When it comes time to chart designer Chris Bangle’s contribution to the BMW brand’s aesthetic, few pundits will praise his pulchritudinous perversion of pistonhead passion, or thank him for the aesthetic affectations for which BMW is now known. In other words, the “Bangle Butt” will be Chris’ lasting legacy. Of course, this is also the man who removed the words “flame surfacing” from art school and placed them on the tip of his detractors’ tongues. That and Axis of White Power. (Oh! How we laughed!) Equally improbably, the Buckeye State native helped the expression “Dame Edna glasses” cross into the automotive lexicon. Yup. It’s been a wild ride. Literally.
Bangle may not have been the most pretentious pontificator to ever describe an “ow-tow-mobile,” but it’s hard to imagine who could challenge him for that distinction. The vehicles he birthed were almost as intellectually challenging as the words he used to describe them. But not quite.
The gallery above is a snapshot of the kinda post-Bangle era; all photos ripped straight from today’s BMW website. Strangely, revealingly, most of BMW’s model photos do NOT show the most popular viewing angle: front three-quarter. Those that do are almost all computer generated. It’s a tacit admission that Bangle’s designs lack the kind of cohesion which was once the marque’s defining visual characteristic.
The brand’s Bangle-related fall from sheetmetal grace coincided with two major developments.
First, iDrive.
It’s easy enough to surmise that Bangle had no say in the matter of whether or not his engineering-obsessed paymasters would equip “his” cars with their fiendishly complicated multi-media controller. But one can guess that he welcomed the device as a break from the past, signaling his own arrival.
In any event, the iDrive appeared in Chris’ first major work: the E65 7-Series [see: main picture above]. The iDrive was a disaster. It drew attention to the brand’s move away from its core, technologically illiterate customers. The iDrive and Bangle’s creased sheetmetal drew attention to each other—and not in a good way. Bangle was off to a lousy start.
The second major event: BMW’s success.
Success has many fathers, and it won’t take a DNA test. There are plenty of pundits who have no trouble putting aside their personal distaste for Chris Bangle’s showy designs to credit him and them for BMW’s dramatic rise in the sale charts. I hate it but I’m a snob. Das volk have spoken.
The counter-argument: false synchronicity. You straighten your tie a car horn beeps. Two events related in time, unrelated in cause and effect. We’ll never know if BMW would have enjoyed more success without Bangle’s rude awakening.
Countering the counter argument, you could argue that BMW’s are still instantly recognizable vehicles, right across the now-vast model lineup. For better or worse, it’s probably for the better. The Japanese have been struggling with this overarching brand aesthetic issue—and failing—for decades. For example, L-Finesse is this decade’s best design language, but Lexus’ badge-engineered sedans and SUVs still don’t speak it well, if at all.
Regular readers can guess my take on this matter: in terms of a car company’s long term health and survival, branding is all. There’s only important question: did Bangle’s tortured designs help or hurt BMW’s Ultimate Driving ethos?
I’m thinking neither. During the Bangle era, BMW maintained its well-deserved rep for driver-oriented mechanical engineering. Not reliability. Fun. Passion. Performance. The latest M5 lost all its visual sang froid. Every. Last. Bit. It’s an ugly, self-referential, over-wrought, arriviste pastiche. (AND it’s cursed with both iDrive AND the world’s worst gearbox.) But the über-5 still goes like hell and corners like the ultimate handling metaphor.
Again, other carmudgeons chiming in on the Bangle bamboozle will have a kindler, gentler take. Members of the autoblogosphere reporting Bangle’s exit, stage right, are sure to couch their criticism carefully, deploying their own obfuscation via words like “challenging,” “daring” and “controversial.”
Truth be told, Bangle took a car company best known for its oxymoronic Oberbürgermeister chic and turned it into an upmarket blingfest. His successor Adrian van Hooydonk has dialed it back a bit, but Bangle lingered long enough to make sure no one cancelled his contract with Fifty Cent. Maybe now they will. Here’s hoping.
Bangle’s departure raises the Lilly Pulitzer question: did he fall or was he pushed? Either way, is his acolyte now, at this very moment, using the ultimate office shredder? Will the Bangle schtick stick? BMW’s Board has been behind Bangle in the most Wagnerian of ways. But their willingness to dump his predecessor’s designs for something entirely new speaks of a new design direction.
