Designer Hakan Saracoglu, formerly of Porsche, has taken up a position at Chery Automobile as its design director, reports say. Saracoglu, 47, heads a 30-strong team at Chery’s design centre in Shanghai to churn out new concepts, from sedans to SUVs.
We know Chery perhaps best for the inexpensive QQ city car (pictured); however Saracoglu told Bloomberg: “Chery is not just QQ, we’re going to change that. The company is redefining itself. Chery is standing for value, for design and gaining customer confidence. That’s where we want to go.”
Saracoglu began his career at Ford’s offices in Cologne, where he worked on models such as the Focus and Mondeo. The Turkish-born German national worked at Porsche for 15 years; while there, he had a hand in designing the exteriors for models such as the 918 Spyder, Boxster and Cayman.
Other Chinese carmakers that have hired foreign designers in recent times include Great Wall Motor (Andreas Deufel from Mercedes-Benz), Geely (Peter Horbury from Volvo), Brilliance (Dimitri Vicedomini from Pininfarina) and Beijing Automotive Group (Ferrari Daytona designer Leonardo Fioravanti).
Salaries for foreign automotive engineers in China are triple that in the US and Europe, Automotive News Europe reports, citing research unit Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. When asked how much of a pay increase he was offered to leave Porsche, Saracoglu said, “I cannot comment on that. Let’s say I’m not unhappy.”
Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.
Get the right person to do the right job..
Quality control please, convince us first.
I won’t hire a Porsche designer if I want to revolutionize my brand since Porsche designers only know how to slightly modify their design, they are not used to drastic changes…
You can try as hard as you can, but China cars will always be down there in terms of quality, presitge and safety. It will be a matter of time before toxic material come out from the steering wheel to poison you. So no point getting the Porsche designer at all. China should just start by being honest at their manufacturing quality in the first place.
China only focus on profit, not quality, prestige and safety. If stealing is legal, they will do it because it profit a lot!
Although sadly, some of these company exists, let’s not stereotype all of them into 1 group. There are still morally right china company out there. Examples, I do not know of any. But in each country, there’ll be good and bad apples. Chill.
Then will you buy a china made car?
i will not for sure despite the ‘911’ sell at rm90k only..
say something sensible.
enough la proton with azlano. get someone else pls.
Porsche design? what design?? all his ex-company car looks the same
Lol! XD
I’m a Porsche fan but I get it that your joke makes sense LOL. Maybe the designer has a lot of ideas to contribute but it’s about the Porsche brand itself, they intentionally want to do very slight change to 911 design to maintain its heritage.
With his new company, maybe he can express his ideas better. We can just wait and see :)
Really a tough industry out there. Everyone going for the best. Any nowadays, do noticed that most of the cars design are really nice. Sadly to say, only Proton is really out of tune and lagging way behind.
Good move, like wht the Koreans did and see what happen to KIA. 5 years later we can expect Chinese to storm the market like the koreans did now and we ll be talking about Chinese cars.. and still no proton in sight
Somehow…proton is still happy with his own design team.Dont care how the world fast changes…Proton will take his own sweet time….Proton fanboy will say”local talent still the best”if u dont like u dont buy or leave the country.Right???!!!
Local talent really do good enough for Proton actually. The designers and engineers (from my study, research and story told) has came out with outrageous ideas, but the main reason here is the Proton’s cough*topmanagement*cough that ‘limits’ the Proton’s capability. I believe Proton can actually do so much better.
Err, chery is on a suicidal path. They want to make their car uglier with porsche look.
I guess he got fired after designing the porsche panamera