This is the single greatest honor in the motor vehicle industry, intended to honor a career and/or lifetime achievement. To become a "Hall of Famer" the nominee must be either retired or deceased. Recipients must have significantly impacted the development of the automobile or the motor vehicle industry. Typically, four to eight individuals are inducted each year.
In 1938, Giorgetto Giugiaro was born in the northwest Italian village of Garessio, the son and grandson of oil painters.
Giugiaro developed a passion for sketching automobiles, and at an end-of-year student exhibition in 1955, his work was noticed by the Technical Director of Fiat. In that year, Giugiaro joined Fiat in its Special Vehicle Design Study Department.
At just twenty-one years of age, Giugiaro left Fiat to become head of the famous Bertone Styling Center. Nuccio Bertone himself invested everything in his young prodigy and Giugiaro rewarded his mentor with a seemingly endless string of automotive design successes, among them the Aston Martin DB4 GT Jet Concept, Ferrari 250 GT Concept, Chevrolet Corvair Testudo Concept, Alfa Romeo Sprint and the Fiat 850 Spider.
After six years, Giugiaro left Bertone to join another Italian coachbuilder, Ghia, and less than two years later, in 1967, Giugiaro founded his own design firm, Ital Styling, soon to be renamed Ital Design/Giugiaro.
Under the Ital Design/Giugiaro trademark, Giugiaro has designed nearly 200 vehicles and concepts for clients the world over, of which over 80 were subsequently mass-produced. The Giugiaro portfolio includes such notable vehicles as the Alfa Romeo Alfasud, Lotus Esprit, Volkswagen Scirocco, Isuzu Impulse, DeLorean DMC 12, Saab 9000, Subaru SVX, Lexus GS 300, Bugatti EB112, Daewoo, Laganza, Volkswagen W12 Syncro, Maserati 3200 GT.
In 1999, a jury of more than 120 journalists from around the world named Giugiaro “Designer of the Century”.
