 he moved to Ghia, Ford’s Italian design center, where he created his first concept car, the Ford Ghia Vignale TSX-4, a forerunner for the Ford Taurus station wagon design.

An American designer friend, Chris Bangle, had been working at Opel design in Germany as an interior designer and was nominated Exterior Design Chief at Fiat. He called Robinson to come to Fiat to help him reorganize the Fiat design process. Robinson began his 19 year career at Fiat working in Advanced Design, where he created the first Virtual Reality room in Europe in 1988. He was nominated Interior Design Chief in 1992 and designed the interior of the Fiat Bravo/Brava which won the European Car of the Year award in 1995. Chris Bangle became the Design Director at Fiat, Walter Da Silva was the Design Director at Alfa Romeo, and in 1996, Robinson became the Design Director at Lancia at age 40. His first concept car at Lancia was the 1998 Dialogos, a breakthrough research vehicle for new luxury sedans exploring cutting edge concepts which are now quite common, such as perceived quality (as opposed to manufacturing quality) and flush sedan bumpers (today known as pedestrian impact requirements). The Lancia Dialogos concept car was transformed into the 2002 Lancia Thesis production sedan. The 2000 Lancia Nea concept car was transformed into the micro luxury car, the Lancia Ypsilon production hatch, famous for its 70% of female clients. He was then nominated the Design Director at Fiat in 2001, where he designed Europe’s best selling delivery van called the Fiat Ducato/Peugeot Boxer/Citroen Jumper.

Robinson is famous for his motivational abilities he calls “People Design”, transforming his design studios into talent farms where his designers not only create beautiful cars, but also grow faster and farther in their careers. Many of his young designers in Lancia back then are now important design directors around Europe:^{[citation needed]}

• Flavio Manzoni – Ferrari Design Director
• Marco Tencone – Lancia, Alfa Romeo, and Maserati Design Director
• Marco Lambri – Piaggio Design Director
• Alessandro D’Ambrosio – Volkswagen Interbrand Design Director
• Roberto Giolito – Fiat Design Director
• Peter Jansen – Fiat Professional (tractors and trucks) Design Director

After his long career in Fiat Robinson was called upon by Lilli Bertone to become the new Brand and Design Director at Bertone in 2009.^[4] His first concept car in Bertone was the 2010 Alfa Romeo Pandion which was designed to celebrate Alfas 100 year anniversary at the Geneva Auto Show.^[5] The Pandion (which is the scientific name for Osprey) is a radical 2+2 sports car with reverse-opening scissors doors which are 3.4 meters tall when fully opened. The car utilizes a novel “Skin and Frame” concept stemming from the two-part Alfa Romeo logo, which underlines the new, dynamic mix between the robust organic frame and the sensuous skin that covers it. Many of the components in the car were realized using Algorithm Design technology, a random form generator which allows forms to become much more complex compared to those designed by humans.^[6]

The second concept car from Robinson and Bertone is called the 2011 Jaguar B99 (Bertone turns 99 years old this year) and demonstrates the exact opposite in design directions compared to the flamboyant Pandion.^[7][8]

In 2011 Robinson was inducted into the Automobile Design Hall of Fame in the National Automobile Museum in Torino, Italy.

References

External links

• Bertone web site