During our most recent Munich event, Citroën lamp designer Richard Brevet received DVN Best Rear Lamp Design award for the new C5 Aircross and its striking rear ‘wings’ design.
These lamps resulted from close collaboration between Marelli France, based in Trappes (not far from my hometown of Versailles) and the Peugeot design centre in Velizy. We met and celebrated with Stellantis Design’s Philippe Poilane and Marelli AL France Head of R&D Arnaud Mouchon.
We started the meeting by reviewing the history of Marelli and their vehicle lighting activities. Magneti Marelli was founded in 1919 and merged with Calsonic in 2019 to become Marelli.
The lighting business started in 1998 when Magneti Marelli bought the Italian Carello company, founded in 1876, with the well-known and still existing Venaria plant near Torino.
In 1999, Bosch and Magneti Marelli founded a vehicular lighting JV which in 2003 was branded Automotive Lighting. In parallel, in 2001 they acquired Seima, a rear-lamps manufacturer based in Tolmezzo.
In 2005, they bought Mako in Türkiye, launched production in China in 2006, did a JV with Motherson in India (MMLI), and elsewise expanded to become the group we know today.
Marelli lighting activity in France started with Axo Scintex, integrated into the Seima group in 1985.
In 1996 they bought Luxor and then became part of Magnetti Marelli in 2000.
They had a plant in Le Mesnil Saint Denis (Axo1) and Saint Julien du Sault, and an R&D centre in Le Mesnil Saint Denis (Axo2). I remember very well this time because it was the first lighting plant I visited when I started my lighting career; it was the lighting plant closest to the Renault Technocentre, just 10 kilometres away. These two Axo plants no longer exist, but here are some iconic 1980s models with lamps developed and produced there:
Innovations developed by the team include:
- The Light Curtain (Peugeot RCZ, Honda Accord 2018, Renault Austral…)
- The Hidden-until-lit lamp with laser-welded foil (as on the 2021 Range Rover), co-created with AL France and the JLR design team (2 times 3 weeks work with at this time Massimo Frascella team)…
- PVD Dark metal (as on the 2026 DS 4) with standard vacuum machine + laser etching (30 second cycle time with one single laser)…
The team has also developed innovation for the group like the Mucell for the Renault Captur rear lamps, as we’ve previously covered. For this one, the France R&D team of 25 are developing the lamps for French OEMs, JLR, and Nissan UK, supported by the EMEA R&D team.
They are developing lamps mainly for production at the Morrocco plant (since 2018) with Peugeot; for example the 2020 Peugeot 2008 model.
We continued the discussion with the Stellantis team about the C5 lamps and the challenge of design convergence between stylists, OEM R&D, and tier-1 rear lamp teams.
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