Hyundai snares ex-Lambo exec

Hyundai is putting the Lamborghini band back together under its new Genesis luxury sub-brand.

Having already snared Gallardo designer Luc Donckerwolke from Bentley, the giant Korean car-maker has signed Lamborghini’s former marketing director, Manfred Fitzgerald, to oversee its from-scratch premium brand.

A source at Hyundai suggested Fitzgerald wouldn’t be the last former Lamborghini director the Korean brand will target, either, though it’s unlikely that engineering talent is on the headhunter list.

Fitzgerald was at Lamborghini during Donckerwolke’s time as design director, just as Audi’s investments in time and engineering muscle at the once-troubled Italian supercar maker started to reap benefits.

He left in 2011 and joined high-end German electronics maker Loewe before starting his own consultancy, The Brand and Design Company, in 2013. The 52-year-old will move to Seoul to oversee Genesis’s global strategy.

Though the first Korean company to head upmarket to ward off shrinking volume-brand profits, it’s not the first Asian car-maker to tilt at the German-dominated upmarket world. It will follow Toyota’s Lexus and Nissan’s Infiniti brands as it attempts to steer clear of the fate of Mazda’s failed Eunos adventure.