Meanwhile, BMW says Chris Bangle is quitting “to pursue his own design-related endeavors beyond the auto industry.” Note: not “outside.” “Beyond.” Egomaniacal to the end, it seems that Mr. Bangle is ready to ascend to a higher plane, beyond mere “automobiles.” We wish him luck in his self-imposed exile from main street.
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The truth be told, Bangle took a car company best known for its oxymoronic Oberbürgermeister chic and turned it into an upmarket blingfest.
Very true. And yet, unfortunately, it’s what the “new” BMW buyers, i.e. the new rich, really wanted. I still consider the E39 5-series one of the most perfect sedans, but its successor makes me puke, even after 5 years on the market.
Bangle rode the upmarket swing very well from a marketing perspective, and I’m now curious to see how much buyers move away from bling, in the “recessionista era”.
He was design lead on the E46 and it’s M3 variant, so all is forgiven.
I’m not sure how anyone could say that 90% of his work was not a raging success for BMW. Considering that a business exists to make money, I don’t see how by what measurement anyone could deny this.
I love the Automotive News picture showing him holding up “air quotes”. It’s a perfectly appropriate illustration of his “designs”.
Perhaps the 3-series will go back to looking like the ultimate driving machine instead of an angry Japanese interpretation of a Jetta. I can’t bring myself to want such an unattractive car, no matter how good the powertrain is.
Couldn’t agree more, however to make your point you should have used some of the more hideous examples of Bangle’s oeuvre like the Coupe Fiat, pre-facelift 7 series or 6 series.
A white, three-door 1 series hatch is actually quite attractive imo.
@Vega :
A white, three-door 1 series hatch is actually quite attractive imo.
That’s what I thought when I saw that picture.
A white, three-door 1 series hatch is actually quite attractive imo.
Really? The grille and headlights carry a surprised and confused look which I find profoundly ugly. The rest of the design is OK, but a white GTI is even more attractive and looks considerably more upmarket to my eye.
Vega:
As the [ever so stylish] Cylons would say, by your command.
The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem. With that in mind, it’s OK to admit that the 6-series (E63) and 7-series (E65… the pre-facelift) are two of the most fugly cars ever built. Once BMW has it’s 90-day chip free from Bangle, I’m sure the classic, timeless designs of the past will once again resurface.
The 5 series has grown on me, and now I find it to be one of the more attractive models in BMW’s lineup. And I’ve always liked the Z4. What he did to the 3, 6, and 7 series, though, is a tragedy.
I personally don’t like BMW’s. However, I must admit BMW has been the exterior design leader for most this decade. I know Audi, Cadillac, Infiniti, and Mercedes have been vying for innovation in design, but it’s been Bangle who’s lead the way, with the sales numbers to prove it.
Now if only he could have done something about BMW’s hideous interiors.
Shouldn’t you have put “contributions” in “air quotes”?
So…now that BMWs may again begin to look like the UDMs they once did, I wonder what Bangle’s impact REALLY was on product mix.
He gets blamed for a lot – and I am not defending him – but did Bangle invent the SAV? Or did some product planners with reams of GM-style consumer research draw up the specification and give it to Bangle with a: “Here! Design zeese!” memo?
It will be interesting to see what design and product mix direction BMW takes now.
Hopefully they’ll look one heck of a lot less like Pontiacs…if Pontiac still exists.
@PeteMoran:
He was design lead on the E46 and it’s M3 variant, so all is forgiven.
Was he in charge of the now infamous E46 3s subframe/differential mount design that tends to rip away, or are the bean-counters responsible for that (future class action lawsuit) disaster?
Link to video
Style is the eye of the beholder. Chris Bangle designs may have gone to far for some, but he was trying to push BMW styling. For me, some of it worked and some it did not. It is easy to sit back and say something is ugly. Designers have to try different things and sometimes it will be a hit and other times it will be a miss.
To me, nothing Bangle did compares to other bad designs such as the Pontiac Aztek, Toyota Echo, AMC Eagle 4X4 wagons, Honda Element, current generation Acura cars, and so many others.
There might be a god after all.
Not so fast, grave dancers…His protege, van Hooydonk, is still in charge at BMW Design and will carry on the mess quite well, I’m sure.
As for Bangle’s legacy, I think it would be VERY interesting to show all the non-BMW’s sporting a bangle-but – Mercedes and Lexus in particular have been very ardent adopters of this horror.
As for his future, I am terribly fearful that RF got it backwards: ” his self-imposed exile from main street.”
