Name Pinky Lai | ||
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From hippie to world famous car designer hong kong s pinky lai
Pinky Lai (born 20 March 1951), Chinese name 賴平, is an automotive designer. During his tenure at Porsche AG from January 1989 until his retirement in 2014, he was chief designer responsible for the exterior designs of 996 series of the Porsche 911 as well as both the Porsche 987 Boxster and Cayman.
Contents
- From hippie to world famous car designer hong kong s pinky lai
- Mr pinky lai porsche s ex chief designer
- Early life
- Career
- Car design awards
- Speech events
- Design consultancy since 2013
- References

Mr pinky lai porsche s ex chief designer
Early life

In 1972 he moved to Rome, where he later gained a BA in Industrial Design at the Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche. When studying he saw an advertisement from Ford of Germany for a car designer and in 1978 he ended up receiving a two-year full scholarship for Master Degree Study on transportation design at the RCA Royal College of Art in London.

In the Spring of 1980, he was declared the Winner of the John Ogier Memorial Design Bursary of the Royal Society of Arts.
Career

After his graduation from RCA in 1980, he started working for Ford Werke in Cologne, Germany. In 1982/83 he went on a joint venture project to work in Ghia Studios (Italy) and Mazda in Japan where he worked on a specialty car program as a result of winning the internal competition. Overall he worked on the Sierra, Fiesta, Escort and Scorpio projects.

After returning to Germany he joined BMW in 1984 as a senior designer. He won the Design of E36 program (the BMW 3 Series). In 1989, He was invited by the president of R&D of Porsche AG to join the design team (Porsche Styling) as studio chief. Since then, he has worked on all the models from the factory, from the Boxster to the Cayman including the revolutionary 996, the first major departure from Ferdinand Alexander "Butzi" Porsche's original design for the 911 in four decades.

Between 1992 and 1995, every Saturday, he taught Design Sketching at the Art Center College of Design in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland.

Since 2004, he was appointed the Chief Designer for all external projects at Style Porsche, handling all Transportation Design for clients from Japan, Korea, China and all over Europe. Projects ranging from High Performance motor bike design to design face-lifting of an over 300 meters long cruise liner, and very much everything in between that moves.
Car design awards
Speech events
Invitations as key-note speaker and distinguished speaker: