Friday 21st April 2023

McLaren snares former Bentley design director

Having cut his teeth at Bugatti and Aston, Tobias Sühlmann returns to McLaren to shape its design future

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There have been a lot of changes in senior roles at McLaren recently. Last year Michael Leiters - ex-Ferrari Chief Technical Officer, lest we forget - came in as its new CEO and Rob Melville moved on after five years leading McLaren’s design team. Melville racked up a total of 12 years working for the company in other design roles, and was chiefly responsible for its design direction since the P1 days. We’d heard nothing about who might replace Melville - until now.

In a statement released today, McLaren reports that its new Chief Design Officer is Tobias Sühlmann, who starts work in September. Sühlmann will be based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, overseeing all aspects of future design policy –including exterior, interior and its extensive customer personalisation projects. This is not Sühlmann’s first stint at McLaren: he was previously Lead Designer for Special Projects, a role that saw him bring the virtual Vision Gran Turismo concept car to reality as the McLaren Solus GT single-seater – a 200mph hypercar with a high-revving, naturally aspirated V10 and more than 1,200kg of downforce.

Sühlmann's CV includes a number of senior design roles with other high-profile brands. After graduating from Pforzheim University in 2005, he went straight into a job at Volkswagen that lead eventually to him becoming Head of Exterior Design at Bugatti. After that, he slotted into the same role at Aston Martin and then came his first period with McLaren, before he moved to Bentley as Director of Design at Crewe. 

Sühlmann will report directly to Leiters, who said of this new appointment, “We are delighted to welcome Tobias to the McLaren team. He is a highly experienced automotive designer with an existing understanding of McLaren having previously worked on our ground-breaking Solus GT project. Tobias will play a leading role in developing McLaren’s new design language across our developing product portfolio as part of our Future of Performance business strategy.”

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[ManyMotors]

Leiters has a difficult job to do and I hope Suhlmann can help improve things quickly. I do not want the company to fail. Suhlmann had a different boss during his first stint at McLaren so I am willing to give him a second chance.

Edited by ManyMotors on Friday 21st April 17:21

[samoht]

Hang on, he claims the Solus at McLaren which only came out last summer, then he went to Bentley and he's back at McLaren already? Sounds like the Bentley position didn't work out, as he was there for less than 12 months?

[pycraft]

samoht said:

Hang on, he claims the Solus at McLaren which only came out last summer, then he went to Bentley and he's back at McLaren already? Sounds like the Bentley position didn't work out, as he was there for less than 12 months?

Not necessarily, if the Bentley job represented a promotion and the McLaren role is a further promotion.

People often don't get promoted at their company because there isn't a higher role available,

[WelshPetrolhead]

I work in Automotive Design and it's pretty normal for people to move around frequently like this even in higher roles. Not unusual for people to leave only to return again reasonably soon after regardless of if they are/were perm or contract.

[andrew]

he's very tall

[Nish Gnackers]

Interesting that he is photographed in front of "old" Mclarens rather than anything produced in the past 10 years.

[FeelingLucky]

Nish Gnackers said:

Interesting that he is photographed in front of "old" Mclarens rather than anything produced in the past 10 years.

Not just "old" McLarens, but neither was produced by McLaren Automotive, the company he works for.

[Marc H]

And he's not very tall, those cars are very short.....