Currently reading: Ferrari designer joins Lotus
Donato Coco - the man behind the 458 Italia and California - joins Lotus

Ferrari’s design director Donato Coco has left the Italian firm to take up a similar position at Lotus.

Coco will become director of design for Group Lotus and will oversee all of Lotus Cars’ and Lotus Engineering’s design.

The Italian worked on the Ferrari F430 Scuderia coupe and Spider 16M, Ferrari California, 599XX and the F458 Italia in his time at Maranello. He has also been Citroen’s head of design, being responsible for the Xsara Picasso, C3, C3 Pluriel, C2, C1, ZX Paris Dakar and the Xsara WRC.

Lotus CEO Dany Bahar, who himself used to work for Ferrari, said: “The appointment of Donato Coco as the new director of design for Lotus puts even more prominence on design within Lotus and strengthens the already talented team.

“We have a very busy few years ahead of us as we are working on a new strategic business plan which will include the introduction of an all new range of Lotus cars and expansion of our third party design work.”

Head of Lotus Design, Russell Carr, will continue to work on designing both Lotus cars, as well as the firm’s third party design work.

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