Giovanni Michelotti

Italian freelance designer who drew the Maserati Sebring's steel 2+2 body for Vignale and, from the late 1950s, the look of Standard-Triumph. After Stabilimenti Farina he opened a Turin studio in 1949. BMW Group Classic credits him with the 700's self-supporting body. He died in Turin on 23 January 1980.

Giovanni Michelotti was born in Turin on 6 October 1921. His father ran the machine shop at Itala's Turin engine works. He entered Stabilimenti Farina as an apprentice. When the senior draughtsman left, Attilio Farina gave him the board. Edgardo Michelotti dates those years 1936 to 1948. A 1947 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS for Farina went into limited production.

In 1949 he left Farina and opened a Turin studio, first at Via Ormea 150, later from the family apartment on Corso Duca degli Abruzzi. He sold drawings to Vignale, Allemano, Bertone and Ghia. After Touring kept the 3500 GT coupé, Maserati approved his Vignale Spyder, shown at Turin in 1959 on a chassis ten centimetres shorter than the closed car.

From the late 1950s he became responsible for new Standard-Triumph models, after Vignale built his TR3 prototype for Standard: a Vanguard facelift, the Herald of 1959, then the TR4, Spitfire, GT6, 2000, Stag and Dolomite. He refused offers to run in-house studios. In 1959 he rented a prototype shop at Via Levanna 2 and moved the drawing office to Corso Francia.

Wolfgang Denzel commissioned him for BMW after Albrecht Goertz's fee proved too high. BMW Group Classic credits him with the 700's self-supporting body, shown in autumn 1959. On the Neue Klasse 1500, LIGNES/auto says Wilhelm Hofmeister asked him to advise and that Hofmeister's team developed the design. For Maserati he put a steel 2+2 on the short Spyder chassis: the Sebring, shown at Geneva in 1962 as the 3500 GTI Coupé S.

In 1967 the firm moved to Orbassano. He drew DAF's 44, Leyland truck cabs and the National bus, and Luigi Chinetti's Ferrari 365 GTB/4 NART Spider. The Reliant Scimitar SS1, laid out in 1979 and built from 1984, was his last production car. He died in Turin on 23 January 1980, aged 58.