Walter Maria de Silva, better known as Walter de Silva, is one of the references of the last years in design of cars. Some of their creations, the most notable are the Alfa Romeo 156 and 147, the Volkswagen Up!, the Golf 6 and 7, the Audi A5 and the supercar R8. His most successful years have elapsed under the umbrella of the Volkswagen Group, a company that is now abandoned withdraw.
Currently, the Italian, 64 years of age, heads the design team of the Volkswagen Group, a position he has held since 2007 and will leave at the end of this month. Walter de Silva has spent the last 17 years working for the germans, beginning as the jede design of the SEAT in 1998. In 2002 was already taking care, in addition to the Spanish brand, of the equipment of design of Audi and Lamborghini. The work carried out with the Audi A5 Coupe and Audi A6, the sixth generation earned him his current position.
The last two generations of the successful Volkswagen Golf have been the work of Walter de Silva
Since then, Silva has been in charge of overseeing the design of all the vehicles of the Volkswagen Group, and that these maintain a culture of consistent design with each other, which many times becomes similar between cars of the group of different brands. Matthias Müller, CEO of Volkswagen, has thanked the work of Walter de Silva, highlighting its success in bring part of that spirit Italian cars of the various brands of the group, creating a link between all the brands but without abandoning the autonomy stylistics of each of the brands.
De Silva, as a good Italian designer, he began his career in the design centre of Fiat in Turin. In his native country grew professionally until 1986, he was appointed head of design Alfa Romeo, a position which he held until the powerful Volkswagen group decided to sign him.
Source – Volkswagen