Anatole Lapine

www.porscheroadandrace.com Anatole Lapine Published: 14th December 2018 By: Kieron Fennelly Online version: https://www.porscheroadandrace.com/anatole-lapine/ www.porscheroadandrace.com Anatole Lapine, 1973 www.porscheroadandrace.com Anatole Lapine who was in charge of styling at Porsche under two disparate CEOs, Fuhrmann and Schutz, looks back on quite a CV: Chevrolet Corvette, Opel GT, Porsche 928, Porsche 964. But there is a lot more to this designer whose career spans two continents and most of the second half of the twentieth century, and who for thirty years, was close to Ferry Porsche. www.porscheroadandrace.com Le Mans 24 Hours, 15 June 1969: Richard Attwood takes a refreshing drink. Standing above is Hans Mezger (second from the www.porscheroadandrace.com right) and Anatole Lapine (third from right in Porsche jacket) Son of a half German half Latvian father and a Polish mother, Anatole Lapine’s first years were spent in Riga, the capital of the then (and since 1990 again) independent Latvia. His father owned a furniture warehouse, but this relatively comfortable middle class existence was to come to an abrupt end in 1941 when the Russians invaded Latvia and the Lapine family fled to (German occupied) Poland. As a young teenager in Poznan, Anatole joined the Hitler Youth (membership was compulsory) and discovered the joys of design as he assembled model aircraft for competitions. This was the calm before the storm. In 1944, with the Russians advancing across Poland, the Lapines were once again forced to flee, this time into Germany and when the war ended they found themselves refugees in a village outside Hamburg. Initially they were helped by a company of the Royal Corps of Electrical Engineers (Anatole peeled potatoes for the regiment), but when the troops left, the family like most refugees endured very lean times for a couple of years. Eventually Anatole was able to go to school but had to suffer the humiliation of classes with children half his age as his German was still rudimentary. He stuck at it though with the determination of someone who one day would make his mark on society: by 1950 aged 20, he was an apprentice at Mercedes Benz in Hamburg. The following year the family was offered visas to the United States under the UN resettlement of refugee’s programme. Anatole found himself in Lincoln, Nebraska. This was a pretty traumatic experience: “It was the coldest place in the world!” he exclaims and goes on to describe how he got a job maintaining snow ploughs thanks to his Mercedes experience. The US is a land of opportunity and as soon as he had completed his education, “and I had money enough to buy a decent suit,” he set off for the bright lights of Detroit, the capital of the automotive world. www.porscheroadandrace.com Nürburgring 1000 km, 1 June 1969: Anatole Lapine (Head of Porsche Design Dept.) www.porscheroadandrace.com It was 1953 and he was recruited by a General Motors research company, Fisher Bodies, which worked on aircraft fuselage design. “Tony,” as he had become known, retains his great admiration for the country that gave him a start in life. “It’s the can-do mentality,” he remarked, “The Americans invented the atomic bomb and they got men on the moon.” Not for nothing is he still an American citizen. Le Mans 1970: Standing outside the workshop in Teloché before the race are (from L – R) Peter Falk, Ferry Porsche (in hat and dark glasses), Tony Lapine, Huschke von Hanstein and Ursula von Hanstein Professionally things were starting to move: his first design job involved creating a seating buck for the 1954 Cadillac. This would decide the internal dimensions and allow a clay model to be made. Lapine smiles: “The roof line had to take into account that people all wore hats in those days.” Then he went to work for body development under Fred Walther, a www.porscheroadandrace.com noted designer who had been with Gläser in Dresden before the war. This was the company which had shaped not just famous Alfa Romeos, but half the cars on Germany’s roads, the Horch, the DKW, Auto Union, Wanderer to name but the most famous. It was the start of an amazing period. Reporting to styling chief Bill Mitchell, he was put to work with Larry Shinoda on restyling the Chevrolet Corvette. Mitchell wanted something altogether racier than the conservative looking original. Here Lapine also got to know Wolfgang Möbius, a young designer from Opel, sent over to Detroit to gain some US experience. He met too, and soon became firm friends with Zora Arkus-Duntov, Chevrolet’s chief engineer, Belgian born, but brought up in Russia until his family fled communism to settle in Germany where he trained as