Mercedes-Benz Chief Designer Gorden Wagener will leave the company on January 31, 2026, at his own request. He will be succeeded by Bastian Baudy, who is currently Head of Design at AMG.
After the numerous management changes announced recently—following which Markus Schäfer, Mercedes CTO (Chief Technical Officer), left the company after 30 years, and Mercedes-AMG appointed a new head in the person of Stefan Weckbach, coming from Porsche—another piece of news has surprised the automotive world.
After nearly three decades, Chief Designer Gorden Wagener will leave the company at his own request on January 31, 2026, to be replaced by Bastian Baudy, the current Head of Design at AMG, starting February 1, 2026.
Born in Essen on September 3, 1968, Gorden studied Industrial Design at the University of Duisburg-Essen (1990–1993), after which he specialized in Transportation Design at the Royal College of Art in London. He then worked as an exterior designer at VW, Mazda, and General Motors, before joining Mercedes-Benz in 1997 as a transportation designer.
In his early years at Mercedes, he was responsible for the exterior and interior design of the ML, R-Class, and GL in 1999, and in 2002 he worked on the A-Class, B-Class, C-Class, E-Class, CLK, and CLS.
Wagener is also the author of the design of the Mercedes SLR McLaren supercar, which is a tribute to the legendary 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé, drawing inspiration from it through the long “nose,” side air intakes, and wheels that mimicked turbine blades.
In 2007, Wagener was appointed Director of Design Strategy and Global Advanced Design, and in 2008 he became Vice President of Design at Daimler AG, replacing another legendary figure, Professor Peter Pfeiffer, who had overseen Mercedes design for 40 years.
In 2009, Wagener presented the new “Sensual Purity” design language, which is still used by Mercedes today.
In 2016, he was appointed Daimler’s Chief Design Officer and joined the Board of Management. Wagener coordinated the design of the Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach, and G-Class brands, and from 2016 he also worked for Smart.
He also supervised the design of models from the van division as well as trucks until the separation of Daimler Truck AG in 2022.
Wagener was also directly responsible for the Mercedes S-Class (W222, 2013), A-Class (W176, 2012—the first A-Class to abandon the sandwich structure), the first generation Mercedes-AMG GT (C190, 2014, which became a direct competitor to the Porsche 911), and the Mercedes-AMG SL (R232, 2021—the first SL built on a dedicated AMG platform).
In the SUV segment, Gorden Wagener designed the Mercedes G-Class (W464, 2018) and the GLC (X253, 2015). The German designer is also the creator of the spectacular “Iconic Grille,” which debuted on the new Mercedes GLC EQ and will be used in the future on other next-generation electric models.
Wagener also left his mark on the new compact range, which debuted with the CLA and CLA Shooting Brake.
In the electric domain, Wagener designed the Mercedes EQS, which stood out for its record-low drag coefficient of just 0.20. Its aerodynamic silhouette turned heads on the street, but the car was not a success because rear headroom and legroom, as well as some materials, did not meet the standards expected of the luxury class.
Wagener is also the author of spectacular concept cars such as the Mercedes One-Eleven (2023), a modern reinterpretation of the experimental C111 vehicle, and the Mercedes Vision Iconic (2025), which previews a possible future design for the S-Class.
Vision Iconic is essentially Wagener’s farewell project, bringing to a close an exceptional career.
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