People
Former Mercedes-Benz Chief Design Officer and co-stylist of the SLR McLaren
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The record
German automotive designer who began as an exterior designer at Volkswagen, Mazda and General Motors in 1995, joined Mercedes-Benz in 1997, headed its design division from 2008, became Chief Design Officer in 2016 and left the company on 31 January 2026.
He was born in Essen, Germany, on 3 September 1968. He studied Industrial Design at the University of Essen from 1990 to 1993, then specialised in Transportation Design at the Royal College of Art in London. He began as an exterior designer in 1995 at Volkswagen, Mazda and General Motors, and in 1997 joined Mercedes-Benz in Sindelfingen during Bruno Sacco’s last years.
In 1999 he became head of exterior and interior design, leading work on the GL-, M- and R-Class models. From 2002 he was responsible for the A-, B-, C-, E-, CLK- and CLS-Class models. In 2006 he became head of Advanced Design and ran Mercedes’ California and Japan studios; in 2007 he was named head of Strategic Advanced Design. In 2008 he replaced Peter Pfeiffer as Head of Design, at 39 the youngest design chief in the industry.
In a 2026 interview, Wagener said that, as a rookie at Mercedes, he won an internal competition to create the concept collaboration with McLaren for the 1999 Detroit show. The production SLR McLaren followed in 2003; Car and Driver’s 2003 preview identified Steffen Köhl and Wagener as its stylists.
As Head of Design he led the SLS AMG, calling it a modern interpretation of the 300 SL rather than a retro copy, and the 2014 S-Class Coupé, whose hard points Design set. Mercedes’ 2025 farewell also listed the AMG GT and the recast G-Class. On 1 November 2016 Daimler AG created the Chief Design Officer position and appointed him at Executive Vice President level.
The office covered Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach, the G-Class, smart, vans and, until the 2022 truck spin-off, the Group’s commercial vehicles. Mercedes-Benz announced that he would leave on 31 January 2026 at his own request. Bastian Baudy, then Head of AMG Design, became Head of Design on 1 February; the Chief Design Officer role was not continued. On 19 June 2026 he received the EyesOn Design Lifetime Design Achievement Award. No later employer has been announced.
Mercedes-Benz describes Sensual Purity as a bipolarity of emotion and intelligence, created under Wagener’s leadership. On the 2014 S-Class Coupé he had Design set the hard points, lowering the roof and widening the track before engineering locked the package.
Discussing the SLS AMG with Car and Driver, he said he did not use Mercedes history for retro design, but took the essence or DNA of earlier cars and infused it into modern ones.
On the SLR McLaren he used an F1-inspired nose and Silver Arrow references rather than a clean surface. Years later he still thought the production car amazing and, to his surprise, timeless.
The stations
The house
Credited through Mercedes-Benz Design.
In the register
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In their words
“As a rookie at Mercedes, I won the competition to do this concept collaboration with McLaren, based on our work with them on the Formula 1 team.”
Gorden Wagener · Car and Driver, 2026
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