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| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Automotive design |
| Founded | (1976 (1976)) |
| Founder |
|
International Automotive Design (IAD UK Ltd) was a British design company, based in West Sussex, England.
IAD UK Ltd was founded in 1976 by John and Yvonne Shute. Initially work came in the form of design services for rail cars which then led to Automotive Body and Chassis Engineering, but due to the increasing customers requirements it soon expanded to encompass everything from Design/ Styling and Engineering through to small-scale production. IAD UK Ltd had at its peak a large R&D facility in Worthing, West Sussex, UK plus 5 overseas operations in the USA (California and Detroit), France (5 facilities), Spain and Germany (3 facilities) along with liaison offices in Korea, Japan and Russia. The US, German and Spanish offices having their own styling studios. It was the world's largest R&D consultancy not only working in Automotive, Commercial Vehicles and Aerospace. The British company was in competition with Italdesign, Pininfarina, Bertone. By the early 1990s the company employed over 1400 professionals. The majority of the projects completed by IAD was never made public, keeping the high level of security that John Shute believed was the key to customers allowing IAD to be considered for future projects.
The company was awarded the Queen's Award for Export and Industry many times and ultimately John was appointed an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II for his endeavors on behalf of the British Motor industry.IAD Worthing Herald Article
IAD designed and developed many cutting edge and memorable concept cars developed as showcases demonstrating the company's creative and engineering expertise including the IAD Alien, IAD Hunter, IAD Interstate, IAD Arrival, IAD Royale, IAD Mini MPV, IAD Venus and finally the IAD Magia. IAD amassed a talented group of designers, engineers and prototype builders who have subsequently gone on to senior positions within the automotive industry.
They specialized in car prototyping and engineering design. Mayflower Corp. purchased IAD after it went into receivership in the early 1990s with the Engineering, Design groups and facilities were sold to Daewoo Motors 1993.
The Mazda MX5 (Miata) was one of the many projects IAD was involved in, developing not only Exterior and Interior style for the vehicle in the UK/ US (California) but also building prototypes locally prior to volume production in 1989. Mazda came to IAD to replicate the "true" British sports car invoking the MG's success of handling, and even directed the Chassis team to copy the exhaust note of early MGBs.
The founder John Shute was a great entrepreneur who was a tough but shrewd businessman. He saw possibilities for expansion in the Automotive R&D consultancy business and grabbed it. He had a knack along with his sales team of getting projects out of a manufacturer which would often led to bigger projects later on. Overall John, who died from cancer in the 1990s was an enigmatic character who suffered fools badly but rewarded people who tried.
and others
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Some of the companies IAD worked for include:
