MSD / Mark Stehrenberger Design (United States) - AllCarIndex

Stehrenberger Design, also known as Mark Stehrenberger Design (MSD), was an automotive and product design consultancy founded in California in 1969 by Swiss-born designer Mark Stehrenberger. The studio specialized in transportation concept development—exterior and interior proposals, ergonomics studies, market research—and, when required, construction of full-scale concept car mock-ups. It gained early visibility through Stehrenberger’s widely published renderings of forthcoming models for car magazines, beginning in 1970, and undertook manufacturer consulting assignments thereafter. Reported clients included Volkswagen—most notably the U.S.-market Sports Bug package in the mid-1970s—as well as Renault, BMW, Toyota, Ford, Rolls-Royce, Nissan, Jeep, and Saab.

Through the 1980s the firm’s founder co-ran a Santa Barbara concern producing full-size concept cars for international automakers, after which MSD resumed independent operations. The practice later maintained a presence in both California and Switzerland to serve North American and European clients and continued to appear in trade outlets with speculative and commissioned design studies into the 2000s. Stehrenberger also taught transportation design at ArtCenter in Pasadena and at ArtCenter Europe.