Chris Bangle quits auto industry.

[coolraoul]

^^I'd say... Mercedes-Benz CLS (okay, not really a typical sedan)... Or the Rover 75.

Thing is, BMW did design mind-blowing sedans before the new style. The e65, e60 and e90 can arguably be described as the less beautiful of all the "modern times" Beemers. By a margin.

There is not one vehicle in the range who is better designed than the predecessors. And the childish "one sausage..." excuse, well... it's not because your cars are different from each other that they have to look not right.

Much more concerning is the fact that even the Coupes and Cabrios do not look right. The Z4 (Cabrio) looks bad and complicated, the 6er is about to scream, the 1er is at best weird with its curveous side and surprised giant eyes...

It's good to draw a "shocking" car with new ideas.
But usually it's the Concept-Car who has weird proportions and over-complicated details. For the production car you make it harmonious and less exagerated...

As far as the "explanations" are concerned... It always makes me wondering why it is needed. For me, Bangle needed to explain its design because it was not completely convincing. I'm not saying a car has to please everybody instantly. A design has to last, so it often needs to be "new" somehow.

But if you need one hour explanation to why there are 4 characterlines in this area and why the bonnet shutline is necessarily an obvious cut above the grille, well for me it's because you have a problem.

You focus on details so that people forget the whole.
The whole meaning, heavy and not spot-on proportions. Hence you over-design to hide it, and then over-explain it.


It's like a musician who, instead of having a gorgeous melody, uses a dozen of different but average melodic lines to make an impression.

 

[Zafiro]

There are only two models from Bangle era that I'm disappointed with, X3 and 7-series E65 and the 6-series is so so.
Other models from Bangle era I actually find attractive to look at.
Unlike Coolraul, I'm a huge fan of the 1-series hatchback and Coupé and its design. I obviosly like the 1-seris so much I now own a 1-series

 

[PanterroR]

There are only two models from Bangle era that I'm disappointed with, X3 and 7-series E65 and the 6-series is so so.
Other models from Bangle era I actually find attractive to look at.
Unlike Coolraul, I'm a huge fan of the 1-series hatchback and Coupé and its design. I obviosly like the 1-seris so much I now own a 1-series

Z4, E65 (pre FL) and X3.

All others are great and there's nothing wrong with 6er, except maybe headlights, a little sad look, but i've leraned to live with that long time ago.

And not because i drive E60, i still can't believe that many think the car is ugly, mainly head and rear lights.... Whatever, to me and to many it's still the most appealing from the trio...

 

[mike.blueberry]

But if you need one hour explanation to why there are 4 characterlines in this area and why the bonnet shutline is necessarily an obvious cut above the grille, well for me it's because you have a problem.

Totally agree with the whole post Raoul. And the bonnet line above the grill was a very painful sight on the E85. Gladly on the E89, it's much better and all the lines, as well as the reduced flame surfacing, are hidden if a dark color is chosen.


Mike

 

[bmer]

I think it's worth mention that the nature of Bangle's work was mostly related to his director role and not so much to actual designing. He couraged and supported a team of excellent designers who have inspired and influenced the automotive design field through their work.

Here's a part of an excellent post by EnI :

Here they are:

Exterior designers of recent BMW models ... THE MOST COMPLETE LIST UP TO DATE!!!!:

• Joji Nagashima: E90/E91 3 series, E36 3 series, E36/7 Z3, E39 5 series
• Adrian van Hooydonk: E63/E64 6 series, E65/E66 7 series, Z9 GT Concept, Z9 Convertible Concept, MINI ACV30 Concept ... (now Head of Design BMW Automobile)
• Geoff Velasco: E83 X3
• Anders Warming: E85 Z4 roadster, GINA Light Concept, Mille Miglia 2006 Coupe Concept ... (now Head of Exterior design BMW Automobile)
• Chris Chapman: E87/E81 1 series hatchback, E53 X5, X-coupe Concept, CS1 Concept ... (now Head of Automotive Design @ BMW Group DesignworksUSA)
• Erik Goplen: E46 3 series
• Davide Arcangeli: E60/E61 5 series
• Tomasz Sycha: E86 Z4 Coupe
• Marc Michael Markefka: E92/E93 3-series coupe & cabrio, E82/E88 1-series coupe & cabrio
• Pierre Leclercq: E70 X5, X71/E72 X6
• Karim Antoine Habib: CS Concept, F01/F02 7-series, F?? "new 8-series" (project "GranTurismo")
• Juliane Blasi: E89 Z4 roadster ... yes, it's a woman
• Jacek Froehlich: F10 / F11 5-series

• Mark Djordjevic: RR Phantom family (Phantom, Drophead Copue, Coupe)
• Frank Stephenson: R50-R53 MINI Mk1
• Marcus Syring: R55-R58 (R60?) MINI Mk2

Mind that interiors, M-kits, M-specific exterior, rims / wheels, interior details like steering wheel, iDrive knob etc are designed by other people!!!

