Tesla's chief designer previously created an extinct American sports car that may have inspired Tesla's models

Franz von Holzhausen is Tesla’s Chief Designer and Elon Musk’s right-hand man, but a forgotten car he designed long before all of that could have provided the inspiration for his later works.

He’s penned every single Tesla model that exists, apart from the original first-gen Roadster.

More importantly, he’s the guy behind the Cybertruck, which features what is arguably one of the most ground-breaking designs in modern automotive history.

Interestingly, his inspiration may have come from an obscure – and now defunct – roadster from the past.

Meet Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s Chief Designer

When von Holzhausen joined Tesla in 2008, he wasn’t exactly a celebrity.

He’d created some intriguing production cars as well as the Mazda Furai, a gorgeous prototype that the Japanese automaker never produced.

Then he became something of a celebrity overnight, when he famously attempted to smash the glass window of the Cybertruck prototype during the first unveil nearly five years ago.

The glass wasn’t supposed to break, but it did.

Tesla’s Chief Designer also appeared at a car event in California, just months ahead of the unveil, driving a production-ready Cybertruck.

Unlike his boss Elon Musk, Franz von Holzhausen generally keeps a low profile, but he has sometimes acted as an impromptu spokesperson for the company.

A few weeks ago, von Holzhausen told a Tesla investor and owner that they deliberately did not apply any logos or badges on the body of the robotaxi because they didn’t need to.

They wanted the car to be immediately recognizable just from its design, like the Cybertruck.

The inspiration behind his Tesla vehicles

A while back, a Reddit user suggested that von Holzhausen may have used the Saturn Sky as an inspiration.

After all, he designed it.

The post went viral, and several people in the comments drew similarities between the Sky and the second-gen Roadster, especially when it comes to certain design cues.

Well, they were made by the same dude, so perhaps those similarities aren’t a massive surprise.

Believed to have been based on the Open Speedster, the Sky wasn’t exactly a roaring success, to put it gently.

You certainly wouldn’t have thought it would go on to inspire bigger and better things – not to this extent, anyway.

The Saturn Sky was an ill-fated roadster that General Motors tried marketing and selling under several brands.

Aside from the Saturn Sky, GM also manufactured the virtually identical Daewoo G2X and Opel GT, as well as the Pontiac Solstice, which looked slightly different.

They all did quite badly, underperforming in terms of sales, and so GM simply pulled the plug and forgot all about it.

Well, GM may have forgotten all about it, but maybe Franz von Holzhausen didn’t.