Design legend Giugiaro reveals a 56-year-old secret

TURIN – Design legend Giorgetto Giugiaro kept a secret for more than half a century: He penned a number of sports car drawings under the name Paul Sybille in 1963.

The most prolific car designer of the automotive industry revealed here on June 18 at the 40th anniversary of Auto&Design magazine that he used the pseudonym, with the surname was derived from his mother’s maiden name, Sibilla, to avoid getting into trouble with his bosses at Bertone.

“When I was asked to contribute with some drawings to the first issue of Style Auto [the world’s first automotive design publication when it debuted in in autumn 1963; the magazine became Auto&Design in 1979], I was a full-time employee of Carrozzeria Bertone so I could not use my name,” Giugiaro, 81, said.

At 21 in 1959, Giugiaro joined Bertone, where he worked on production models for Alfa Romeo such as the 2000/2600 Sprint and the Giulia Sprint.

The drawing of a tiny sports car that he created for Style Auto could be seen as an early rendition of one of his masterpieces while at Bertone, the 1964 Alfa Romeo Canguro concept.

Giugiaro, who was named Car Designer of the Century by an international jury in 1999 and inducted into the European Automotive Hall of Fame in 2002, also used a variation of his mother’s maiden name for a concept he created in 2018 to celebrate his 80th birthday.

There are just two units of the full-electric Sibylla luxury sedan, which was unveiled at the 2018 Geneva auto show and developed with Chinese energy management company Envision. One of those belongs to Giugiaro, who drives it on a regular basis.