Peter Horbury, the English automotive designer famed for remodeling Volvo into a method chief, has handed away on the age of 73.
In a single day Lotus Automobiles introduced, “[Peter Horbury] handed away earlier this week whereas visiting colleagues in China, doing what he has at all times carried out — main, inspiring and mentoring others to problem conventions and be the perfect that they are often”.
Horbury was head of design for Group Lotus on the time of his passing. The corporate didn’t present extra particulars about his demise.
Born in 1950 in Alnwick, north of Newcastle in northern England, Horbury gained an industrial design diploma from the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Faculty of Artwork. In 1974 he received a grasp’s diploma in automotive design from the Royal Faculty of Artwork.
His first job after graduating was with Chrysler UK, the place he labored on the grille of the 1978 Chrysler Simca Horizon, also called the Talbot Horizon on the Continent.
In 1977 he jumped ship to Ford earlier than beginning his first stint at Volvo in 1979. Based mostly within the Netherlands, he labored on the Volvo 480 hatch, the corporate’s first front-wheel drive car, and fairly a radical-looking automotive given the mainstays of the vary have been the boxy 240 and 740/760 fashions.
After spending a number of years as design director for the consultancy MGA in Coventry, England, in 1991 Horbury took the job that made him identified all through the automotive world, design chief of Volvo.
Within the years since Horbury final labored at Volvo, the corporate had solidified its popularity for constructing extremely secure vehicles, however its extremely sq. designs have been holding the model again from higher acceptance.
The 1992 ECC idea ushered in a brand new design philosophy centred round a broad shoulder line, an embrace of curves and surfaces, however with a number of hints of upright Volvos of yore.
Whereas a lot of what we noticed with the ECC idea entered manufacturing in 1998 because the S80, the primary manufacturing Volvo penned underneath Horbury’s watch was the 1995 S40/V40 vary, which shared its bones with the mockingly named Mitsubishi Carisma.
Underneath the management of Australian Jacques Nassar, Ford purchased Volvo Automobiles in 1999, and created the Premier Automotive Group (PAG) to deal with all of its luxurious manufacturers, together with Aston Martin, Jaguar, and the newly acquired Swedish marque. Land Rover was added to the roster a 12 months later.
With Volvo’s picture rehabilitated in simply over a decade, Horbury was tapped to be the chief designer of PAG – however every of the posh marques primarily operated independently, and two years later he was promoted to Ford head of design for North America.
There he instigated the “purple, white and daring” theme, which aimed to present Ford and Lincolns a extra distinctive look. Varied Ford fashions, together with the Fusion, revived Taurus, and Flex, gained bolder faces with a thick three-bar chrome grille. The Lincoln model, in the meantime, started introducing its waterfall grille.
In 2009 Horbury moved again to Volvo, and a 12 months later the Swedish model was bought to Geely as Ford undid its PAG empire as a part of its profitable effort to stave of chapter through the World Monetary Disaster.
By 2011 Horbury was accountable for design for the complete Geely group. Along with overseeing the work of Thomas Ingenlath, his successor at Volvo, and now CEO of Polestar, Horbury was accountable for setting the route for Geely’s ever-expanding vary of manufacturers, which now consists of Lotus, Proton, Lynk & Co, Good, and Zeekr.
Horbury’s duties on the Chinese language automaker have been reduce when he was changed in 2021 by Stefan Sielaff, previously head of design at Bentley, though he remained in cost at Lotus to information the agency into the EV period and an enlargement into crossovers and GTs.