And as you can see NONE of the BMW model's exterior hasn't been penned by Chris Bangle!!! EVER!
And that the design team is VERY international.

 

[LaArtist]

Amused at BMW groupies explenations ..
They are always something extra.. lol

I guess the dude never held a pen and beacame the cheif designer of BMW..

Lucky dude

PS
Im glad to see him go.. in my eyes he is a FAILURE

 

[vabboud]

a failure that has knocked off MB from top spot eh artist

 

[vabboud]

in retrospect one cannot ismply talk about bangle. i don't think enough time has eleapsed since the advent of the E65 (Arguably the dawn of the bangle era) to be able to fully judge this man's impact on automotive design.

bangle has provided automotive design with fresh outlooks and ideas that were lacking. it would be fairlyy simple to reduce his entire philosophy into "i hate the butt bangle sucks fire bangle" as many have done, but point is as a philosophy or conceptual entities his ideas have permeated all modern car design.

people anger at the names, flame surfacing bangle butts, etc... but the odd thing is that all these same people rave about the execution of these concepts in other brands and makes. the bangle butt has become a staple of the W221 and the upcoming A8, flame surfacing, has becoming a permeating livery on almost all modern cars in the interplay of convex and concave, wrap around headlights etc.. etc.. and the list goes on.

many of you do blame him for their hatred of a particular model, it is your right, but one cannot deny that BMW has become, for better or worse the standard by which all automotive design is judged.

the E65 will stand almost virtually alone when it comes to execution of design concepts in the automotive sector. every single line, every single nook, cranny, curve and crease on this car has provokes countless pages of debate. every on of them criticized, rendered into a fallacy of primal order in terms of sound design, yet every single one of those lines is now a classic modern staple of automotive design, in the E65 is the template for every single car on the road now, from the nissam tiida to the Bentley's et al, all of them are based in some way or the other on this design.

no design bangle would have create could have been appealing universally, many of you laud the e39, yet a lot of people, mostly silent hate it with all their guts. no design is universal, good design makes a statement conveys an idea, requires debate and explanantion to extract every single drop of its essence.

some of you posit that bangle's design are awful because they require explaining or debating. let's see, i don't think any of you would dare question the might of leonardo davinci, well for 500 years an ongoing never abating debate has been raging about the smile of the mona lisa, that simple idiotic detail of curvature of a lip, can somebody use this to denigrate the master's piece? or is it rather testament to its enduring power to captivate the human mind throughout centuries?

bangle rendered this exact feeling into automotive design by making people capable of being moved by a car, capable of responding to a car's lines, or curves.

BMW is better off after bangle, without bangle, car design would have still been stale, unmoving, dictated by rigid rules in textbooks, lacking life and dynamics, limited by manufacturing processes and tooling.

in my eyes, an era has ended, the spirit might live one with AvH, and the others, the BMW design direction will not change, it will move forward, but overall an era of design not just at BMW has just ended and probably 50 years from now, in textbooks you will find chapters dedicated to the bangle philosophy and the bangle era.

dibs to a great man, who transformed car design from a rigid discipline into an emotional art.

Bangle you will be missed, surely!

 

[PanterroR]

^

 

[Deleted member 25]

Why do haters never considers his role as chief designer before 99 ?

 

[bum-man]

a failure that has knocked off MB from top spot eh artist

Juergen Schremp was the one that knocked Mercedes off the top spot.

Anyways, Stage 1 is complete, so I guess we can expect better looking BMW's from now on?

 

[SCOTT27]

well , Adrian Van Hooydunk is indeed from the Bangle school of thought, after all he was responsible for the cutting edge diversity as embraced by the E65 and E63/E64.

So expect some Radical thinking I have seen his sketches for what he would like to focus on , believe me it is very forward looking which means history will repeat itself with the controversial direction by Bangle being replaced by Adrian Van Hooydunk so expect to see Concept Cars based on the 6er utilising a (coupespace idea) and very much a rethinking of the XCoupe either based on the X3 or X1.

