Robert Opron’s rite of passage before starting at Citroën in the early 1960s was to have his ego metaphorically thrown into a car crusher.
Flaminio Bertoni, the French carmaker’s chief designer, who was responsible for the 2CV and DS, threw Opron’s portfolio on the floor and told the proud young designer that he did not think much of his work. An insulted Opron picked up his drawings, stormed out and vowed never to work for such a man. Three weeks later, he was offered a job and accepted.
Bertoni, one of the world’s most renowned car designers, had merely been testing him. In reality the maestro was impressed enough to become Opron’s mentor at Citroën and when he died in 1964 Opron was appointed to succeed him. Over the next ten years he designed three of Citroën’s best-known cars: the SM coupé, the GS and the CX.
All three received critical acclaim and demonstrated the designer’s obsession with aerodynamics. The SM, the world’s fastest front-wheel drive car, which was powered by a Maserati V6 and capable of a top speed of 140mph, was considered Opron’s magnum opus. It was wider at the front than the rear, had fared-in rear wheels, and was heavily influenced by the naturally aerodynamic shape of the teardrop.
The car would prove popular among celebrities such as Bill Wyman, the Rolling Stones bassist, Johan Cruyff, the footballer, and John Williams, the composer. It was also favoured by Leonid Brezhnev, Idi Amin, the Shah of Iran and Georges Pompidou, the French president.
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Opron then redesigned his mentor’s masterpiece, the 20-year-old Citroën DS. The CX, launched in 1974, was the most aerodynamically efficient saloon car of its time, featuring a concave rear window that was claimed to be self-cleaning and a vertical cut-off tail.
In parading such designs Opron was as stylish as his cars, wearing bow-ties, cravats, bold shirts and tinted glasses.
Robert Maurice Jean Opron was born in Amiens, northern France, in 1932 to Yvonne (née Beaudenaille), a secretary, and Henry Opron, an army officer. His father’s military postings meant that he spent much of his childhood in Francophone Africa.
As a child he developed a love of art and design, painting miniatures of modernist paintings by Braque and Picasso. After returning to France in 1952 Opron enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Amiens before transferring to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris a year later.
In 1953 he married Geneviève Mercier, whom he had met during a snowball fight. She survives him along with their two children.
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Newly graduated, he was hired by Nord, an aircraft builder, and specialised in cockpit design. In 1958 he joined Simca, a car manufacturer, and designed the Fulgur, a bubble-topped car with tailfins that was to be atomic powered, voice-controlled and driven on two wheels balanced by gyroscopes when it reached 150km/h. More realistically, he redesigned the Simca Vedette as a parade limousine for Charles de Gaulle.
Opron was increasingly unhappy at Citroën after the bankrupted company was merged with Peugeot in 1974. Frustrated by the new management and concerned about the level of independence granted to Citroën’s designers, he resigned in 1975 and joined Renault, where he would spend the next decade.
Here, he would design landmark cars such as the Renault 9, the Fuego coupé, and the Espace. Yet only the Renault 25, the manufacturer’s flagship vehicle, stood out to him from his decade there. His wife explained that this was because of press feedback praising the car because it looked like a Citroën, which suggested that it had her husband’s mark on it.
In 1985 he moved to Fiat, where he designed the Alfa Romeo SZ, a sportscar dubbed “the monster” for its controversial post-modern design.
After leaving Fiat in 1992 he consulted for the microcar manufacturer Ligier. He was made a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur 2004. He told Drive-My: “I questioned what is beauty and we created cathedrals.”
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Robert Opron, car designer, was born on February 22, 1932. He died of complications from Covid-19 on March 29, 2021, aged 89