Stop This Man Before He Designs Again
Few things in the automotive world have been as depressing as the rise of Chris Bangle. Mr. Bangle was recently promoted to Grand Design Poobah of the BMW group, which includes BMW, Mini and Rolls Royce. Whatever. The point is that under Mr. Bangle, BMW has transformed itself from a vendor of mostly attractive vehicles to a vendor of decidedly unattractive vehicles.
No BMW designed under his watchful eye looks better than its predecessor. You wanna run through the list? See, e.g., the 7 series bustle trunk, the 7 series Dame Edna eyebrows, the 5 series Funky Librarian cat-eye headlamps, the More Is More school of Z4 design. Add to that the all-new 1 series. And don't even get me started on iDrive. The only new design that escaped relatively unscathed is the new X3. Its design brief apparently was to be a slightly smaller, slightly uglier version of the X5. This allows the next-generation X5 to be a larger, more expensive 7 seater hyper-mega-über land yacht.
I understand Mr. Bangle's motivation. He's tired of the retro-future-retro movement of automotive design (Ford Thunderbird, Chrysler 300M), and Audi beat him to the punch in clean, modern design (although the jury is still out on the virtue of the new corporate honker). So he wants to do something new. You know, futuristic. Although why he wants to make his cars look like they are permanently lodged in a rift of the space-time continuum is beyond me.
BMW, like Subaru, has always been an engineering-driven company. Each company does conservative designs well (BMW 3 series, Subaru Outback). Each tends to stumble on more aggressive design (BMW Z3, Subaru XT). So why mess with a good thing? At least in Subaru's case it makes sense.
At an annual volume of approximately 500,000 cars they simply were unable to generate the cash flow needed to stay competitive in the marketplace. Hence GM taking a 20% stake in Subaru's parent company, Fuji Heavy Industry. So they get a heavy-hitting equity investor, make a strategic alliance with sister company Saab (Saab 9-2X) and hire Andreas Zapatinas, former director of the Centro Stile design center for Alfa Romeo, a car company that knows how to design a beautiful car.
But it doesn't make as much sense in BMW's case. Their sales volume is over 1,000,000 cars per year, which is more than enough to let them remain independent and competitive. Ignoring the Isetta for a moment, their cars were never as ungainly as Subaru's (Subaru 360 anybody?). It's not enough to say that Mr. Bangle is merely justifying his salary. Somebody (and by that I mean the Quandt family) must approve of his work or he would have been kicked to the curb a long time ago.
Maybe, then, it's just the pursuit of excellence. Nothing wrong with that. Except when it's horribly, horribly misguided.
So please. STOP. CHRIS. BANGLE. NOW.
No BMW designed under his watchful eye looks better than its predecessor. You wanna run through the list? See, e.g., the 7 series bustle trunk, the 7 series Dame Edna eyebrows, the 5 series Funky Librarian cat-eye headlamps, the More Is More school of Z4 design. Add to that the all-new 1 series. And don't even get me started on iDrive. The only new design that escaped relatively unscathed is the new X3. Its design brief apparently was to be a slightly smaller, slightly uglier version of the X5. This allows the next-generation X5 to be a larger, more expensive 7 seater hyper-mega-über land yacht.
I understand Mr. Bangle's motivation. He's tired of the retro-future-retro movement of automotive design (Ford Thunderbird, Chrysler 300M), and Audi beat him to the punch in clean, modern design (although the jury is still out on the virtue of the new corporate honker). So he wants to do something new. You know, futuristic. Although why he wants to make his cars look like they are permanently lodged in a rift of the space-time continuum is beyond me.
BMW, like Subaru, has always been an engineering-driven company. Each company does conservative designs well (BMW 3 series, Subaru Outback). Each tends to stumble on more aggressive design (BMW Z3, Subaru XT). So why mess with a good thing? At least in Subaru's case it makes sense.
At an annual volume of approximately 500,000 cars they simply were unable to generate the cash flow needed to stay competitive in the marketplace. Hence GM taking a 20% stake in Subaru's parent company, Fuji Heavy Industry. So they get a heavy-hitting equity investor, make a strategic alliance with sister company Saab (Saab 9-2X) and hire Andreas Zapatinas, former director of the Centro Stile design center for Alfa Romeo, a car company that knows how to design a beautiful car.
But it doesn't make as much sense in BMW's case. Their sales volume is over 1,000,000 cars per year, which is more than enough to let them remain independent and competitive. Ignoring the Isetta for a moment, their cars were never as ungainly as Subaru's (Subaru 360 anybody?). It's not enough to say that Mr. Bangle is merely justifying his salary. Somebody (and by that I mean the Quandt family) must approve of his work or he would have been kicked to the curb a long time ago.
Maybe, then, it's just the pursuit of excellence. Nothing wrong with that. Except when it's horribly, horribly misguided.
So please. STOP. CHRIS. BANGLE. NOW.
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