Car brands have become a mainstay of Milan design week. Here, we round up the key automotive moments from 2025’s event, featuring Range Rover, Audi and Lexus among others.
The car industry is increasingly seeking to align itself with design, and it’s now the norm for marque brands to commission installations, run events and even launch cars during Milan design week.
More than a dozen motoring brands were active during the world’s biggest design week this year, including some notable newcomers.
Below, we select the nine to know about:
Range Rover
This year saw luxury SUV brand Range Rover present its first Milan design week installation.
Created in collaboration with California-based, experience-specialising design studio NUOVA, it placed a monolithic, 25-metre-long building in the historic Palazzo Belgioioso.
Within the building, visitors were handed a “time travel boarding pass” before entering a room styled as a car dealership from the early 1970s, complete with walnut-clad walls and space-age-style light fittings.
Actors wearing oversized 1970s suits – also designed specially for the installation, in collaboration with LA luxury atelier L’Equip – pretended to be salesmen. They delivering a pitch about the significance of the first ever Range Rover, built in 1970, which dominates the room.
In the next room Range Rover’s newest Autobiography model was placed in the middle of a futuristic all-white space. It was brightly lit by an illuminated ceiling, with a white gravel floor and the car encircled by a ring of mirrored columns.
Cupra
Cupra, a high-performance subsidiary of Spanish automaker SEAT, sought to make a splash this year with the unveiling of a design brand – Cupra Design House – following in the footsteps of Porsche and BMW.
Debut items from Cupra Design House were on display at an installation outside its garage on Corso Como, including trainers developed in collaboration with 3D-printed-shoe company Zellerfeld and a concept lounge chair.
At a press conference on Tuesday, a collection of suitcases made from used fishing nets in collaboration with Harper Collective was also unveiled.
The installation also introduced the Cupra Capsule (pictured) – a wheelless, life-sized model of the middle portion of a car that illuminates and adjusts its proportions as a narrator explains the brand’s design priorities.
Audi
To help premiere its new A6 Avant model, German carmaker Audi commissioned an installation from Dutch artist duo Drift in the courtyard of the Portrait Milano Hotel.
Called Drift Us, it took the form of a glass-walled room occupied by 22 illuminated, bulbous objects designed to sway gently back and forth by visitors passing through them.
The concept was intended to invoke a grassy field being ruffled by the wind – “a natural element capable of adapting, flowing and generating movement, just like progress according to Audi”.
Lexus
Lexus is a regular fixture at Milan design week, and this year the brand presented two interactive installations drawing on its Black Butterfly technology – a dual-interface cockpit-control system developed for the LF-ZC concept car.
Visitors were invited to engage with the installations through a series of interfaces that mimic the winged form of the Black Butterfly design.
Denza
Multiple car brands used this year’s Milan design week to launch new models – including Brabus, Škoda and Lamborghini – but Chinese electric-vehicle company BYD went one further and launched an entire brand.
An event on Wednesday was the European unveiling of its premium sub-division Denza, initially founded as a joint venture between BYD and Mercedes-Benz in 2010 to marry Chinese technology with European design. Its design director is Wolfgang Egger (pictured), who formerly led design at Alfa Romeo, Audi and Lamborghini.
Denza has introduced two cars to the European market – the powerful Z9GT and the seven-seater D9.
Fiat
Visitors to the stand of furniture brand Kartell at the Salone del Mobile trade fair this week may have be surprised to be find a car on a pedestal front-and-centre.
Kartell teamed up with fellow Italian household name and long-time collaborator Fiat to produce and premiere the Fiat Grande Panda Kartell. A pathfinder project, it is intended to help the two brands cross-pollinate design and material ideas.
The car was finished in a bright red livery but has blue-tinted interiors. It bears the Kartell logo in several places, including the wheels and seats.
Fiat’s press release also said it aimed to introduce the recently launched Grande Panda to a new audience through the partnership.
Maserati
Fiat and Kartell was not the only car/furniture collaboration organised for this year’s Milan design week. Two other heritage Italian brands came together in Maserati and Giorgetti.
Giorgetti presented an interiors collection including sofas, armchairs, rugs, coffee and side tables and a pouffe that can be inverted to double up as a table or container.
The pieces nod to Maserati with streamlining, the introduction of materials found in its sports-car interiors and subtle inclusions of the marque’s trident motif.
Additionally, Maserati showcased a special one-off version of its Grecale Folgore electric SUV, with finishes and interiors intended to capture the design philosophies of the two companies.
Bentley
British luxury car brand Bentley moved into interiors more than a decade a go with the launch of its Bentley Home furniture collection, created in collaboration with Luxury Living Group.
It used this year’s Milan design week to unveil the first Bentley Home picnic collection at its showroom on Corso Venezia.
Flying Flea
Although not quite a car brand – India-based Royal Enfield recently launched the Flying Flea brand of electric bikes, its name a reference to the famous motorbikes parachuted behind enemy lines by British forces during world war two.
This week at Salone del Mobile it unveiled Motototem, an art piece by LA-based Mattia Biagi that incorporated natural materials into the Flying Flea debut model, the C6.
Hand-blown glass sculptures replace the standard LED headlights, travertine forms the fuel tank, hand-moulded clay encases the forks, leaves cast in clear resin make up the fenders and the seat is made from solid walnut.
See our Milan design week 2025 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.
The post What car brands are doing at Milan design week 2025 appeared first on Dezeen.
