Here’s what I’m not going to do: I’m not going to assert that the cars are attractive or explain why they look good or bad. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the cars certainly have a few admirers. That said, my personal feeling is that the cars are hideous. Absolutely ghastly and a massacre of BMW’s, nay, Germany’s styling traditions. There are many ways to push the envelope stylistically, be progressive, and Bangle’s methodology is not it for everyone.
That said, I admire the guy and have what I think is a plausible theory for why the cars look they way they do. I’m an industrial designer by degree and I know that at the professional level car stylists operate, there are reasons behind almost every design decision. Styling and design may seem arbitrary, nebulous and terribly subjective to the outsider, but one of the fundamentals of design theory is to have a reason, a tie, behind as much of the design as is possible; something beyond “It just looks good.” Styling isn’t purely art, and it’s not purely engineering; it’s a combination, and it can be understood and reasoned with, not fully, but to a much greater degree than is commonly thought.
What does this mean in practical terms? It means that in all good designs, the lines were drawn, sculpted and placed where they were for a purpose, whether that purpose is more on the functional (Ford GT40) or aesthetic (Series 1 E-Type) end of the spectrum. A well-styled car’s lines communicate something, and that’s the reason we can attach adjectives to a car when viewing it like “fast” for a Maserati Ghibli, “feminine” for a Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso (or conversely, “masculine” for a BMW 850 CSi), “capable” for a Hummer H1 or “stately” for a Rolls-Royce Camargue.
So with that established, we can introduce another premise: Since Bangle has been hired and supported by as prestigious a company as BMW, it’s because they believe he’s a good designer. And since the vast majority of good designers operate to some degree on a more rational, conscious level than pure intuition (the “it just looks good” level) we can infer that Bangle probably has certain thought-out reasons for making the cars look the way they do.
So why do the cars look the way they do? What is Bangle thinking, and what, if anything does he want the cars’ looks to communicate about them? The reasons are especially hard to infer when dealing with cars whose aesthetic qualities (read: ugliness) are difficult to look beyond, with the goal of speculating about them on a more objective level, but they’re there. The primary reason may seem far-fetched, but I think it holds water. It’s best illustrated by drawing a connection between 19th century art history and Bangle’s recent efforts in the realm of car styling.
German styling has traditionally relied on proportion above all else. This means the cars weren’t necessarily flashy, but instead garnered adjectives like “understated,” “classy” or “conservative.” We almost didn’t process the styling elements of the car on a conscious level, we just knew the car “looked good.” The design of the typical German car didn’t stand out, but was functional, efficient, neatly packaged and confident.
And there was something immensely appealing about that, even if we may not have even realized there was a styling process present in the cars’ creation. You see, design is like art in that there are two elements to it—the process and the product. In a painting, for example, these would be the act of creating the painting itself (the technique, paint, movement, studio, subject, circumstances, emotions), and the piece itself, the finished expression. Traditionally, in German cars (pick any BMW, M-B or Audi from the ’80s) and in cars in general to a lesser degree, all we saw was the product. For all we knew the cars’ styling sprang fully-formed from the drawing boards, and the cars looked that way too because of the deliberate confidence of their lines. We only saw the finished expression. German styling at this point was analogous to artwork of the early 19th century–the ideal was the power of the finished product. The smaller and less obvious the brushstrokes the better. More photorealism, more rigid compositions, more structure. And the best paintings of that era certainly have an appeal, both aesthetic and intellectual.
But then the Impressionist movement came along in the mid/late 1800s. All of a sudden we noticed the process behind the product. We saw the brushstrokes; the artists wore their technique on their sleeves. Seurat’s main appeal was his Pointillist technique. Van Gogh’s brush strokes were integral to his artwork. And at the time, many people thought the paintings were aberrations, grotesque, hideous—but the movement revolutionized art.
This, I believe, touches on the reasons behind Bangle’s styling decisions. The lines may seem arbitrary, yes, but we finally notice that the cars are styled, for better or for worse. Basic design “building blocks” of the cars stand out like the trunk on the 6-series or the flanks of the Z4. We may not like the way the cars look, but we have to admit that our perceptions of the process have changed, even if it’s the simple act of noticing there is a process in the first place. It’s almost as if we can see the “brushstrokes” still present in the styling. Simply put, “Bangle-ism” is Impressionism for cars.
Take it or leave it, but think about it the next time a 7-series drives by or you read an article about an M6 in a magazine.
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Small sidebar: The recent attempts to “scale back” Bangle influence (read: E90 and 7-series restyle) and incorporate more traditional BMW styling themes are not a move in the right direction. I’ve always been of the opinion that if you adhere to a design philosophy, adhere to it fully, and the resultant “hybrid” styling creations have none of the intellectual appeal of Bangle’s initial, unencumbered work or the intellectual and aesthetic appeal of the traditional BMW look. They’re not hot or cold but lukewarm in terms of their styling loyalties but represent inferior styling efforts to Bangle’s more radical work.
Originally posted here.