Chris Bangle
…probably doesn’t need any introduction to the readers of this site, but just in case, he’s the force behind recent designs at BMW, including the much-maligned 7-Series:
Photo from Car Enthusiast.
Back in April, I ran across an interesting video from TED — a fascinating site — with Chris discussing cars as art. Great stuff. Foreword was taking a break, though, so never wound up posting about it.
Initially, I disliked the 7 pretty intensely. However, it’s grown on me in a big way — enough so that I’ll actually defend it in a conversation. Never been able to do so succinctly, though; thankfully, a commenter in a forum on the Car Lounge, where I saw a mention of the video again, can:
Chris Bangle saved BMW.
By 1992, BMW had been essentially penning the same car for thirty years. Every new generation was lower, longer, and wider, but none of them represented anything like a stylistic advance. Furthermore, the end was in sight. The E38 and E39 represented the absolute dead end of BMW styling, in that the new ones couldn’t be any more stereotypically BMW.
When you’ve painted yourself into a design corner, you can do one of two things. You can do the Jaguar thing and simply keep designing the same car, which is why even I have trouble telling the difference between a 1995 X300 and the current XJ at a distance. This will eventually cause you trouble, as it has for Jaguar.
Or you can create an entirely new design language, which Bangle did. And he succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings. Nearly every new car for sale today has a bit of Bangle in it. The new LS460 might as well have been sketched by von Hooydonk. All the new Toyotas have the two-step trunk. Hyundai internalized the Bangle form language so well that the TCL morons are calling the new BMW 1 “Korean” for having an “Elantra” two-step trunk!
Bangle’s tremendous insight was that you could create a tension of concave and convex that went beyond the traditional interplay of the “Coke Bottle”.
I don’t like the look of most “Bangle BMWs”, which is really to say Hooydonk BMWs. But I’m not stupid enough to ignore the fact that the Bangle era needed to happen. [Emphasis in original.] Without Chris, BMW would be where Jaguar is today - furiously attempting to convince its buying public that the car in the showroom isn’t a decade-old used car.
Watch the video. Believe in the Bangle.
Update, 22 July: Corrected a link, provided photo credit. Apologies for not doing the first time.