I’ll bet my BMW he’s going to become an architect, and will next be DESIGNING Main Street!
@kristan:
Given that the E36 suffered from exactly the same problem, I wouldn’t look for anything particular to happen with regards to remedies for that subframes.
I also notice that somehow, these failures tend to appear most often in Bimmers with crappy aftermarket bodykits and “sweet drops”.
Good riddance. I bought a 335i in spite of the stupid swoops, chrome moustache, squinty taillamps and ill-advised panel cuts all brought courtesy of Chris Bangle.
The Z4 remains a testament to Bangle’s overly cute “design” philosophy, where he took an otherwise attractive shape and “designed” it into a rolling turd. The Bangle-butt was the least offensive thing he did to BMW, and it wasn’t good.
Sadly, he’ll fit into the world of high-end architecture quite well.
@RetardedSparks,
Good point! Though more common than the Bangle-Butt, what new car hasn’t some sort of “flamed surface” character crease….
From the Impreza (mild) to the C-Class (medium) to the new Accord (drastic) they all wear some kind of multi-surfaced sides with a big crease through them: Bangles’ automotive design legacy, I suspect. More so than the self-named derriere.
“There are two kinds of people. Those who don’t know who Chris Bangle is, and those who want to run him over.”
upmarket blingfest
Yeah… That sums it up. I’m on my 4th 3 Series – a couple of E36’s, an E46, and now a 2008 328i.
It’ll be my last BMW though…. The E36 really was a driving machine. Nice creature comforts but a simple car basically. Sure the dash looked like a 60’s pickup truck but it was functional and all the materials were excellent.
My E46 was design that grew on me. I liked the E36 better for a long, long time, but I finally got to appreciate that it was as clean and elegant in its lines as the E36.
Now the E90. Its looks annoy me. I keep seeing the clean E46 trapped inside the busy lines. My take is that they refused to let Bangle do what he wanted so, like a school-boy trapped in study hall, he just kept retracing the details more and more heavily, emphasizing every cliche until he wore through the paper.
In the E90, I keep seeing a pretty girl in whore makeup.
It also has too many electronic gimmicks for me. Worst of all, BMW caved in for popularity and moved the !@#$%^!@^ window controls to the driver’s door. After years of BMWs now I have to change so it’s easier for the posuers. Bah.
Good riddance to Bangle. Maybe I’ll consider another BMW if they go back to a clean design.
“beyond the auto industry.”
Ascending to the true pinnacle of design where his genius will be acclaimed by all: elderly british women’s evening wear.
“Flame surfacing” my foot. I never saw the effect, and even if I had, never understood why anyone would want a car to look like flames were licking at it. Ford successfully captured the effect with the Pinto and people were understandably outraged.
I am surprised Bangle lasted as long as he did, and that BMW survived him.
Bangle is the second lead designer to walk away from the car biz. Dan Sims left Mitsubishi to work for Proctor & Gamble.
You know something is wrong with an industry when folks would rather design boxes of Tide.
All good things come to an end… Fortunately, all bad things do too! I’m glad he has ascended beyond the auto industry… I just hope there isn’t a second coming.
Self-imposed exile from main street, or sympathy for the Devil?
People laugh at me when I show them my Chris Bangle Voodoo doll that I keep in the glove box of my E39 5-Series. Well who’s laughing now? The bell tolls for thee, Mr. Bangle.
I have to disagree almost completely with this editorial. Bangle tried to bring new ideas to automotive design and he succeeded. And not just with the volk but who are buying bimmers in ever greater numbers but also with his fellow designers many of whom are busy copying his design features. How much more successful can you be than that? So I am not surprised that he wants to go beyond automotive design and unlike Farago I mean it honestly.
Personally I think his strength was individual design features sprinkled in different corners of the car. The weakness was his inability to bring it all together and create a striking harmonious unit. Actually he did achieve striking designs, the cars had presence, they just were not one harmonious whole.
The idea the Farago pushes that the BMW sales success and its design direction in the last 10 years are probably unrelated is untenable in view history. The fact is that people don’t spend large amounts of money on high end cars if they are put off by the car’s design. I think that has been established over the 100 years of auto industry and it’s been proven daily on this blog.