The difference between Project-I is BMW Have now decided the car will not be badged as a BMW as the agreement is that the entry level BMW will be the 1er only - No 0er.
Which leaves much internal debate whether i-Setta or MINI?
Some are calling for the Project i to follow the first model which was the MINI-E to be part of the MINI family.
But ever since the design department have created some Concepts for Isetta including a Rethinking of the older "bubble car and it's four wheeled counterpart , Its the decision which is frustrating because all designs are excellent even from the MINI design dept.

The upside down kidney grille pioneered by AVH makes it's debut with the X3 and then the 1er.

The BMW Board of Directors lunderstand that this is an exciting new direction for the 1er. It works in real life It has a very sporting aura.

 

[Deleted member 25]

I love that angry face, i also would like to see some separated double lights again.

 

[andresswe]

I think Chris Bangle has been something very good for bmw, if I look at the e65, well I don´t think its the best looking car in the world BUT it´s something with the car that makes it special, somthing like, this is BMW, the sometimes unordinary design contributes to the feeling of yeah...that´s why I like thier cars...

Let´s hope AVH can lead the designers to sculpture more of the cars that creates this, this is a car I WANT to use...

Thank you Mr Bangle

 

[mike.blueberry]

in retrospect one cannot ismply talk about bangle. i don't think enough time has eleapsed since the advent of the E65 (Arguably the dawn of the bangle era) to be able to fully judge this man's impact on automotive design.

bangle has provided automotive design with fresh outlooks and ideas that were lacking. it would be fairlyy simple to reduce his entire philosophy into "i hate the butt bangle sucks fire bangle" as many have done, but point is as a philosophy or conceptual entities his ideas have permeated all modern car design.

people anger at the names, flame surfacing bangle butts, etc... but the odd thing is that all these same people rave about the execution of these concepts in other brands and makes. the bangle butt has become a staple of the W221 and the upcoming A8, flame surfacing, has becoming a permeating livery on almost all modern cars in the interplay of convex and concave, wrap around headlights etc.. etc.. and the list goes on.

many of you do blame him for their hatred of a particular model, it is your right, but one cannot deny that BMW has become, for better or worse the standard by which all automotive design is judged.

the E65 will stand almost virtually alone when it comes to execution of design concepts in the automotive sector. every single line, every single nook, cranny, curve and crease on this car has provokes countless pages of debate. every on of them criticized, rendered into a fallacy of primal order in terms of sound design, yet every single one of those lines is now a classic modern staple of automotive design, in the E65 is the template for every single car on the road now, from the nissam tiida to the Bentley's et al, all of them are based in some way or the other on this design.

no design bangle would have create could have been appealing universally, many of you laud the e39, yet a lot of people, mostly silent hate it with all their guts. no design is universal, good design makes a statement conveys an idea, requires debate and explanantion to extract every single drop of its essence.

some of you posit that bangle's design are awful because they require explaining or debating. let's see, i don't think any of you would dare question the might of leonardo davinci, well for 500 years an ongoing never abating debate has been raging about the smile of the mona lisa, that simple idiotic detail of curvature of a lip, can somebody use this to denigrate the master's piece? or is it rather testament to its enduring power to captivate the human mind throughout centuries?

bangle rendered this exact feeling into automotive design by making people capable of being moved by a car, capable of responding to a car's lines, or curves.

BMW is better off after bangle, without bangle, car design would have still been stale, unmoving, dictated by rigid rules in textbooks, lacking life and dynamics, limited by manufacturing processes and tooling.

in my eyes, an era has ended, the spirit might live one with AvH, and the others, the BMW design direction will not change, it will move forward, but overall an era of design not just at BMW has just ended and probably 50 years from now, in textbooks you will find chapters dedicated to the bangle philosophy and the bangle era.

dibs to a great man, who transformed car design from a rigid discipline into an emotional art.

Bangle you will be missed, surely!

I have a question for you vabboud. I would like to know whether people would have cared about Bangle's designs if they were applied on a manufacturer that has less of an enthusiast following than BMW, let's say like Citroen. Or Peugeot. Or Skoda. Imagine the whole Skoda line-up looking exactly like BMW's today. Do you think these designs would also be the standard by which all the automotive industry is judged?


The reason why people have so many emotions when looking at Bangle designs, is because they love BMWs, they know that the best 6-inline for decades was BMW's, they knnow that the Porsche 968 was thrown out of production by the M3 in the 90's and the whole Porsche entgreprise had to reinvent itself when the M3 was beating the 911 on the track.
People love the handling, the quality of driving these machines, the gap between BMWs and their rivals in terms of driving pleasure and sportiness, and this included gearbox, engine, handling, quality of the materials, design of the interior and exterior.


And it hurts to see the brand of cars that you love so much, be used as the carrier of a fashion craze. and since these people are still going to buy their beloved engineering masterpiece despite the controversial designs, because the internals of the car matters to them more, that is why there are so much emotions, and so much struggle in everybody (I didn't like it at first but now I love it blabla). It's because these people are buying the car they know and then getting used to the new design that they would have hated had it were on another car than a BMW.

Bangle used one of the most beloved car brands out there to shove his design, and no one knows how much impact it would have had if it wasn't BMW.
The best would have been if he were hired by another manufacturer like Peugeot. Then all these people wouldn't have to struggle so much with the Bangle design and create all this controversy, which I am convinced, is solely because this is BMW we are talking about and not Peugeot. They would have looked at the brochure and said ewwwwww what's that..


Mike

 

[Deleted member 25]

Actually the guy you think of exists and is called patrick lequement, mr Renault design, one of the most contreversial and admired designer, and tell me mike, what do you think of bangle as chief designer of the teams that created the E3X ( the 90s generation) bmws ?

 

[vabboud]

it is undoubtable that the fact that Bangle's template was BMW did in more ways than one push forward his ideas, of course BMW lent credence to his push. but we msut not forget that had not his designs succeeded in the way that you deride them, sales would not have gone up so substantially post E65.

it is also true that once the substance is solid, you can move forward much easily, but bangle could have also been as simply as another ian callum at aston, very lovely but very insipid designs.

i don't think the public feels as badly as most of you here feel about BMW, and bangle. in fact i think it's quite the opposite. in my native lebanon, when one wants to describe an E65, he is more likely to compare it to a "tayyara" i.e. a plane.

modern Bimmers set standards that the entire industry wants to catch up to, asides the standards in handling and engines and the other traditional stuff, nagle added design standards for the whole industry.

of course had he stayed at fiat, he might have ended up an eccentric small time designer with wonderful ideas who never were capable of full application, you need an amalgamation of circumstances for the full monty. in this case it neede bangle's genius and the BMW board's balls and confidence to write history.

i would rather now that the period is over we all stop the brisk judging and most of us the needless hating, and instead take a look abck and try to see if we have enough perspective to start correctly analyzing the entire circumstances and context surrounding bangle and the full impact he has caused on the sectors of automtive design and design as a whole.

 

[LaArtist]

Juergen Schremp was the one that knocked Mercedes off the top spot.

Anyways, Stage 1 is complete, so I guess we can expect better looking BMW's from now on?

Thank you..for saying what i wanted to say..

To claim the fall of MB to some BMW strategy..

is like saying claiming the fall of an empire to 1 single factor..

The damn BMW design isnt even a deciding factor in that fall..

Often BMW and its fans like to take more credit than is due..

 

[bmwownage]

If the 6series and the E65 7 and Z9 were more AvH influenced, then I think it's a bit worrying... in no way we're heading in a 'better direction' if BMW becomes more AvH influenced... I don't know why there is so much Bangle bashing, he started 17 years ago, which is something like 1992, so the E39, E38 and E46, the 3 sausages in different sizes yet absolutely beautiful, were under him... if you ask me, the E65 adventure was one they could gamble on, the 7 never got up in the lines of the Sclass back then and creating something that special has a lot of positive effects, including testing the market. The facelift of it made it back to a normal car imo. Other models, to me, all the flame surfacing stuff etc. was just what BMW should have done anyway. I mean, traditionally BMWs had the most dynamic and strong lines and it was just an evolutionary step that the lines and surfacing will become even stronger. For example I cannot imagine a BMW to have a boring side profile like an Audi now, it was never their image. There were some "mistakes" of course, for example i think the 6series-style kidney grille (with the thicker chrome bar on the top) is bad, i'm sure they planned it for the E92 and dropped it, and they dropped it on the E90 too.. lines are getting smoother, most obvious with the F01, none of the E90 bulky-ness and no more of the disasterious X3.. My point is, the direction was never wrong, The E65 days i guess the balance was not found, but look at for example MB and Audi, you have MB who never had a side swage line, putting one in for every car they make; front overhang becomes so short, the BMW eyebrows appears on the new Cclass; Audi, well they never did much except changing the grille. And look at this, a BMW carbon copy. Holden Australia - Large Cars: Commodore

 

[Deleted member 25]

Thank you..for saying what i wanted to say..

To claim the fall of MB to some BMW strategy..

is like saying claiming the fall of an empire to 1 single factor..

The damn BMW design isnt even a deciding factor in that fall..

Often BMW and its fans like to take more credit than is due..

Like it or not BMW became N°1 under CB reign and that's a fact. Not any paranoia BS.