Scarred
BMW designer says
personal attacks on
his designs cut deep

(Courtesy of GoAuto, Mellor Australia)

CONTROVERSIAL BMW design chief Chris
Bangle has revealed that he was surprised and
affected by the personal attacks his radical new
design language attracted.
In Australia for the first time late last month,
Mr Bangle unveiled BMW’s M6 Convertible,
Z4 Coupe, twin-turbo 335i coupe and facelifted
X3 models at the Australian International
Motor Show opening in Sydney on October
28, before presenting a public forum hosted
by the National Design Centre at Melbourne’s
Federation Square the following day.
But the world’s most notorious car designer
said it took him and his family some time to
come to grips with the reaction that followed
his new flame surfacing design theme, which
prompted more than 30,000 to sign an internet
petition calling for his sacking.
That sort of dialogue in the media was new
and caught me by surprise, he told GoAuto.
Until then, nobody talked about other people’s
work, but the internet has a faceless anonymity
and it took a lot for my family and I to come to
grips with the fact it’s part of the real world.
It was hard to deal with. I feel I’ve now had
some experience and have learned to be able to
deal with it.
Asked whether he was surprised about the
vehemence of the reaction to his designs,
Mr Bangle said: If you asked me when I
was younger I’d have said yes. But for every
negative I receive a positive letter in the
mail.
Mr Bangle, who started work with BMW
in 1992, still describes the redesigned 1999
7 Series sedan flagship, one of two models
that introduced his fundamental new design
philosophy, as the future.
Other BMW officials, including outgoing
BMW Group Australia chief Dr Franz Sauter,
claim the latest BMW limousine’s sales success
and the fact some of its styling cues have since
been adopted by many car-makers shows Mr
Bangle’s new design direction has now been
vindicated.
For his part, Mr Bangle said his newest role
as chief designer for the entire BMW Group,
which includes BMW, Mini, Rolls-Royce, M
cars and motorcycles, has made the 50-yearold
even more impatient for change in the
world of global car design.
If anything my impatience has increased
with where I want the industry and BMW,
Mini and Rolls-Royce to go.
There are many aspects that need a
kickstart, which will still set the agenda 50
years from now, he said.
CHRIS Bangle openly admits his bookend
approach to designing BMW models aims
to banish the one-car-in-different-lengths
philosophy that existed previously, by
maintaining the same basic vehicle proportions
for all models but using different surfacing to
both link and separate them within the BMW
model family.
Before I came to the company, one of your
colleagues in the journalistic fields called us the
one-sausage-in-different-lengths company and
perhaps it wasn’t completely unfounded, he
told GoAuto. But of course back then we only
kind of did one sort of car the sport limousine.
The 3 Series, 5 Series and 7 Series were more
or less based around a similar theme.
Now as time goes on of course we’ve
added many more cars and that requires a
design language that is more flexible than just
taking the same design concept and having it in
different lengths.
Then we came up with the idea we’ll call
them bookends. We’ll say everything about
design fits in books on a bookshelf and we’ll
move the bookends out so we can fit more
books on the shelf and in fact that’s exactly
what happened.
Mr Bangle said the first bookend to appear
was the Z9 GT concept, which appeared at
the 1999 Frankfurt motor show. Along with
previewing the new 6 Series coupe, it heralded
the new design language for the current 7
Series sedan and BMW’s controversial iDrive
control system.
(Z9 GT) of course
was the basis for the
vocabulary that we
had in the 7 series
then it turned into
the 6 Series. It was
also the first time
that we clearly
demonstrated we
wanted to illustrate context over dogma.
Here, for the first time, Z9 GT showed the
iDrive concept which was later used in 7 series,
6 series, 5 series. In fact, a variation of that has
turned up in other cars from other companies
as well.
So Z9 was a really decisive moment when
we put context before dogma not by putting
curvature and buttons on it because that’s what
we did before, but by going about the best way
to do it.
The US-born Mr Bangle said the other
pivotal bookend was BMW’s X Coupe
concept at the 2001 Detroit motor show, which
allowed Z4 to exist.
Aesthetically, it was very emotional and
expressive and for the first time the Z4 had a
relationship to the rest of the cars. The Z3 was
a nice car, but looked nothing like any of the
rest of the cars just an isolated incident.
Here we had for the first time a car that was
the anchor for the rest of the cars from the 1
Series and working its way all the way up the
range to 3 Series and 5 Series as well.
Interestingly enough, many companies are
now saying diesel is sporty, off-road is back,
etcetera. That car was a diesel by the way.
Many people probably don’t remember that.

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