I think Bangle did set BMW apart (I just can’t ignore the sales success or the number of imitators), from the competition However, he did so at the expense of good taste. It’s really a shame that, were I to be in the market for a large luxury sedan (ha!), I would run straight to Audi or Merc, who still seem capable of making elegant cars. BMW remains king of the sporty sedans with the 3, but a large car needs be beautiful, as none of them really handle. The 7 series is (and has been) one of the least attractive cars ever sold, even with the redesign. To my eyes it’s almost as bad as the Aztec.
They also are inviting unwelcome comparisons with infinite imo. BMW’w newfound tackiness makes the G series’ ricey design seem bearable and in some cases less cluttered, allowing them to fight on even ground if they get the suspension settings polished. BMW should not be content with just being more capable, b/c someone else will eventually match them on these grounds.
I’m with ra_pro on this one – I’m not the biggest fan of Bangle’s work but this editorial is way off base.
I’ll have an easier time taking TTAC seriously on visual design when you start putting up pictures of cars that actually correspond with the captions (hint: that is *not* a 2002 7-series in the main picture.)
and yet not one of his designs looks better than even the most mediocre Alfa Romeo.
I seemed to have missed the news where Bangle was $#;+canned or quit, but I can’t say I am unhappy. Today’s BMWs are fat and overwrought. To me they scream victim of fashion, not piston head.
I did not know that Chris was a fellow Buckeye. It explains a lot. Ohio does not do beautiful, or even pretty. Bangle’s cars would not look out of place at the Ohio State Fair with the 250 lbs girls wearing far to little ill-fitting clothing.
From Bangle Butts to the soon to be released Van Badonkadonk.
Nobody will ever look at a car’s rear end the same ever again.
Bangle merely captured the go-go, quickrich, de-regulated early 00s zeitgeist. And now, with the good times gone, at least for now, it’s time for BMW to return to a more restrained, conservative, fly-under-the-radar design theme. In other words, their old design theme.
Or, alternately described as the J Mays school of uber-understatement.
I Like Chris Bangle.
I said it. I am on my 2nd e38, my brother just got an e39 on my advice. But I would much rather be in an older e65, because they look better (just the mechanical gremlins keeping me out, not Bangle’s fault.) The 38 is a classic design – re: Old. I like the Z4, because it is fun to drive, and looks like something other than a toy car (MX-5) or a Gel Cap (350z).
I get a chance to compare Bangle and pre-Bangle BMW every day, looking at my wife’s E39 parked beside my E60 in the garage. As someone else said, the E39 was in many ways the culmination of BMW sedan design, it was a great example of form following function. It has no gimmicks, just a great, clean design, no doubt about that! But, the E60 has more than one redeeming feature. While the E39 may look a bit tallish, especially from behind, the E60 is seriously planted, with the wheels pushed well out into the wheel openings. I concur with those who said the E60 looked very strange when it first appeared, it actually took at least 2 or 3 years until I grudgingly accepted the design, and now I really think it has (what some people call) presence. There is now only one detail I’ll never forgive Mr. B. for creating, and that is the tapered cutout for the trunklid. As the cut follows the slope of the rear window, I am never sure whether the car has a trunk, or if it is sliced off. I keep dreaming of having some metal wizard re-do this for me; fill in the cut and cut the trunklid opening on top! It’ll never happen, but dreams are free.
@RF
You might want to see a nationally-known neurologist to definitively diagnose your idiopathic instances of alliterative articulations.
“Though more common than the Bangle-Butt, what new car hasn’t some sort of “flamed surface” character crease….”
Porsche.
What some have called “laziness” on the part of Porsche’s designers, I have always seen as a healthy resistance to trendiness and fadishness, and a kind of quiet courage in seeking continuity through over 40 years in a car’s basic design “language.”
It’s exactly why 997 911s still look relevant and beautiful, and why all these re-birthed Challengers, Mustangs, T-Birds, Chargers, Camaros, et al, are gross, desperate quotations of cars whose essential designs were ceased not long after their 40 year old births.
It’s also why the current generation BMWs have spent so much energy thrashing around like a dying fish in the thin air of Bangle’s design world, looking for something that sticks, and feels continuous with BMW’s history. It seems every single year recently the tail lights and back end of the 3 series finds itself re-designed. It’s like multiple personality disorder.
I want to love current BMWs so much. I want to drive one again, as I did once over twenty years ago (2002, and 325). But these cars feel sterile and dead.
It will be very interesting to see how the Bangle era cars look to us in twenty or thirty years. Inspired revolution? Or horribly dated symbol of the 2000 oughts? We’ll see.
