| Pinky Lai | |
| Birth Date: | 20 March 1951 |
| Birth Place: | British Hong Kong |
| Education: | Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche (ISIA) of Rome Royal College of Art of London |
| Occupation: | Automotive designer |
| Employer: | Ford of Europe (1980–1983) BMW (1984–1988) Porsche (1989–2014) |
| Years Active: | 1980–2014 |
Pinky Lai (賴平, born 20 March 1951) is an automotive designer. Lai is noted for his design work at Ford, BMW, and Porsche AG.
During Lai's tenure at Porsche from January 1989 until his retirement in 2014, he was chief designer responsible for the exterior designs of 996 series of the Porsche 911 as well as both the Porsche 987 Boxster and Cayman.
Born and raised in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong, Lai moved to Rome in 1972, where he studied and received a BA in industrial design at the Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche. After seeing an opening for car designer at Ford of Germany, in 1978 Lai received a two-year full scholarship for master's degree study on transportation design at the RCA Royal College of Art in London.
In 1980, winner and recipient of the John Ogier Memorial Design Bursary of the Royal Society of Arts.
After his graduation from RCA in 1980,[1] he started working for the Fordwerke in Cologne, Germany. In 1982–83 he went on a joint venture project to work in Ghia Studios (Italy) and Mazda in Japan, where he worked on a specialty car program as a result of winning the internal competition. He worked on the Sierra, Fiesta, Escort, and Scorpio projects.
After returning to Germany, he joined BMW in 1984 as a senior designer. He won the design of E36 program (the BMW 3 Series). In 1989, he was invited by the president of R&D of Porsche AG to join the design team Porsche Styling as studio chief. Since then, he has worked on all the models from the factory, from the Boxster to the Cayman, including the revolutionary 996, the first major departure from Ferdinand Alexander "Butzi" Porsche's original design for the 911 in four decades.
Between 1992 and 1995, every Saturday he taught design sketching at the Art Center College of Design in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland.
Since 2004, he was appointed the chief designer for all external projects at Porsche Styling, handling all transportation design for clients from Japan, Korea, China, and Europe. Projects ranged from high-performance motor bike design to design face-lifting of an over-300-meter-long cruise liner.
Invitations as key-note speaker and distinguished speaker: