We feared the worst after we noticed the information that famed auto designer Giorgetto Giugiaro had rolled his new Land Rover Defender off a cliff in Sardinia. Nonetheless, regardless of his accidents, the 87-year-old had climbed out of the automobile by the point authorities arrived. Anybody who’s survived a significant crash could have a brand new perspective on life, and Giugiaro isn’t any exception. The designer himself penned an article for La Stampa about his ordeal and his newfound appreciation of automotive security, in addition to his issues.
“My automobile, with its clever seatbelt pretensioners, its myriad airbags, its bolstered, progressively deformable physique, protected me like a shell,” Giugiaro writes. “It was the distinction between an epilogue and a brand new starting.” Even nonetheless, he has three fractured vertebrae and is carrying a brace whereas he heals. He laments not having the ability to experience his bicycle, however totally acknowledges how lucky he’s that he’s nonetheless alive to endure this inconvenience. He considers himself “privileged” to be in as fine condition as he’s, and credit the trendy luxurious automobile he was driving for making it doable.
Concern for others
Through the years, Giugiaro has designed not solely unique automobiles just like the BMW M1 and DeLorean DMC-12, however unusual automobiles for the unusual driver, just like the Fiat Panda and the unique Volkswagen Golf. Whereas appreciating his personal comparatively luck, Giugiaro is kind of involved for people who find themselves not as lucky as he was.
“Security at this time is a luxurious,” writes Giugiaro. “Those that can afford a brand new automobile have a greater likelihood of constructing it residence alive.” He goes on to say, “I owe it to the know-how I’ve helped, in my very own small approach, to form. If I would been driving a automobile from fifteen years in the past—the common age of autos on Italian roads—I most likely would not be right here telling this.”
It is a related story within the U.S., the place the common automobile’s age was 12.6 years as of 2024, and rising. New automobiles are for the wealthy, which most of us aren’t, and even used automobiles hold getting costlier. The typical individual’s lack of ability to purchase a brand new automobile is not simply costing cash. It is also costing lives.
“The statistics do not lie,” Giugiaro writes. “A brand new automobile, with its security options, gives seven instances extra probabilities of surviving an accident than one from fifteen years in the past. I am a kind of instances.” Regardless of his crash, or maybe partly due to it, Giugiaro has no intention of giving up on creating new auto designs, maybe with a renewed emphasis on security.
