Bruno Sacco
For 39 years, Mercedes-Benz's first styling czar has overseen design evolution at the world's oldest automaker.Bruno Sacco, director of design for Mercedes-Benz, is this year's Honored Designer at Eyes on Classic Design. His is an extraordinary talent, and that talent has been applied for nearly 40 years to the products of an extraordinary automaker. When the history of Mercedes-Benz is written, a long chapter will be devoted to the contributions of Bruno Sacco.
Born in Udine, Italy, in 1933, Sacco traces his love for design to a spring afternoon in Tarvisio. It was 1951, and Sacco was on his bicycle headed for the tennis court. An electric blue 1950 Studebaker, a Commander Regal designed by Raymond Loewy, crossed his path. Sacco could not banish the image of this car from his consciousness, though he did not then and there shout, "I will be a great designer of automobiles."
Sacco's educational path took him to the Technical University of Turin, where he studied mechanical engineering. Following completion of his university studies, he unsuccessfully sought work at Ghia and Pinin Farina (now Pininfarina), two legends of Italian design.
His job seeking took him to Germany where he was hired as a stylist by Karl Wilfert at Daimler-Benz in 1958. A few years earlier, Wilfert had created the company's first dedicated styling department at Sindelfingen, a pleasant town near the company headquarters city of Stuttgart. Though he could hardly have imagined it at the time, Bruno Sacco would make the name Sindelfingen synonymous with styling excellence.
Thinking to stay only a few years, Sacco's plans were soon changed. In 1959, he married a girl from Berlin, Annemarie lbe, and in 1960, their daughter Marina was born. Meanwhile, the work at Mercedes-Benz grew more and more compelling.
Sacco worked on the massive limousine, the 600, the handsome 230SL, the Mercedes-Benz ESV (Experimental Safety Vehicle) and on the series of experimental cars collectively called the C111. One of the C111s will be on display at Eyes on Classic Design.
Soon, after becoming accustomed to the Mercedes-Benz way of doing things, Sacco began to make his own contributions to the corporate culture. In 1970, he was made manager of the bodywork and ergonomics departments. He describes his assimilation into the Mercedes-Benz culture thus:
"First, I had to understand it, which took several years. It was difficult for the Germans themselves. There weren't any written [styling or design] laws; it was a corporate culture. They had a working philosophy all their own, one that's well described in the motto coined by one of the founders, the engineer Gottlieb Daimler: 'Nothing but the best.' Once I understood it, I began to evolve the form."
In 1974, Sacco became chief engineer, and a year later, he became head of the Daimler-Benz styling center at Sindelfingen. He was head of passenger-car styling for the oldest automaker on the planet.
The evolution of Mercedes-Benz automobiles mirrors the progress of Sacco himself: the 1979 S class, the SEC coupe of 1981, the 190 series in 1982, the E class in 1984 (including the E class wagon in 1986 and the coupe in 1987), a new S class in 1991 (with its new coupe in 1992), the C class of 1993, and the recent flood of new models that include the M class sport-utility vehicle (called an all-activity vehicle at Mercedes-Benz), the SLK, CLK, and the SL 600.This last trio will be on display at Eyes on Classic Design.
Often overlooked in Sacco's own history is his time spent working with Bela Barenyi, one of the most famous--and reputable--designers and pioneers in the field of passive safety. Sacco, working with Barenyi, specialized in research projects applicable to innovative body design and calculation. Three generations of the C111 project car testify to his work with Barenyi.
Mercedes-Benz has always been conscious of its heritage. Regardless of how fresh and innovative, the shape of a new Mercedes is unmistakably allied with its predecessors. Key design elements survive, intelligently modified, from the previous generation; other elements join an evolution that has flowed through decades of progressive models. Unlike any other automaker in the world, Mercedes-Benz can trace any new design to the very first automobile: the earliest Daimler and Benz creations. This is a heavy responsibility, but Bruno Sacco has dealt with it.
"Evolution has always existed [at Mercedes-Benz]", says Sacco. "Until the Seventies, it was very slow. Then it picked up speed. People understood that it was the right path to take. Corporate elements can be identified even beyond the grille and the three-pointed star. And it isn't necessary to be a designer in order to recognize them. We showed photos of new models to non-Mercedes drivers. The first photos were blurred, then we showed clearer and clearer ones. Even with the first blurred photos, the majority recognized that the car, which they had never seen before, was a Mercedes."
Sacco's mention of the grille and the three-pointed star opens the way for an automotive parable that illustrates how individual features become identified first with a car and then with the company itself.
Until the model 180 (W-120) was introduced in 1953--the first modern Mercedes-Benz sedan--Mercedes-Benz cannot rightly be said to have demonstrated design continuity. Nevertheless, marque identity was carefully maintained throughout the model range and passed on from a retiring model to its replacement. A case in point is the subtle, nine- decade evolution of the three-pointed star carried on Mercedes-Benz cars. The trident--signifying land, sea, and air, each an area served by Daimler engines--moved from a position, in relief, on the radiator entablature to its present three-dimensional form in 1924, the year Daimler and Benz announced their merger. Benz contributed the ring that encircled the trident. The symbol has been there ever since.
Until 1953, the foundation this symbol stood on was a massive, chrome-plated radiator cap. Then, with the model 180, the radiator cap was moved under the hood, but the three-pointed star remained freestanding.
