page_title: Luigi Colani
section_title: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Luigi Colani / Life and career / 1970s
caption_attribution_description: English: Trucks designed by Luigi Colani in front of the Nancyhalle in Karlsruhe, Germany in late august of 2005.
context_page_description: Luigi Colani was a German industrial designer.
  His long career began in the 1950s when he designed cars for companies including Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Volkswagen, and BMW. In 1957, he dropped his first name Lutz using the name Luigi. In the 1960s, he began designing furniture, and as of the 1970s, he expanded in numerous areas, ranging from household items such as ballpoint pens and television sets to uniforms and trucks and entire kitchens. A striking grand piano created by Colani, the Pegasus, is manufactured and sold by the Schimmel piano company.
  His unconventional designs made him famous, not only in design circles, but also to the general public. He received numerous design awards, although his unconventional approach left him largely an outsider from the mainstream of industrial design.
context_section_description: He had developed a sufficient reputation and income by 1970 to establish a studio with a major design team at Harkotten Castle near Sassenberg, Germany. The studio was an enormous success, with work and exhibitions worldwide for many major companies. Meanwhile, he continued with his innovations in car design, including his 1972 design of the Eifelland Formula One car. 
  This period saw him making his first forays into the Japanese market, when he obtained contracts from Japanese companies for the first time. In 1973, he made his first study trip to the Far East, during which Japanese buyers recognized Colani's potential. He received invitations by five companies to establish a Colani Design Center Japan. 
  About this time, the "Drop" teapot he designed for Rosenthal, a world leader in porcelain, was acquired for inclusion in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. In 1999, Rosenthal promoted a special edition of his now-famous design.
  Not all of his designs were successes. For example, he created an unsuccessful design for an Olympic row boat. About this time, in the early 1970s he developed his first streamlined truck design, which he said, "was a direct response to the world oil crisis yet nobody noticed my design. They didn’t get the message." He would revisit streamlined trucks later in the decade to more fanfare. 
  Colani's first profession as an aeronautics designer was revisited in 1976 when he was assigned the task of designing the  RFB Fanliner, the first plastic sports airplane with a Wankel rotary engine. Later, in 1985, he unveiled the Pontresina propeller-driven airplane, having two contra-rotating coaxial pusher propellers with scimitar blades mounted in the tail. The propellers, also known as "centripetal supersonic propellers", were a new design idea. The plane was a design study and is not airworthy.
  By 1978, his revolutionary trucks, aircraft, car and ship studies had begun to be seen frequently at exhibitions worldwide. His interest in fuel economy continued into the 1980s. In 1981, he set a fuel economy world record set with the four-seater Colani 2CV (based on the French Citroën 2CV which consumed just 1.7 litres of gasoline to travel 100 km using a stock 2CV engine and chassis.
caption: Truck prototype Designs by Colani
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