, with its
gullwing doors ajar. This
Wankel engined
concept car was one of Sacco's projects prior to his ascension to chief stylist at Daimler-Benz. , Sacco's "most significant" design According to Sacco himself, he was first inspired towards car design as an eighteen-year-old, after seeing a
Raymond Loewy-styled 1950
Studebaker Commander Regal as he cycled through the streets of
Tarvisio in 1951. Afterwards, he could not get the car out of his head, and "knew [his] life had been decided." After studying
mechanical engineering at the
Polytechnic University of Turin, he first sought work at the renowned
Ghia and
Pininfarina carrozzerie (
coachbuilders), but moved to Germany when his efforts proved unsuccessful. and although he intended to stay only briefly, his marriage to
Berlinerin Annemarie Ibe in 1959, and the birth of their daughter Marina the following year, made him reconsider his future. For the next quarter century, until he retired in 1999, he was responsible for the design of every Mercedes road car,
bus, and
truck. Among his numerous works are the
C111 concept car, three successive generations of
the SClass luxury saloons, (the
W126,
W140, and
W220), the
R129 SL convertible, the
C-Class W202 compact executive car, the
W124 and
W210 versions of the
E-Class sedan, the
CLK and
SLK sports cars, the
M-Class luxury sport utility vehicle, and second generation
CClass W203. as well as his very last design, the
R230 SL convertible (in 1997). Sacco's favourite design, because of its significance to the company's history, is the
Mercedes-Benz 190 introduced in 1982, while he confessed dissatisfaction with the
1991 W140 S-Class, of which he considered the
'greenhouse' (upper body) to be "four inches [10 cm] too tall". In his retirement he had given up his old red
SLK convertible in favour of a dark blue
Mercedes-Benz 560SEC (C126). Sacco died on 19 September 2024, at the age of 90, in
Sindelfingen, a suburb of
Stuttgart, where he had lived. ==Design themes==