“Today’s BMWs are fat and overwrought”
Too true. As are most other new cars.
Design aside, weight and girth have become the cancer of cars, at least inasmuch as we’re talking about things like Ultimate Driving Machines and so forth.
Remember what it was like to drive a 2002? An early 911? A Lotus? That experience is utterly lost to current drivers, and I’m sorry for anyone young enough to have never experienced a sporting car built with sporting weights.
I will not miss Bangles butt ugly slab sided BMW’s one bit. He took what was once a pretty decent looking car design, grafted on that controversial butt, overbloated the look and also mixed in Asian dull plainess into some of the most forgettable designs that are being copied everywhere. Maybe BMW can now make a better looking design so the other clueless designers of today can have better things to copy! This decade is going to be rememebred as the all time low point of styling and design for a long time. I also have to laugh at all the omissions on todays cars. Yes America while you have been sleeping these idiot car manufacturers have quietly been taking a knife to each new car line removing those glovebox lights, trunk and passenger key cylinders, floor well interior lights, rear map pockets, rear seat center armrests, bodyside moldings, underhood lights, ashtrays and cigarette lighters, interior color choices other than charcoal tan or gray and plenty more of those little things we used to get as std equipment.
Bangle’s designs always grew on me nicely, suggesting he might be a leader, somewhat ahead of his time.
The biggest exception is the version of the 1 Series that they sent to the States. I love the look of the 1 Series hatchback that I’ve seen elsewhere in the world. Sigh. Sometimes companies snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Does this mean there’s a chance BMWs will become lean again? And that they’ll stop looking like Japanese cars?
Interesting.
Fundamental Attribution Error – Attributing BMW’s sales success to Bangle’s designs. The Roundel drove sales success, despite the design and iDrive – not because of them.
I’ve never grown to love Bangle BMWs, but before him, BMWs were a little too ‘white bread’ for me. Some years the Accord had more flair than the 3 series.
If it hadn’t been for Bangle, would we have all been crying about how ‘boring BMW design’ let the brand dwindle?
In contrast to many of you, I find the current 5 series to be the best looking of the Bangles.
“I want to love current BMWs so much. I want to drive one again, as I did once over twenty years ago (2002, and 325). But these cars feel sterile and dead.”
How is BMW different from any other car company? Cars have been refined across the board. Even porsche. Compare a 997 to an 80’s 911. Even porsche, the purist brand, looks bloated by comparison. Sure older cars have “soul” and “character”. Thats only because no two of them were alike due to vastly inferior manufacturing and quality control. I would love to own a 2002 to work on and look at on sunny days but for a car I actually have to use it’ll be an e92.
Am I the only one who finds the casual use of platform designations, e.g. E39, E36, E46, E60, for BMW’s to be code for “I’m a BMW fan and know inside baseball”? While other manufacturers’ platform designations get mentioned (like Ford’s Panther or GM’s disastrous W bodies), they’re nothing like how frequently people refer to the various vintages of BMWs.
Ronnie Schreiber wrote
Because BMW recycles its model numbers (e.g. 325i, 530i, etc.), the use of the E-series designator is often necessary.
A 1986 325i (E30) is a very different car from a 2003 325i (E46).
Thankfully, there is handy guide on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:BMW_platforms
upmarket blingfest
How so true…
Own a pre-facelift 2K e46 325Ci, bought new. I still like its appearance and simple interface. Reminds me of a current Jessica Simpson… bloated but we know we would not mind being caught inside one too much.
However all the stuff created under the frame-surfaced administration of corn-fed Bangle reminds me a certain Joan Rivers.. while some of his worst atrocities brings to mind pictures of Donatella Versace’s face.
As the previous owner of a few BMWs, my dislike of the current offerings from Munich has more to do with their engineering decisions than Chris Bangle’s designs. Sure the current 3 and 5 series are a mess but it’s BMW insistence on run flat tires and electric power steering as well as the aforementioned iDrive that keep me away from the BMW dealership. Then there are WTF decisions like the X6 and an M version of the X5 that have me wondering what if BMW management have collectively lost their minds.
I won’t deny that Bangle was a successful designer. He created a whole new design trend, and possibly attracted new customers to BMW.
Objectively, though, Bangle’s designs are ugly abominations, as are those of his immitators. Time will not be kind to cars of this era.