Italdesign Tapped To Design These Two City Cars For Vietnam’s VinFast

Just because Italdesign has been subsumed into the Volkswagen Group doesn’t mean it can’t still design cars for other automakers. In fact, the design house has just won a tender from VinFast.

The Vietnamese startup held an open contest to see who’d design its new line of vehicles. Just last month, Pininfarina announced that it had won the contract to design a sedan and SUV for the company, and now, Italdesign has claimed the prize for two city cars.

Little in the way of details have been disclosed to go with these design sketches, but we do know that one of the models will be conventionally powered by an internal-combustion engine, and that the other will be fully electric. Both are slated “to be produced within next years.”

The design house founded by Giorgetto Giuriaro also notes that it won an earlier round of the contest to design a sedan and SUV for VinFast. Given that Pininfarina claims the same (and based on the headline image on the automaker’s Facebook page), we gather that it plans to make two sedans and two SUVs – one each designed by the two Italian studios – to go with the two city cars.

“Being chosen as a winner for all the four design proposals we made for Vinfast makes us proud,” said the studio’s chief designer Filippo Perini. It’s “a confirmation of how Italdesign is able to make proposals that go along every Country’s taste and feeling.”

Once dependent largely on Russian imports, Vietnam aims to step up its domestic auto industry. The VinFast initiative aims to become Southeast Asia’s leading car manufacturer, with plans to produce numerous vehicles with both conventional and electric powertrains.