Horbury began his occupation in 1974 at Chrysler UK. His first process in just about a part century of operating in car was once designing the grille, headlamps and bumpers of the Chrysler SIMCA Horizon little hatchback, which went onto to win the 1979 Ecu Automobile of the Time award.
He moved to Ford U.Okay. in 1977 and two years upcoming was a expert fashion designer to Volvo, based totally in Sweden. In 1981 he labored for Volvo as a consulting fashion designer based totally within the Netherlands. In 1986 he was once named design director on the MGA consultancy in Coventry, England, earlier than transferring to Volvo in 1991 as design director.
In 2002, Horbury was design head of Ford’s Premier Car Crew, which incorporated Volvo in addition to Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover.
Two years upcoming he moved to Detroit as Ford’s government director of design the place he was once tasked, at the side of design head J Mays, with growing an international “One Ford” styling language for the automaker’s next-generation vehicles.
He returned to Volvo in 2009 as vp of design. A month upcoming the Swedish automaker was once bought by way of Ford to Zhejiang Geely Preserving, and 2011 he moved to Geely as senior vp for design. His successor at Volvo was once Thomas Ingenlath, who’s now CEO at Geely subsidiary Polestar.
At Geely, Horbury oversaw the design of Geely’s Lynk & CO emblem.
He was once changed as Geely’s head of design by way of former Bentley design prominent Stefan Sielaff in 2021. Regardless of promising to shoot a step again, Horbury stayed on to steer Lotus design following Geely’s takeover of the British sports activities automotive maker.
“I must say the Lotus projects that we’ve started, I am going to find it hard to let them go. They are so exciting,” Horbury advised ANE in 2021.
“You can imagine that having the chance to design a new Lotus is something I would like to stay with a little while longer.”
Douglas A. Bolduc contributed to this document.