We feared the worst when we saw the news that famed auto designer Giorgetto Giugiaro had rolled his new Land Rover Defender off a cliff in Sardinia. However, despite his injuries, the 87-year-old had climbed out of the car by the time authorities arrived. Anyone who's survived a major crash may have a new perspective on life, and Giugiaro is no exception. The designer himself penned an article for La Stampa about his ordeal and his newfound appreciation of automotive safety, as well as his concerns.
"My car, with its intelligent seatbelt pretensioners, its myriad airbags, its reinforced, progressively deformable body, protected me like a shell," Giugiaro writes. "It was the difference between an epilogue and a new beginning." Even still, he has three fractured vertebrae and is wearing a brace while he heals. He laments not being able to ride his bicycle, but fully recognizes how fortunate he is that he is still alive to suffer this inconvenience. He considers himself "privileged" to be in as good shape as he is, and credits the modern luxury car he was driving for making it possible.
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Concern For Others
Over the years, Giugiaro has designed not only exotic cars like the BMW M1 and DeLorean DMC-12, but ordinary cars for the ordinary driver, like the Fiat Panda and the original Volkswagen Golf. While appreciating his own relatively good fortune, Giugiaro is quite concerned for people who are not as fortunate as he was.
"Safety today is a luxury," writes Giugiaro. "Those who can afford a new car have a better chance of making it home alive." He goes on to say, "I owe it to the technology I've helped, in my own small way, to shape. If I'd been driving a car from fifteen years ago—the average age of vehicles on Italian roads—I probably wouldn't be here telling this."
It's a similar story in the U.S., where the average car's age was 12.6 years as of 2024, and rising. New cars are for the rich, which most of us aren't, and even used cars keep getting more expensive. The average person's inability to buy a new car isn't just costing money. It's also costing lives.
"The statistics don't lie," Giugiaro writes. "A new car, with its safety features, offers seven times more chances of surviving an accident than one from fifteen years ago. I'm one of those times." Despite his crash, or perhaps partly because of it, Giugiaro has no intention of giving up on creating new auto designs, perhaps with a renewed emphasis on safety.
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