Long-time Porsche designer Tony Hatter recalls his illustrious career, including how he designed the iconic, final air-cooled 911

Written by Tony Hatter Photography courtesy Tony Hatter

Tony Hatter stands in front of a 993, one of the Porsche he played such a pivotal role in creating

Tony honed his design chops during a stint at Opel – here we can see some early work in an Opel design brochure

Iwas a car-crazy kid – a Porsche-crazy kid, in fact. I ended up at the Royal College of Art in 1979, and tried to make my way into the car design world. To do this, I decided to enter a competition to design the MG of the ’80s. I didn’t win, but I was a runnerup and managed to get the centre of the cover of Motor. That was my initial claim to fame. There were a lot of edgy-looking cars that people were posing in, in those days – there was a lot of round softness. That part of my design philosophy was already being born, even then.

I didn’t manage to get into Porsche in the first instance; however, I did land in Germany, in Opel. I was working on the first study of the Vauxhall Calibra – but after five years in this business, you get itchy feet, and I applied to Porsche again. Lo and behold, I was accepted in 1986. I ended up spending 34 years at the company, which was great because everyone knew me. I was one of the infamous designers!

“Imagine it: there’s me, fresh in from Opel, telling these legends how to model the next 911!”

The language barrier was an issue to begin with. However, I had been at Opel for five years in Germany. With Opel being a General Motors company, there were a lot of American designers so that wasn’t a problem, but the modellers were German and I had to learn on the job – and quickly. I learnt French at school, which didn’t really help me! When I got to Porsche, they spoke a different sort of German - it was a mixture between Hessisch (from Hessen) and Bairisch (from Bavaria). They speak Schwäbisch, which is a very difficult dialect to understand.