Page 20 - Marcello Gandini Maestro of Design Revisited

REVISITED
288rENAuLT MASTEr (& SaviEM SG2 FACELiFT)
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RENAULT MASTER
(& SAVIEM SG2 FACELIFT)
1975
In June 1965, Renault’s popular light commercial vehicle,
the Super Schooner, was replaced by the SG2 (the SG
an acronym for Super Goélette, the French for seagull).
The SG2 featured a wide curved windscreen, full width
dashboard, gear shifter on the steering wheel column,
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and independent suspension with variable rate coil
springs at the front but retaining leaf springs at the rear
to tackle the poorer roads in the French hinterland, along
with pronounced ground clearance.
Manufactured by Saviem, which had been taken over by
Renault, the SG2 was a big success. But by the 1970s, it
was aging, and Renault commissioned Stile Bertone to
design its replacement, which would be launched in 1980,
several years after the design was proposed by Marcello
Gandini.
For Renault’s new van, Gandini designed a semi-forward
control cab whose shape was defined by a straight line
raked at an angle all the way from the top of the grille
and the leading edge of the bonnet to the top of the
windscreen, bringing the wedge-look into the commercial
vehicles arena.
The rectangular headlamps were inset into the bumpers,
which, in turn, also integrated with the grille in the form
of four circles between the headlamps, thus Gandini
imagined a single mold composite unit. As he explained
“The first drawings were presented to Renault during the
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 AND  Both the scale models — with differences in details —
captured a design that was several generations more modern
than the designs of commercial vehicles from then. COLLEZIONE
LOPRESTO
1973 Geneva Motor Show. The same year, we presented
in Paris two 1:5 scale models and by the end of 1973, the 1:1
full-scale model. In 1974, we presented three prototypes.
Later, in 1976, the bumpers were changed to the design
that the car came out with, as they decided to change
the design of the headlamp nacelle and the grille.” With
the impact of the oil crisis and the rising cost of petrol-
based products, Renault backtracked on initial plans,
and resorted to interpreting the design of the grille and
bumper in metal stampings, which resulted in a rather
compromised shape.
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Moreover, Renault took some five years to put the
Master into production, launching the vehicle in 1980.
Yet the first-generation Master remains a reference point
in modern light commercial vehicle design and was so
successful that it remained in production for 18 years,
until 1997.
In 1975, when Renault realized that it would be a while
before they could tool up for its replacement, they
commissioned Stile Bertone to update the Saviem SG2.
Gandini’s team reworked the grille, incorporating oblong
headlamps.
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