Peter Horbury, who transitioned Volvo from boxy to curvy, remembered as 'giant in car design'

Former colleagues and industry executives paid tribute to Lotus design chief Peter Horbury, who has died at age 73.

Horbury, probably best known for turning around Volvo design, died on Thursday in China, according to multiple sources.

"He passed away earlier this week while visiting colleagues in China, doing what he has always done -- leading, inspiring and mentoring others to challenge conventions and be the best that they can be," Lotus said in a statement.

"He was a proper giant in car design. Everybody knew Peter. There will be a pain felt throughout the industry because of this," Sam Livingstone, who is director of consultancy Car Design Research, told Automotive News Europe.

Peter Stevens, former Lotus head of design and now a design consultant, was Horbury's former tutor at the prestigious Royal College of Art in London. He said Horbury's talents extended beyond design.

"Peter's natural charm, great sense of humor and modesty were far from the brash, ego-driven characters who now populate many automotive boardrooms," he told ANE. "He had an ability to understand the culture of all the makes that he worked on, from Chrysler to Ford, Volvo, Lotus and others, which manifested itself in guiding the long-term design language of those brands."

Horbury was also held in admiration by a younger generation of designers.

"Peter was one of very few designers who maintained momentum throughout their whole career," Anders Warming, head of design for Rolls-Royce, told ANE.

Ford CEO Jim Farley tweeted: "Peter was a remarkable design leader, perhaps best known for using the power of design to transform & modernize Volvo globally."

At Volvo, the British designer oversaw the transition from the Swedish automaker's long-standing boxy shapes to incorporate the now-famous "shoulders" below the window line that retained the practicality but broke up the boxiness.

Cars such as the first-generation XC90 large SUV that arrived in 2002 proved popular with customers and revitalized the company.

He managed to push through revolutionary design at Volvo through his powers of persuasion over skeptical executives, Lex Kerssemakers, former head of commercial operations at Volvo and currently strategic advisor at the company, said.

"He was extremely gifted when it comes to explaining why you should change a design. That was how he was able to get such a dramatic change through at Volvo," Kerssemakers told ANE. "He could explain design better than anyone."

In statement, Volvo said Horbury "was instrumental in creating the company’s design language in the 1990s."

The statement went on to say: "Peter was an immensely important person for Volvo Cars, both as a designer and as a person. He will be missed by all of us. Our thoughts are with his family."

Horbury started his career in 1974 at Chrysler U.K. His first job in nearly a half century of working in automotive was designing the grille, headlamps and bumpers of the Chrysler SIMCA Horizon small hatchback, which went onto to win the 1979 European Car of the Year award.

He moved to Ford U.K. in 1977 and two years later became a consultant designer to Volvo, based in Sweden. In 1981 he worked for Volvo as a consultant designer based in the Netherlands. In 1986 he was named design director at the MGA consultancy in Coventry, England, before moving to Volvo in 1991 as its design director.

In 2002, Horbury became design head of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, which included Volvo as well as Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover.

Two years later he moved to Detroit as Ford’s executive director of design where he was tasked, along with design head J Mays, with creating a global "One Ford" styling theme for the automaker’s next-generation cars.

He returned to Volvo in 2009 as vice president of design. A year later the Swedish automaker was sold by Ford to Zhejiang Geely Holding, and 2011 he moved to the Geely as senior vice president design. His successor at Volvo was Thomas Ingenlath, who is now CEO at Geely subsidiary Polestar.

At Geely, Horbury oversaw the design of Geely’s Lynk & CO brand.

He was replaced as Geely head of design by former Bentley design chief Stefan Sielaff in 2021, but despite promising to take a step back Horbury stayed on to guide Lotus design following Geely’s takeover of the British sports-car brand.

"I must say the Lotus projects that we've started, I am going to find it hard to let them go. They are so exciting," Horbury told ANE in 2021. "You can imagine that having the chance to design a new Lotus is something I would like to stay with a little while longer."

Added Lotus CEO Feng Qingfeng in the company's statement: "Peter's timeless design is his legacy, and it can be found on roads across the world today, enjoyed by millions of drivers. His many friends, colleagues and admirers at Lotus, across the wider Geely business, and in the global automotive industry will all miss him greatly."

Douglas A. Bolduc contributed