Miguel Angel Galluzzi - Career

Career

Galluzzi is a third generation motorcyclist whose first motorcycle was a 1959 Kreidler Florett 50 he received for his eighth birthday, a present that disappointed him at first because, said Galluzzi, his "head was 100 percent into music" at the time and he wanted a drum set to become like Charlie Watts, though the bike changed the direction of his life. Because Galluzzi is 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) tall, many of his best known creations with low seat heights and high foot pegs, like the Monster and Raptor naked bikes, are better suited to their target buyer than their designer.

Galluzzi graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in 1986, from the same Transportation Design program as BMW's David Robb, designer of the R1100RT, K1200RS, R1200C, R1100S and K1200LT. Galluzzi first worked for Opel, and then for Honda's V-Car/Omega design studio in 1988, first in Offenbach, Germany and later in Milan. In 1989 Galluzzi went to work for Ducati's parent company at the time, Cagiva, in Varese, Italy. He stayed at Cagiva for 17 years, until July 2006 when he became Styling Director at Aprilia, rising to become Vice President of Design for Piaggio Group, Aprilia's parent.

In 2012, Galuzzi relocated from Piaggio's headquarters in Pisa to Pasadena, California to lead the company's new Advanced Design Center. The California location follows other branches in China, India, Italy and Vietnam, which work with the main Piaggio Group Style Center, run by Director Marco Lambri. Galuzzi chose the Pasadena location, "because of its proximity to centers of transportation thought," namely the Art Center College of Design, California Institute of Technology, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Galuzzi said he is, "looking for the next form of mobility," five to fifteen years into the future, and he will be, "hiring young and creative and crazy people," at the new design center to do, "experiments that might offer a rethinking or a melding of recent mobility concepts". Piaggio and Galuzzi hope to bring a more cosmopolitan perspective than is possible working only in Italy, and branch out to such areas as electric vehicles that combine aspects of a motorcycle and a car, like the Renault Twizy and Audi Urban Concept. The Daily Telegraph's Kevin Ash said, with the Piaggo Group's total US sales, including Aprilia and Vespa, at only 10,000 units in 2011, the new center must also be aimed to bolster sales in that market.