After less than a year at the design helm of Alfa Romeo, a company whose long anticipated return to the United States is now imminent, the multinational Frank Stephenson is stepping down.
The forty-eight-year-old designer, who was born in Morocco and educated at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, made his mark on the automotive world as the designer of several iconic vehicles including the Mini Cooper. He is responsible for the BMW X5, the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, and the Maserati Quattroporte. Most recently Stephenson worked on Alfa Romeo’s 8C Competizione and Mi.To.
Stephenson, who reported to Lorenzo Ramaciotti, head of Style for Fiat Group Automobiles and Maserati, was working on turning the 500 into a production model when he said bade arrivederci to Torino.
No reason was given for his departure. Stephenson will be replaced by forty-year-old Austrian Christopher Reitz.
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Poor ol’ Frank. BMW to Mini to Ferrai-Maserati to Fiat Automobiles to just Alfa to nothing.
He has actually been truly responsible only for the X5 and Mini. Not bad, but honestly nothing at all with his signature on it since those.
Great guy but unfortunately trusted his future to the Italians who steamrolled him and finally forced him out.
Like Mike Robinson before him, then Ken Okuyama, even Chris Bangle (who had the sense to jump ship early to BMW).
You have to wonder how much of this was money trouble at Alfa. They’re talking about all sorts of expensive expansion, but how are they financing it? Maybe he saw the writing on the wall, that it wasn’t going to work.
Maybe the Italians realized that having Americans run their design departments wasn’t working out (although it’s hard to say since it’s been going on so long).
I worked for Mike Robinson and I can tell you he wasn’t a big loss to the company, but I think Mr. Stephenson is. I’ll be curious to hear what led to this. Was he “pushed out” as jacksprat thinks, or did he abandon ship for something that we’ll find out about in a few weeks?
And will Alfa be better or worse off?
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