Raymond Loewy

Raymond Loewy is one of the leading designers associated with 1950s automobiles.

Hailed as the father of industrial design, French born Raymond Loewy dedicated his talents to the American motor car manufacturing industry after Studebaker recruited his company Loewy and Associates to aid the design of their cars in 1936.

Three years later Loewy began work with Studebaker's lead designer Virgil Exner, another dean of American car design.

Following the ending of World War Two, the American car industry had a renaissance as sales rocketed. Loewy had a role in incorporating the new designs which were to be so tempting to the car buying public.

Loewy and his creative team designed the iconic bullet nosed Studebaker cars of the early 1950s. In 1953, in collaboration with Virgil Exner, Loewy created the Starliner and Starlight coupés, which were part of the 1953 Studebaker line.

Twenty tears later the Starliner coupé was hailed as an “industry best” by the United States top motor car designers.

In the mid 1950s Loewy transformed the Starliner and Starlight into the Hawk range.

That was to be Loewy's final project for the company, but in the early 1960s he was brought back by Studebaker for the design of the Avanti.

Outside the world of car manufacture, Loewy design skills proved to be most versatile. In 1939 he redesigned the packaging for the Lucky Strike brand of American cigarettes.

In 1952 he founded the Compagnie de I'Esthetique Industrielle in his native France and two years later designed what was to become the Greyhound Bus.

And in 1962 he designed the Shell logo, one of the most recognisable brands on the planet.

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