David Wilkie, 47, is the new design director at Stile Bertone.
Previously, Stile Bertone had two separate design directors, one for interiors and the other for exteriors.
After the de-parture of exterior design director Giuliano Biasio in early February, Stile Bertone decided to consolidate the positions under Wilkie, the former interior director.
Stile Bertone had been considering the new management structure over the last year, and decided to use Biasio’s departure as an opportunity to implement it, Wilkie said.
“It is very important that the product has one stamp on it,” he told Automotive News Europe. “When you get different personalities leading interiors and exteriors the risk is you can deviate a bit from the overall feeling of the products we work on.”
Wilkie, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, began his career in 1984 as a designer with PSA/Peugeot-Citroen in Paris. In 1988, he became a consultant to Ghia, the former design studio for Ford in Turin, and was promoted to design manager there 10 years later. He joined Stile Bertone in 2003 as interior design director.
Stile Bertone is the automotive design center of Bertone Group and is located outside Turin, Italy.
