Chris Harris: “We Were All Wrong, Chris Bangle Was A Prophet”

Chris Harris writes an insightful article on BMW’s former chief of design, Chris Bangle, and gives some compelling reasons why he is one of the best designers in the history of the automotive industry.

At the time, or at least in the build-up to that evening, I thought Chris Bangle was at best a madman, at worst a criminal. He’d taken the finest mainstream design language of them all — the demure yet purposeful BMW saloon — and sodomized it with a special brutality. When we saw the E65 7 Series we could barely contain the contents of our stomachs. He parried the criticism by insisting that BMW needed a new direction and that only a complete schism with the past would provide suitable change. So he went bat-shit-crazy with the Seven. Which looked terrible in 2001. And which now, especially the facelifted model, so-help-me-Lord, looks pretty damn good to my eyes.

The Houdinery deepened with the 2003 E60 5-Series. Born with a face for radio, I thought it was a crime against Bavaria – gone was the Hoffmeister kink, gone was the driver-slanted centre console, gone was all the BMW DNA; incoming was ‘flame surfacing.’ I interviewed Burkhard Göschel just weeks before he left the company and he laughed demonically about the situation: “What do you think of our flame surfacing, hohoho-hahahahaHAHAHAHA.” he asked, shaking his head in mock disapproval — his not knowing what to think confusing me into not knowing what to think either.

There are some brilliant stories about Bangle’s legendary ability to create an evangelical following among his staff and team – perhaps even the board of BMW. Go and look at a first generation Bangle-BMW Z4, then spy the previous Z3 and tell me how the hell he managed to get that past the suits. He must have spiked a few drinks. Like so many Bangle shapes, it’s looking really quite good now. My favourite completely non-verified tale involves the sign-off for the E63 6-Series. It is alleged that several different design proposals were considered and after some tantric downtime in a green spot, he randomly chose the one we have now. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I sincerely hope it is. Guess what? The E63 6-Series is looking very cool these days. Especially as an M6

A BMW board member as perplexed by BMW’s design language as the rest of the planet in 2004.

Read full article at Jalopnik