David Bache was born in Mannheim in 1925, the son of an Aston Villa and England footballer coaching in Germany. Towards the end of the war he joined Austin as an engineering apprentice, and moved into its design office, where he worked under Dick Burzi, and designed the dashboard of the Austin A30.
In 1954 he moved to Rover at Solihull as its first ever stylist. He restyled the Rover 60, 75 and 90, and gave the Land Rover Series II its more domesticated look in six weeks; the shape lasted until Defender production ended in 2017. He created the imposing P5, whose shape stayed unchanged for fifteen years, and the P6, launched in 1963, whose open-plan dashboard and rear bucket seats broke new ground.
At British Leyland he smoothed the prototype lines of the Range Rover, defined by Spen King and Gordon Bashford, and styled the SD1 of 1976, a five-door hatchback that won the 1977 European Car of the Year. As BL chief stylist he was also involved with the Metro and improved the Maestro. He was forced to resign in 1982 after disagreements over the Maestro, replaced by Roy Axe, and set up David Bache Associates, which he ran until his death from cancer in 1994.
