By Michel Cruz. Photos McLaren Automotive
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The wonderful creations of Frank Stephenson Frank Stephenson is the master of successful retro design; perhaps the greatest automotive designer of our era, he succeeded in taking an apparently inimitable classic and improving upon it.
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he Mini is an icon of Britain, the living embodiment of the Swinging Sixties, just as the Fiat 500 is as Italian as Dolce Vita, and forever a reminder of that sweet era and the post-war resurgence of Italy. Both have become part of the modern cultural heritage of their respective countries, and much loved for it. The little Mini made its designer, Sir Alec Issigonis, join the pantheon of great designers, for a car with an almost unprecedented production run of nearly 5.4 million from 1959 to 2000. The same can be said of the Fiat ‘Cinquecento’, though its designer, Dante Giacosa, didn’t quite achieve the same level of personal fame. This little gem sold over four million units between 1957 and 1975. With the approach of a new millennium, however, it seemed clear that even the Mini had got through its seven lives and when word got out that the brand’s new owners, BMW, were working on a new model it was universally agreed that no ‘new Mini’ could truly replace the original. The master’s eye Step in Frank Stephenson, the master of his generation of automotive designers and a man with a unique ability to mould retro-based designs within a fresh, modern frame without losing the identity and charm of the original. He sculpted a new model that was a modern classic, which interpreted the spirit of a 1960s original and revived its sense of fun and style in a chic modern form.
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Britain had a new motoring icon, but in spite of his Englishsounding name the creative force behind it isn’t British at all. Born in Casablanca to a Norwegian father and a Spanish mother, Stephenson grew up in Istanbul, Málaga and Madrid before studying design in California. Having started at Ford USA and rising through the ranks to Senior Designer at BMW, he was put in charge of the company’s new Mini project. The resounding success of the new incarnation, which has sold over three million since 2001, sealed Frank Stephenson’s reputation, before he moved on to the Ferrari-Maserati design centre in Italy. Here he penned such super car gems as the Maserati MC12 and the Ferrari F430 before he was appointed head of styling for Fiat, where he led the development of another classic revival – the Fiat 500. Creating modern classics Working on the project with Roberto Giolito, he again succeeded in creating a model that does justice to the spirit of its predecessor whilst being a modern and more attractive reinterpretation. After a short stint at Alfa Romeo Stephenson was rewarded with the chief design job at niche super car manufacturer McLaren. There he oversaw the creation of the MP4-12C and the P1, looking to nature for inspiration to “… find the principles in nature that makes products do what they look like they do.” Such is the intuition of a master craftsman of our time.