How many world-class designers can one automaker hire? We're quickly finding out. Just yesterday the Hyundai group announced a major coup in the appointment of Karim Habib as the new head of Kia's design studio. Now it's picked up another leading designer to pen the next generation of luxury vehicles for the Genesis brand.

Starting next week, the Genesis Advanced Design Studio in Europe will be under the talented direction of Filippo Perini – an Italian designer who's been responsible for more of his country's most beautiful vehicles than we'd venture to count. But we'll try.

After graduating from the Politecnico di Milano, Perini started work at Alfa Romeo in 1995 and was named its lead exterior designer in 2001. He then spent a couple of years at Audi before moving to Lamborghini, where he headed up the design department for over a decade before switching to Italdesign, where he's lead the studio for the past several years. Along the way, he's been credited with designing such beauties as the the Italdesign Zerouno and a long string of Lamborghinis including the Murcielago, Reventon, Aventador, Veneno, and the Miura, Estoque, Asterion, and Urus concepts.

That's a heck of a portfolio, the experience from which he'll now be lending to Korea's new luxury automaker. And he's not the first talented designer with European experience to move to the Hyundai group. Like former BMW designer Habib at Kia, Perini will report to fellow former Lamborghini designer Luc Donckerwolke, who recently replaced former Audi designer Peter Schreyer as head of Hyundai group design.

"Filippo's vast experience with European luxury brands makes him an ideal fit to lead the Genesis Advanced Design Studio," said Luc Donckerwolke, "and his insight will be instrumental for the development of each of our upcoming projects including both advanced and production designs."