an engineer. Duntov knew Ferry Porsche, and he raced the 550 Spyder at Le Mans in 1954 and 55 with significant success. It was through Duntov that Lapine first came across Porsche when Bill Mitchell invited Ferry Porsche to Detroit, and it was perhaps not surprising that the German speaking Lapine was brought into the discussions. The late fifties in GM were, he recollects, “They were colourful, exciting and sometimes even wild times, emotions ran high, I can even remember tears.” It is a compelling account of a bold, exuberant period and the feeling that as designers they were really shaping not just a car, but almost society itself. Lapine had by this time become a successful young man, buying himself at the age of 29 a Porsche 356 coupé, which he still owned half a century later. www.porscheroadandrace.com Colleagues in the Porsche Design Studio stand with a scale model of the Porsche 917 in 1970. Anatole Lapine stands at the right shoulder of the lady in red, with folded arms GM was very conservative and would not permit its subsidiary to engage in motor sport. Lapine describes how Chevrolet got around this by assisting Jim Hall’s Chaparral which www.porscheroadandrace.com allowed Chevrolet to go racing by proxy. Later Penske Racing would get similar support, but Lapine’s latter day involvement in racing was ended when he was despatched to Rüssellsheim in 1966. Here the atmosphere was more restrained, but once again, Mitchell’s intention was to liven up Opel’s staid brand image and the styling department at Rüssellsheim was to become the high temple of advanced design techniques. Here Lapine, together with Shinoda and Möbius was behind a number of exercises to rejuvenate the Opel range and the trio’s best known work was the stylish Opel GT, which took many design cues from their earlier Corvair Monza GT concept. Anatole Lapine stands outside a prototype helicopter made by the Wagner company in Friedrichshafen in March 1970. Sitting inside the cockpit is F.A. ‘Butzi’ Porsche (left) and Hans Epple (right), the owner of the company. Wagner was looking at producing these helicopters, but the project never got off the ground www.porscheroadandrace.com It was at this stage that Anatole Lapine encountered Ferry Porsche again. Mitchell had invited Porsche to come and admire the styling set up at Opel and it was during the subsequent convivial dinner that Lapine understood that there was a potential opening for him in Stuttgart. Today he says that there was a certain destiny about his joining Porsche: “I knew, even in the 1950s, that I would be working for Porsche one day. I already knew Ferry Porsche well and when I did join (in 1969) it was like a homecoming.” After three years at Opel, he met the Porsche boss again: this time the offer was more specific. Ferry was 59 and planning to stand back and let his eldest son Butzi become managing director. Lapine could take over Butzi’s design position. The alternative for Lapine was to stay with GM and be repatriated to Detroit or be sent to Holden in Australia. Neither option was attractive: he was settled in Germany and his three children were in school there. Porsche would be his future. www.porscheroadandrace.com Nürburgring 1000 km, 31 May 1970: Vic Elford stands on the Armco barrier as teammate Kurt Ahrens crosses the finish line in first place in the Porsche Salzburg entered #22 Porsche 908/3. Anatole Lapine stands to the left www.porscheroadandrace.com He recalls his first office at Zuffenhausen: “It was Butzi’s old place, right next door to the machine shop with all the heat and noise.” This was a provisional arrangement, for Ferdinand Piëch’s spectacular new facility at Weissach would be ready in a year or so, enabling engineers and designers to work together with sight of the test track. One of Lapine’s first recruits was his old friend, Wolfgang Möbius, and together they worked on the joint project with VW (it was income from design and development for VW that largely financed Weissach) coded EA1966. This was the design which would furnish the basis of both a successor to the Beetle and a new Porsche. Lapine pulls out a book from the shelf behind him and we pore over photographs of a neat, rear engined two door hatch back, visually not unlike the Golf that eventually emerged. But then VW did a complete about face, tore up the agreement with Porsche (which was mostly an unwritten understanding between Ferry Porsche and VW’s chairman Heinz Nordorf who had died in 1968) and cancelled the project. This had two effects. It meant that in the medium term, Porsche was more committed to the 911 than ever, and that a fresh start to find its successor would have to begin.

Load more