Astonishing similarity
09/28/2014
The VW Passat was presented in 1973. It is attributed to the designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. Six years earlier, the Fiat 125 Executive, which Marcello Gandini had (presumably) designed for Bertone, was on show at the Turin Motor Show.
At first glance, the resemblance is striking. However, the Fiat 125 Executive was the continuation of the line of the Jaguar FT Coupé, which was presented at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show.
While Bertone hardly ever built similar cars after that, Giugiaro, who had worked for Bertone until 1965 and was Gandini's predecessor, so to speak, obviously took up certain design lines in his later work.
However, this is not entirely true because, as an attentive reader correctly pointed out to us, the VW Passat is of course a direct descendant of the Audi 80, which in turn received its lines with the support of Bertone or the aforementioned Marcello Gandini. Giugiaro contributed above all to the hatchback, which actually already existed on the Fiat 125 Executive by Gandini.
However, while the Fiat 125 Executive (together with its saloon series sister 125) is largely forgotten today, the VW Passat in its eighth generation can already look back on 41 years of success.
