Naoki Sakai (industrial designer)

Japanese industrial designer (born 1947)

Naoki Sakai (坂井直樹, Sakai Naoki, born 1947 in Kyoto) is a Japanese industrial designer who known as the designer of Nissan's pike car series with its retro-future design.^[1]^[2] Currently, he is a professor of Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC), a guest design director for au, and the manager of his own company, waterdesign. He has collaborated with companies such as Nissan, Suzuki, Toyota (WiLL), Olympus, KDDI, and Cassina.^[3]

The S Cargo was not designed by Sakai. Sakai led the Pike designs and created a proposal for the Nissan Figaro, but the design selected for final production (first shown at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show) was designed by Nissan's in-house design team, led by Jim Shimizu (Shimizu Jun).^[4]^[5]

Major works

Nissan Motors

- Be-1 (1987)
- Pao (1989)
- Rasheen (1994)
Suzuki SW-1 (1992)
Olympus

- o-product (1988)
- Ecru (1991)
au design project
- HEXAGON (2005)
- MACHINA (2005)
- DRAPE (2006)
Toray
- torayvino aqua meister (2007)

References

^ McAleer, Brendan (2021-03-08). "How Nissan's Bizarre Pike Factory Built Retro Masterpieces". Road & Track. Retrieved 2022-11-13.
^ Patton, Phil (2011-03-18). "Nissan's Cartoon Cars, Once So Hip". The New York Times. Retrieved 2022-11-13.
^ Kawaguchi, Judit (2007-05-08). "Naoki Sakai". The Japan Times. Archived from the original on 2014-12-27.
^ "Naoki Sakai – Nissan Figaro Designer". Figaro Owners Club. Retrieved 2022-11-13.
^ Pearlman, Chee (May–June 1990). "Cult of Cute". I.D. p. 51 – via Figaro Owners Club.