These designs made Tobias Sühlmann the new Porsche Chief Designer

Tobias Sühlmann is only the fifth chief designer in Porsche's history, which began in 1948 with the first sports car under this name. The successor to Michael Mauer, who was responsible for Porsche's appearance for 22 years, comes from McLaren as a sports car specialist. However, he has already left his mark on the VW Group.

The news came as a complete surprise to many. After 22 years as head designer in Zuffenhausen, Michael Mauer was dismissed at the end of January. Since taking up his post in 2004, he had been responsible for numerous important vehicles for the brand, including the redesign of the Cayenne SUV model, the slightly smaller Macan SUV, the four-door Porsche Panamera, the 918 Spyder super sports car and the Porsche Taycan, the Zuffenhausen-based company's first electric car. Mauer's successor is 46-year-old Tobias Sühlmann. He comes from the British sports car brand McLaren, just like the new Porsche boss Michael Leiters, who moved into the executive chair at Porsche at the turn of the year.

The words with which the new Porsche CEO welcomed the new Chief Designer at the end of January are striking: "Tobias Sühlmann can build on a unique design philosophy. With his experience in the design of sports and super sports cars, he will further sharpen Porsche's profile." So there is full focus on the sporty models in the choice of the fifth designer in Porsche's history. That is quite interesting. After all, it is no longer sports cars that play the central role at Porsche, but SUVs. However, the Macan and Cayenne models, currently the brand's two best-selling model series, have just been redesigned by predecessor Mauer.

Sühlmann will probably be pleased that the SUV work has been completed for the time being. After all, it was mainly fast models that he was responsible for in his previous career. At McLaren, his last stop before moving to Porsche on February 1, 2026, the Solus GT is considered his most important work: a single-seater super sports car with a ten-cylinder V-engine and 840 hp output, of which only 25 units were delivered at a price of around four million euros each. With a sliding glass cockpit and a custom-made individual seat, designer Sühlmann was able to let off steam with the project as much as he wanted.

In his career, which began after his studies at Pforzheim University, Sühlmann turned out to be a man for the particularly exclusive. After several years at VW, he was Head of Exterior Design at the luxury brand Bugatti from 2017. He then moved to the British luxury brand Aston Martin, where he was responsible for the exterior design of the super sports car Valhalla, limited to 999 units, which also appears in the James Bond adventure "No Time to Die". He was also involved in some of the British company's study vehicles, such as the Lagonda All Terrain Concept SUV model and the Vanquish Vision Concept, which was designed as a challenger to the Ferrari 296 GTB.

The Aston Martin adventure came to an end for Sühlmann, but he remained loyal to Great Britain. After an initial, brief interlude at McLaren, he was drawn to the VW Group brand for particularly luxurious vehicles: Bentley. From 2021, he initially worked there under the current VW Chief Designer Andreas Mindt, until Mindt took up his new job in Wolfsburg and Sühlmann replaced him as head of the Bentley design team of around 50 people. Sühlmann therefore not only knows Porsche boss Michael Leiters from their time together at McLaren, he is also familiar with the currently most important designer in the VW Group.

At Bentley, Mindt and Sühlmann have jointly created the Mulliner Batur luxury coupé. They left very little of the Continental GT, on which the model, limited to just 18 units, is based. The round headlights typical of Bentley were replaced by narrow headlights reminiscent of the human eye. The rear lights were narrowed into slits. With strikingly wide wheel arches and the continuous shoulder line, Sühlmann as lead exterior designer deviated from the typical Bentley style. The design is now to be used as a blueprint for Bentley's future battery-electric vehicles.

It is questionable whether Sühlmann will also benefit from this kind of electric style at his new employer. This is because Porsche is now skeptical about the original electrification plans for the Cayman and Boxster model series, which are soon to be revised. An electric 911 under the pen of Sühlmann is probably even more difficult to imagine at the moment.

At Porsche - unlike in his previous positions as the responsible designer - it is not Sühlmann's job to cater to the tastes of the less affluent with sensational one-offs or small-series vehicles. Now he has to create cars for a broader customer base. After all, Porsche model series such as the Macan and the 911 each sell more than all vehicles from Aston Martin, Bentley and McLaren combined.

The good news is that Sühlmann is not entirely new to these areas of the automotive industry. After all, he also worked as a designer at VW before moving to the British luxury brands. Among other things, he was responsible for the exterior of the VW Arteon, which was presented in 2017 and with which VW tried to appeal to a style-conscious clientele for whom a VW Passat was too arbitrarily designed. Sühlmann was also involved in the design of the third generation of the VW Touareg, which has been in production since 2018. Production of the Arteon has already been discontinued and the Touareg will be phased out this year. One thing is clear: Sühlmann's designs will have to find favor with the tradition-conscious Porsche brand for some time to come. (aum)