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Anatole Lapine is deadFormer Porsche chief designer dies aged 81

Stuttgart. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Stuttgart, is mourning it’s chief designer of many years, Anatole Carl Lapine, who died on 29 April 2012 in Baden-Baden. Lapine headed up the Style Porsche design studio from 1969 to 1988. Michael Mauer, Porsche’s chief designer since 2004, paid homage to the deceased: “Anatole Lapine shaped Porsche sports car design over more than two decades. As a designer he didn’t follow fashion but was forever setting new trends with his concepts.”

Anatole Lapine was born on 23 May 1930 in Riga, Latvia. After the war, Lapine served an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic with Daimler-Benz in Hamburg before attending the Hamburg Wagenbauschule. In 1951 he went to the USA where a year later he began work at General Motors in the advanced body engineering department. In 1965 Lapine returned to Germany and was put in charge of the Opel Research Center. On 15 April 1969 Lapine moved to Porsche as head of the styling department. In addition to the design of the Porsche 911 so-called “G Series” numerous new Porsche models such as the 924, 928 and 944 saw the light of day under Lapine’s direction. But Anatole Lapine and his style team also delivered a number of Porsche Engineering third-party client development design projects.

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Note: Images of Anatole Carl Lapine are available to accredited journalists from the Porsche press database at the following address: http://presse.porsche.de/.

5/2/2012

Further information and pictures for journalists and media representatives can be found on the Porsche press database at http://presse.porsche.de/.