The other potent signature of every Mercedes-Benz automobile, its grille, possesses a similar evolutionary history. A tribute to the first modern car--the 1901 Daimler runabout--the grille is, in current form, the product of 96 years of gradual change. The grille was at first entirely utilitarian, its appearance inseparable from its working purpose, that of a functional radiator.
When a smaller, lighter radiator was incorporated beginning in the early 1930s, the grille became a nonfunctional styling ingredient. The original grillwork was retained as a kind of protective screen between the new radiator, fitted vertically just behind it, and whatever flying debris might damage its shell. The shape of this grille, this symbolic radiator has changed considerably in recent years, most dramatically by becoming much more horizontal.
Thus the evolution of Mercedes-Benz often reveals a complex interaction between aesthetic and practical considerations. A purely functional exploitation of the new radiator of the early 1930s, for instance, might have modified the grille, allowing a lower hoodline. But popular expectations of the time called for automobiles that possessed tall, narrow, lengthy engine compartments--particularly those cars meant to be emphatic statements of wealth and position.
Behind its instantly identifiable mock-radiator grille, Mercedes-Benz traveled for more than half a century without the benefit of a single-purpose design department, yet it remained consistent with its past, and indicative of its future. Until the early 1950s, Mercedes-Benz cars were not designed as the term is currently used--that is, given a distinctive shape that combines maximum function and maximum aesthetic appeal. They were essentially engineered--developed in the engineering department to its criteria.
Not that such a method deserves criticism, or inevitably leads to anything less than excellence. To the contrary, some of the most beautiful and most successful racing cars of all time--the Mercedes-Benz grand prix machines of the late 1920s to the mid-1950s--were not "styled" or even "designed," but were developed by the racing department to a few straightforward criteria of pure function: minimal weight with maximum engine output, aerodynamic efficiency, and psychological impact. Like other objects of great technological complexity and notable utility--the Space Shuttle or the Hasselblad 1600E single-lens reflex camera--these racing cars arrived at their exterior forms as a natural, logical development of rigorous engineering optimization--to the exclusion of virtually all decorative elements. In fact, the one concession to the visual appeal of the 1934 racing car, a coat of white paint, had to be removed before the season's first race in I order to meet the grand prix weight limit. Ironically, matte aluminum looked even more distinctive than white paint, and from then on was deemed official racing trim.
The Mercedes-Benz racing program has supplied the Mercedes-Benz passenger-car program with numerous advanced engineering solutions. Its vital emphasis on pure function has colored the personality of every Mercedes-Benz introduced in a major portion of the past century. Yet, in the early 1950s, the functional goals that had once dictated every element of Mercedes-Benz design began to merge with other more aesthetic concerns. This was not, however, a complete departure. Engineering goals remained the principal design consideration.
Here at last was a clear need for a design department. It may seem that the criterion of engineering function will dictate a single, optimal design solution. Nothing could be further from the truth. Typically, numerous functionally equivalent engineering solutions will emerge. It is at this point that the designer--part engineer, part marketer, part artist--must step in to select among aesthetically diverse choices.
With almost four decades at the Mercedes-Benz style center, Bruno Sacco is better able than most to assess the weight of marque tradition against the development of recent Mercedes-Benz automobiles, vehicles that represent management and marketing strategies that were unthinkable just a decade ago.
Bruno Sacco has define the readily perceived evolutionary changes in the Mercedes-Benz products emerging from Stuttgart (and from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the M-class sport-utility vehicle is built) by coining a new expression of design philosophy: representativity. He uses the new CLK coupe as an example.
"The CLK was conceived in a different key from the 124 coupe which, in a certain sense, preceded it. The styling was intentionally oriented toward a certain lack of representativity. There's a lot of dignity in the car, but the absence of representational elements directs it toward a different, wider public-even at the cost of leaving some of our established customers somewhat puzzled," says Sacco.
"For this car, we made use of pre-established styling themes, such as the twin round headlamps. The public has demonstrated its acceptance of these themes as Mercedes elements, but--and even more important--it had accepted them as elements of a different Mercedes from the one that existed before.
"As for the future, we can confirm that the new concept of representativity has influenced the next-generation S-class, too. Even in that segment, marketing had to acknowledge that the requirements had changed, so we looked again at the S concept in this new light. Not with the intention of downgrading or cheapening the car, but with a view to a more understated, less imposing representativity."
In 1958, when Karl Wilfert, head of Daimler-Benz passenger-car design and research, hired Bruno Sacco as a designer, the passenger-car design department had many engineers but only one designer. Today, Bruno Sacco is director of design at Mercedes-Benz, and the department he manages has a large contingent of talented designers.
Sacco has done much to further the Mercedes-Benz philosophy of design, both through his department's successful production designs and, as an ambassador to the world, through interviews and speeches. He has, in a very real sense, helped to rationalize Mercedes-Benz design, codifying the underlying precepts that dictate the shape of the modem Mercedes-Benz passenger car.
Sacco refers to car design as prognosis. From the time design work on a new Mercedes-Benz model is completed to the time the last vehicles of that model are sold can be as long as 15 or 20 years--a long period for a design to remain fresh and interesting. But this challenge must be met--for the sake of Mercedes-Benz owners who retain their cars for long periods, and to fully complement Mercedes-Benz engineering and manufacture, which stress durability. It is a task to which Bruno Sacco has proved equal.
