Patrick Le Quément ( French Patrick Le Quément ; born February 4, 1945 , Marseille , France ) is a former French chief designer and designer of Renault cars.
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Biography
Born in French Marseille , but raised in the UK . Le Keman earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in product design from the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, as well as a Master of Business Administration from the Danbury Park Management Center.
After graduating from university in 1966, Le Ceman got a job at the French company Simca. Soon he quit to create his own design bureau, but did not succeed. In 1968, he returned to England and got a job as a designer at Ford , where he worked on a Ford Cargo truck, and in 1982, the family car Ford Sierra of his authorship, which was ridiculed for its peculiar exterior, was presented in Dusseldorf . Having received a career advancement, he moved to Detroit ( USA ), but returned to Europe in June 1985 when Karl Khan, chairman of the Volkswagen-Audi Group , proposed that he create a Center for Advance Design and Strategy.
Amid low and continuing to fall sales, then Chairman and CEO of Renault Raymond Levy offered Le Ceman a job in the hope that the French designer would help revitalize the company's sales. In 1987, he received the position of Vice President of Corporate Design, Le Ceman demanded structural changes in the design of Renault , saying Levy that his department will no longer be responsible for mechanical engineering. The services of external consultants were refused, and the project team was doubled to more than 350 people; the department got a seat on the Executive Board, and Le Ceman himself was accountable only to the chairman.
The results of his design team were Renault Twingo , Renault Mégane and Mégane II, which, as he later admitted in an interview with the European magazine Automotive News, had a too bold design, Renault Scénic , Renault Espace 1994 and 1998, Renault Kangoo , 1994 Renault Laguna , Renault Avantime and 2002 Renault Vel Satis .
In 1987, Le Ceman was appointed senior vice president for quality, and in 1995 , joining the Renault Board, for corporate design. Since 1999, he was the head of the Joint Design Policy Group, which worked to create a unified car body design for Renault-Nissan.
In 2002, he won the Lucky Strike Design Award and took a seat on the board of the European Academy for Automotive Excellence.
On April 10, 2009, he announced his retirement in October 2009. At Renault, he was replaced by Laurens van den Acker, a former Mazda chief designer.