WHAT’S WITH BMW’S DESIGN?
THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR BMW’S AUDACIOUS NEW DESIGN PHILOSOPHY EXPLAIN WHY, DESPITE THE NAYSAYERS, THAT GRILLE IS HERE TO STAY
Are oversize beaver-toothed grilles really the future? The top crayon men from Munich defend their vision
IF YOU’VE BEEN anywhere near social media in the past year, you will know that BMW’s design department has had to weather a fair old storm. In the words of Adrian van Hooydonk, senior vice-president of group design at the Bavarian firm, “it can be brutal”. But if you think that’s a hint that van Hooydonk and head of BMW design Domagoj Dukec are about to change their ways, think again. The big kidney grille is here to stay. The reasoning is simple: van Hooydonk and Dukec want BMW to stand out, so they’re happy to make it the distinguishing feature. They rationalise it by pointing out that it’s part of BMW’s past, so it will remain part of the future.
Listening to both men talk about all aspects of BMW’s design, it’s clear that the ‘separator’ reasoning is the philosophy behind what they are doing. Dukec justifies it with the amount of noise they have created: “If you want to create something that stands out, it must be distinguished and it has to be different. If you want to reach some customers, you have to stand out. It’s not our goal to please everyone in the world, but you have to please your customers.”
This, then, is at the heart of what van Hooydonk and Dukec are trying to do – sell cars. “It all comes back to the customer,” Dukec says. And it’s difficult to argue with the numbers. Covid aside, 2020 was a good year for BMW. The group’s sales recovered later in the year, with the 686,069 vehicles sold in the final quarter marking a
3.2 percent increase on the same period in 2019.
Not that it has been easy or without risk. It’s the age-old compromise of acknowledging the past but also moving a company forward, a job that’s not easy with a back catalogue as long as BMW’s. As van Hooydonk is all too aware of: “There is some friction when your old product is so successful, and that’s what we’re seeing. If your market success isn’t there, then you have to change. That’s a very stressful situation as a company. It’s better to have this kind of stress [the controversy], even though it would be even better to have market success and universal praise for the changes. But somehow that’s rarely the case.”
What’s clear is that both men feel a huge amount of responsibility towards BMW. Both are well aware of the history of the brand – indeed, they have justified their current strategy by looking back to the 1960s, when BMW pioneered a sports car that came with a healthy dose of limousine. Cars like the 1500, which set the standard for the company for years to come, right up to today.
These days, the fragmentation of what customers want – and
Dukec is clear on this: he’s aiming for customers to want his cars, not need them – means that the two men have identified two groups they want to appeal to. They have called them the elegant creators and the expressive performers. While it’s tempting to dismiss this as marketing hyperbole, it does make sense when you view it in terms of the product. The creators tend to sit in the odd-numbered cars – the traditional 3, 5 and 7 Series – while the performers are the evennumbered buyers, with cars like the M4 and X6.
It boils down to how people will use their cars. As Dukec has it, the creators want a car “more focused on the cabin, but it still has to have a fluid silhouette and nice proportions”, while the performers don’t want such a practical car. The cabin will be smaller, like a suit that’s “not the most comfortable one, but it’s the one in which you look the best. They want a car that’s almost irrational.”
“We’re making each new model stronger in character without taking the brand apart” ADRIAN VAN HOOYDONK
FOR CONTROVERSY in 2021, read controversy in 2001. That was the year the fourth-generation BMW 7 Series came out, complete with an accompanying howl of anguish from critics. Remember the bootlid? Of course you do; it’s not an easy one to forget. Back then, it was Chris Bangle wielding the design pencils. He was head of design at BMW from 1992 to 2009, but it was in 1999 that he really ramped it up with his new style of ‘flame surfacing’. That was the year of the Gran Turismo concept, from where flame surfacing became a ‘thing’ and BMW’s designs only got punchier. There were hits and misses along the way. The CS1 Concept was a preview of what the 1 Series could look like and hasn’t aged well, whereas something like the 2003 5 Series has now almost achieved cult status. Other highlights in terms of concepts were the X-Coupe Concept, a bold foretaste of what a sporty SUV could look like, while the 2009 Gina featured a shape-shifting cloth skin, so its headlights could open and close like eyes. Bangle left shortly after the Gina. Who knows where his mind would have taken BMW next?
“We will continue the fire but not worship the ashes” ADRIAN VAN HOOYDONK
What does all this mean for the cars you will see in the street? Traditional BMW styling cues like the kidney grille, quad headlights and Hofmeister kink will remain, but there will be increasing fragmentation across the range. The sportier models will get vertical grilles and fuller bodies with sculpted surfacing, while electric cars will have a similar treatment to the recently revealed iX.
The grille on that car remains vertical because of all the high-tech equipment, such as autonomous driving sensors, that needs to be positioned in the centre. The sedans, meanwhile, probably won’t get a vertical grille or even a big one: Dukec actually used the word “narrow” to describe it. It will depend on the customer and the car’s character.
This separation is an entirely deliberate ploy. As van Hooydonk says: “We are expanding the vocabulary of the BMW brand with each new model and we’re pulling them further apart. And that’s deliberate. We’re making them stronger in character without taking the brand apart.”
It’s interesting what this means for niches, in that they’re here to stay. Van Hooydonk adds: “We’re broadening the choice we offer our customer. That’s the secret of selling more cars. You can’t sell more of the same.”
Each pillar of BMW has a part to play in this, as van Hooydonk explains: “We’ve used BMW i to experiment and move the brand forward, and with M we can also do some very pointy cars that are of course geared around performance. For the mother brand, we can take from each of these two sub-brands whatever we feel works.”
Van Hooydonk acknowledges that none of this has been easy for the aficionados. “If you have fans, it’s fantastic. You have people who don’t just buy your products, they love what you do. For them, it’s an emotional thing. Of course, if they love what you do, the minute you’re going to change it they might have an issue with that. It comes with the territory. Our job isn’t so easy. We have to debate how much change would be enough because we’re living in a world where there are constant new players coming in. If we don’t move, we become a sitting duck for all our competitors. [The balance is] to move enough so that the company thrives but not move so much that you lose contact with your fan base altogether.”
To keep moving and to keep looking forward is key for van Hooydonk, especially given the competition from start-ups. This means that any BMW worshipper who wants a return to the past is going to be disappointed. Retro is interesting for van Hooydonk, but it’s not what he wants. A homage is okay and going down a retro route is fine when you want to relaunch a company (like Renault has done with the electric 5), but “it’s not necessary for BMW”. In a lovely expression, he says “we will continue the fire but not worship the ashes”.
Of course, BMW is no stranger to design controversy. We’ve been here before with Chris Bangle, and most of the cars he created are now talked about in revered terms – a point highlighted by Dukec. But this time it somehow feels different. Maybe it’s social media and the increasingly entrenched views of the world.
Either way, neither Dukec nor van Hooydonk will change the path they’re on. It feels like both will be justifying BMW’s design direction for a while yet.