Color & trim focus: Six of Poltrona Frau’s auto collaborations

Collaborations between the car industry and the world of product design are fraught with difficulties, are usually fleeting and all too often end in (marketing department) tears.

One of the few possible exceptions is Italian leather and furniture company Poltrona Frau. Its 102-year history includes the 904 ‘Vanity Fair' chair from 1930 and the more-recent 2009 Archibald chair by Jean-Marie Massaud. But while it's known in domestic and commercial design circles, Poltrona Frau's automotive experience is less familiar, despite accounting for 30 percent of its total revenue.

Car Design News recently took the opportunity to visit its north-eastern Italian manufacturing facility and museum to find out more. From car seats for Ferrari, to domestic armchairs by VW Group design boss Walter de Silva, here are six of our favorite Poltrona Frau auto collaborations:

Poltrona Frau started back in 1912 as a furniture company but its first car interior wasn't until in the mid-80s when it created a hand-made leather interior for the ‘8:32' special edition Lancia Thema, which takes its name from the V8, 32-valve Ferrari 308 engine under its hood.

This suitably titled ‘model 911' is a curiously skeletal chair, with a design that drew on research from the ergonomics institute of the Technische Universität München, and had adjustable carbon-fiber ‘vertebrae' - a revolutionary material for a chair at the time - so it could also turn into a chaise longue. It also heralded Poltrona Frau's move into luxury office furniture.

Poltrona Frau upholstered the interior of the 456M, its first for Ferrari. It swiftly followed this up with the 550 Maranello and since then has developed ten new types of leather finish specifically for luxury cars. These range from waterproof ones for convertibles, to reflective ones that limit heat absorption. Ferrari is still its biggest automotive client.

Beyond function, some of the aesthetic flourishes from Poltrona Frau's furniture designs have found their way into its car projects. The most explicit example is the X-shaped stitch from its 2006 Kennedee sofa that's mirrored in the seat design of a China-only edition of the VW Phaeton. Limited to 99 units, and launched at the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao International auto show in June 2013, each customer also got an old-school Poltrona Frau ‘Bonnie' sofa and cleaning kit. We'd prefer the more contemporary Kennedee.

VW Group's design boss, Walter de'Silva, has some form for non-car design, coming up with a smattering of domestic furniture products during his time at Seat that included a lamp that looked like an insect. But his most recent design with Poltrona Frau is arguably one of his most convincing. The Luft lounge chair launched in late 2013 and uses classic car design elements like exposed metal and luxury leather. Poltrona Frau's video [in Italian] with de Silva is worth a watch.

Poltrona Frau's most recent automotive collaboration involved re-interpreting Infiniti's Q50 sedan and QX70 large crossover into ‘Good' and ‘Evil'-themed concepts for Milan Design Week. After early mood renderings from Infiniti's London-based creative design manager Bert Dehaes, Poltrona Frau's Luca Bellomari interpreted those ideas in the final cars.

This process included the hand-cutting, sewing and applying of 100 different leather sections - from a cool one-piece, perforated leather, lower door surface covering the speaker, to the less-convincing leather-clad door mirrors on the white ‘Good' edition. Each vehicle took nearly 500 man-hours to complete.

By Guy Bird