In Oliver Heilmer, BMW Group’s Mini brand will finally have a design chief after being rudderless for much of the last year.

Anders Warming, Heilmer’s predecessor, resigned the post last summer. The 42-year-old Heilmer, who makes his way up the corporate ladder from BMW Designworks in California, won’t actually undertake his new role until September.

“With his design expertise and experience, Oliver Heilmer combines continuity with the freshness and vision Mini stands for,” Adrian van Hooydonk, head of BMW Group Design, said in BMW’s official statement. In other words, Heilmer is both an insider, as part of BMW Group Design for 17 years, but also an outsider, as the BMW Designworks boss who previously held a post in interior design at the BMW brand.

Regardless, Heilmer has his work cut out for him. In the hugely important U.S. market, Mini sales in 2016 fell to a six-year low, and sales are declining further in 2017. (Read More…)

This week, BMW Group proudly announced that its Designworks styling subsidiary had recently been honored with numerous awards… for its John Deere bulldozers. I had no idea that BMW had any ties — indirect or otherwise —with Deere & Company, let alone that they were absolutely killing it with some of the sexiest designed construction and forestry equipment on the planet.

However, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the flash-masters at Lamborghini started off building tractors and just about every major manufacturer has tried its hand in aviation, industrial equipment, military vehicles, or some combination of the three. Some of even started there. What makes BMW’s involvement with Deere stand out, however, is how much pride the company is taking in the accolades it received for the heavy machinery, even as the Group’s automotive sales took a nosedive last year.  (Read More…)