Conversation with Bruno Sacco (1933-2024), who compared Mercedes to Mercedes

The designer’s “signature” is a very new aspect of the automotive industry. But at Mercedes, the policy is one of identification between the designers and the company…
In fact, the “signature” car phenomenon was unknown at Mercedes until now and I believe it will stay that way! In my opinion, placing too much emphasis on original design shows a lack of a solid previous image. This has always been my attitude when responding to people who ask why we never accept outside suggestions and contributions. This wouldn’t be possible. A designer’s hand is always recognizable. Moreover, the individual designer rarely succeeds in understanding the specific qualities of the product he is asked to design or “dress”. At Mercedes we try to look at the problem as a series of interconnected functions. Our design is accurate in showing the function.

In fact, I wonder whether this message is generally received and whether the consumer actually recognizes the functions in every detail. So being innovative doesn’t necessarily mean inventing something completely new. Design is not stylistism. In general, we unfortunately have to admit that there is now a significant uniformity of image in the automobile industry. This is not as people generally believe, or at least not entirely due to basic technical processes. Even though the wind tunnel limits the designer’s freedom a little, it does not actually limit the design. The tunnel simply tells us whether the car is aerodynamically good or not. A purely functionalist perspective collapses as soon as it turns out, after checking, that two different notions of form are both valid. You see, our position can be described as “extended functionalism”, which means remembering that design is also about “sensory” factors. In other words, we can assume that some general rules for reflection now apply. One of these is definitely the wedge shape. For obvious aerodynamic reasons, lines with actually significant horizontal progression no longer look meaningful. But this is valid up to functional limitations. The designer’s research continues the definition of a new form. The lucky thing about Mercedes is that, unlike many automakers or individual car designers, the prospect of having to work on more than one project a year never arises. As a result, I do not believe that true uniformization of the automobile object will ever occur, at least from our perspective.