[MONTH IN CARS] Events
Bruno Sacco, the designer who shaped countless Mercedes cars, has died aged 90
Sacco took the established route for Italian car designers of his generation, studying Mechanical Engineering at Turin Polytechnic before applying to the Torinese design houses – in Sacco’s case Pininfarina and Ghia. Initially joining Ghia in 1955 as a prototype modeller, Sacco was persuaded to join Friedrich Geiger’s new Mercedes-Benz styling department by Karl Wilfert, who visited him in Turin in 1957. Sacco arrived at Sindelfingen as part of the same intake as Paul Bracq, who Wilfert had brought in from France. Only intending to spend a brief spell at Mercedes, Sacco soon met Annemarie Ibe, married, had a family and became a naturalised German citizen by 1959.
He worked under Geiger on the ‘Pagoda’ SL and 600, before taking the design lead on the dramatic gullwing-doored C111 supercar project, which raised his profile as a stylist with multiple revisions at motor shows, and the bestselling W123 saloon range.
Sacco succeeded Geiger as chief engineer of the design department in 1975, introducing the second generation of S-Class in both saloon and coupé form from 1979.
The self-proclaimed aesthete either designed or oversaw the styling of every Mercedes launched throughout the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, finally retiring in 1999. Under him, and following a precedent set by his C111, the design department became unashamedly experimental, breaking away from Mercedes’ conservative past to explore sectors as diverse as compact MPVs and small sports cars. Dramatic concept vehicles such as the half-motorcycle F300 Life Jet and the scissor-doored, joystick-controlled F200 Imagination finally gave the marque a sense of fun, while Sacco’s experiments led to new cars like the SLK and A-Class of the Nineties.
The car Sacco was always proudest of was the modernising 190E (W201) that took the brand toe-to-toe with the BMW 3 Series in the Eighties. But his favourite was the 560SEC – an example of which he kept and maintained for the rest of his life.
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