Italdesign Giugiaro

Don't count Giorgetto Giugiaro and his son Fabrizio out of the design business just yet. After selling out to Volkswagen, they're going independent.

Giorgetto Giugiaro and his son have sold their remaining 9.9 percent stake in Italdesign Giugiaro to Audi, and the two of them have resigned from the company that bears their name.

Wolfgang Egger has bounced back and forth between Italy and Germany over the course of his career, and will now be bouncing somewhere else as he reportedly leaves his job as head of Italdesign.

Italdesign Giugiaro has turned its design talents to Volkswagen's MQB platform, revealing this, the Clipper MPV, at the Geneva Motor Show.

Think of famous Italian design firms and you'll likely conjure up names like Pininfarina, Bertone and Zagato. But don't forget Italdesign. The firm started by Giorgetto Giugiaro has been responsible for more designs for more automakers than we would care to count. Like Ford bought Ghia in 1970 and De Tomaso took over Vignale the year before that, Italdesign Giugiaro was subsumed into the Volkswagen Group (via Audi and Lamborghini) in 2010 – but that hasn't stopped the studio from creating.

Volkswagen Group Night ahead of the Frankfurt Motor Show always has some surprises, the first of which this year is the Audi Nanuk Quattro Concept. The all-wheel-drive, turbo-diesel-powered supercar is similar to the Giugiaro Parcour Concept that was unveiled earlier this summer. In fact, the Parcour's creator, Italdesign Giugiaro, penned the Nanuk, and we suspect much of the former found its way into the latter - with some changes, of course.

Coachbuilt Italian Finery Rides High In The Mediterranean

The rather awesome ItalDesign Giugiaro Parcour concept first seen at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show hasn't been affixed to some museum plinth just yet. The high-riding assemblage of curves, wedges and prisms laid over the carcass of a Lamborghini Gallardo – in both coupe and convertible forms – was sent out to play for the cameras, solely for our benefit.

What could possibly be better than a two-passenger, off-road performance coupe built atop the Lamborghini Gallardo platform? A topless version of said vehicle, of course. We've already showed you the ItalDesign Giugiaro Parcour in fixed-roof form, and now we're able to bring you some live shots of the Parcour Roadster.

The Volkswagen Group had one final trick up its sleeve to unveil at the Geneva Motor Show, a daring concept car from ItalDesign Giugiaro called the Parcour. We're thinking this one is going to be controversial, but that's fine by us – a little conceptual shake-up never hurt anybody.

An auto salon like the Geneva Motor Show isn't just a chance for automakers to show off their latest production and concept cars, but also for stoic design houses to shape the state of automotive design. So with Pininfarina, Bertone and Carrozzeria Touring all having released glimpses of the designs they will be unveiling this year at the Palexpo, so has ItalDesign Giugiaro.

Famed coachbuilder and industrial design studio Italdesign Guigiaro has released a free app for the Apple iPad that tracks the history of this famous design house since its founding by Giorgetto Giuguaro in 1968.

1970 Volkswagen Porsche Tapiro Concept – Click above for high-res image gallery

Click above to enlarge

Some years back I got to meet Giorgietto Giugiaro, the ultra-famous Italian car designer. "Gosh," I gushed, "you certainly are a visionary. Twenty years ago you said that the one-box design would become the dominant body style in the future. And you were right."

Click above for a full high-res gallery of the Italdesign Quaranta concept

click either image to view high-res