Italian car designer Pininfarina dies Sergio Pininfarina, who headed the Italian company that designed some of the world's most-coveted cars in recent years, including most Ferraris, has died aged 85 in Turin. For four decades he ran the company whose designs included the Ferrari Testarossa and Alfa Romeo Spider, helping to make his family's name synonymous with sleek, elegant lines that reflected a car's underlying functionality. "If it looks right, it will work right," he told a US audience in 2000. Pininfarina presided over an expansion of a small family-owned "coachbuilding" concern that built cars in artisanal quantities into a full-service contract manufacturer for global carmakers, a move that would later land the company in deep financial trouble. From boyhood, Pininfarina's father, Battista "Pinin" Farina, groomed him to run the coachbuilding company he had founded in 1930 as Carrozzeria Pinin Farina. The company built a reputation for its simple but appealing designs, endearing it to Fiat, the company that dominates Turin, and its controlling Agnelli family. It designed cars for Fiat's Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Maserati brands and began cooperating with Ferrari in the early 1950s, designing nearly all of the Fiat-owned carmaker's models since then. The family changed its surname to "Pininfarina" by power of a presidential decree in 1961, a nod to their prestige in Italy. The younger Pininfarina became the company's chief executive that year, taking on the role of chairman too in 1966 after his father died. He expanded the company's manufacturing operations, building two plants to assemble cars for manufacturers including Peugeot, Mitsubishi Motors, and General Motors" Cadillac brand, and a wind tunnel. The business flourished in the 1980s and 1990s as big global automakers farmed out production of small, low-volume models to European coachbuilders. Pininfarina listed on the Italian stock exchange in 1986. Pininfarina served as a member of the European Parliament from 1979-88 and from 1988-92 he headed Confindustria, Italy's main industrial organisation. In later years he stepped back from day-to-day management, ceding a bigger role to his three children. In 2001 he handed the CEO job to Andrea, his son, who was later killed in 2008 when he was knocked off his Vespa by a car. By then, financial losses at Pininfarina were mounting, as they were at most of Italy's other design houses as cost-conscious carmakers took back in-house manufacturing and design work they had formerly subcontracted. Pininfarina had to be bailed out by banks in 2008 and has abandoned manufacturing but survives as a design and engineering service provider. It still turns heads at car shows with concept cars such as the Cambiano, an electric-powered luxury model it revealed in March in Geneva. Walter de Silva, Volkswagen's head of design and a compatriot of Pininfarina, on Tuesday described him as "the first ambassador of Italian automobile design in the world." De Silva said: "It is a great loss for the design community and also for Italy, but I'm sure that his cars, his creations, his name will last forever." Pininfarina died at home and is survived by his wife Giorgia, daughter Lorenza and son Paolo, who is Pininfarina's chairman.