1973 was the first gasoline crisis in the world. That year, I designed the first aerodynamic truck, eating 40 percent less fuel. I put it on exhibit everywhere. It was 30 years ahead of its time. Nobody is building it today, and everybody still has problems with their boxy cars and trucks eating up fuel.
Luigi ColaniWell, sex is life. You know, if you don't do it anymore, you can take a spoon and go into the woods and dig yourself a hole and be finished! Eroticism is the driving force behind everything in the world.
Luigi ColaniI learned to ask myself questions like: Why is something made the way it is? Why does a motorcar look like it does? Is it right or wrong? What is an airplane? Why is it shaped like that? Then, later, I became a diver and studied subaquatic life and the streamlining of sharks and manta rays. Any fish is superior to the shapes we humans have invented - and unchanged for 250 million years, imagine!
Luigi ColaniThe thing is, 75 percent of design today is absolutely outdated. It all has to be redesigned with the materials and knowledge that we now have. We know so much more than what we are doing.
Luigi ColaniI was 3 years old, and we had a very rich neighbor in Berlin who drove a Mercedes sports car. I remember standing behind this car, admiring the trunk, how nicely shaped it was, for an hour. That shape has never left me - I could design it today!
Luigi ColaniThe world is super-stupid. You have by far the best designers in America! And you do the most stupid cars in the world! They put billions into their stupid designs for General Motors, Chrysler, Buick, or who knows what. The designers in America must be frustrated. I am not frustrated, because I am not a designer - I am a philosopher, and all philosophers have said for ages that the world around them is stupid.
Luigi Colani