Passed by a new M5 today
Discussion
Saw my first new M5 in the flesh today as it passed by me on the A2 into london.
I have to say first impression you think, would be nice to find out what 500bhp felt like, although when he passed the impression I was left with was, which twonker designed the rear end of that car to look like a poor version of a megan.
For some reason I couldn't get my head round, the rear end on the back of the M5 looked worse than a normal five series.
Is it different to a normal five series?
I have to say first impression you think, would be nice to find out what 500bhp felt like, although when he passed the impression I was left with was, which twonker designed the rear end of that car to look like a poor version of a megan.
For some reason I couldn't get my head round, the rear end on the back of the M5 looked worse than a normal five series.
Is it different to a normal five series?
los angeles said:
I'll pick up this one; car design is my hobbyhorse.
I agree with your impressions. It's a contrarian design philosophy. It is not cohesive. The boot is a good example of the awkwardness that results in applying a single idea onto various shapes and planes, and onto all models, sports cars, saloons, and SUVs. The boot design looks as if lifted from a basket hamper attached to a veteran car. The shut line has a number of planes, turns and angles it has to negotiate, but on BMWs each alteration of line causes severe alterations in gap widths: it meets the body work at the rear of the window, gets wider across the flanks, and sticks up over the rear lights because metal over plastic doesn't work. In other words, the line is not uniformly resolved on all its length.
The headlights make no sense either. They are a collection of novelty jewelery. It is interesting to note that the famous kidney grille, the icon of BMW, together with the flick-forward return line of rear side windows, is an icon that, by management decree, is sacrosanct, it cannot be altered except for size, we rarely hear criticism that those aspects have been fugli-ised.
Invariably, a car designed by Chris Bangle is ill-proportioned.
To my mind, the new BMW cars are collisions of opposing lines and shapes, their volume at odds in relation to the next shape, as if the designer has studied a Picasso abstract portrait, the kind that has both eyes on one side of the face. By throwing the car's surfaces at all angles on the same plane, the designer seeks refraction of the light to make interest. By jettisoning previously held design rules, he or she (there is a team) hopes to achieve some tension, like a Japanese garden path in which every stepping stone is square but one suddenly appears oblong, set in the earth at a weird angle. However, in this instance the automotive designer forgets that a painting and a path are inanimate objects, something fixed. A car is a three-dimensional object that moves. A sports car or saloon is meant to offer an image of speed even when standing still. The current crop of BMWs are at odds with that philosophy.
There are stylists, designers, and there are gifted engineers who design. The great Malcolm Sayer of Jaguar fame is one such engineer-designer. He had the true artist in him. (He claimed to work with mathematics and aerodynamics, not arty-farty theories.) And he tested the cars he designed. His hands were ingrained with engine grease, not perfectly manicured for holding pencils.
Chris Bangle, chief of BMW design is, in my view, a stylist. What he does is no different from what the stylists of Renault do, except with less success. He creates the latest BMW fashionable look. He may justify his philophy with all sorts of plausable theories but in the end it just does not work. A real artist would abandon that path for like Jackson Pollock, Bangle's work is a dead-end. You cannot develop it anywhere. Indeed, there are signs others are removing its most extreme aspects. (All of Pollocks contemporaries developed their work in other directions. Pollock killed himself with booze and a car crash.)
I am sure Bangle - a charming, articulate, dedicated man - thinks he is breaking with tradition, the mold, the rules, creating works in progress, but in fact what we see is what we get, a car designed by a group of stylists signed-off by Bangle, the proverbial camel created by a committee. I have it on good authority (ie: from other eminent stylists) that he enters the design studio last, when the vehicle is all but complete and adds those clumsy slashes and lines! Now car hacks boast other stylists are following his lead - groan! - well, such folk used to be called lemmings.
You and I know that the great car designers followed their instincts because they were talented, stubborn sods, not fashionists. Who knows, perhaps Bangle's philosophy will coalesce into an harmonious design ... one day. That is why, when arguing for and against aspects of contemporary automotive design, I usually end by quoting the great Scottish architect, designer and artist, Charles Rennie MacIntosh:
" There is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist."
LA
>> Edited by los angeles on Friday 3rd March 18:30
Great post, I'm constantly impressed by the quality of some posts on PH.
Edited to add, I'm not a fan of the new 5 series' looks but the bigger haunches and alloys of the M car add some needed solidity and (for lack of a better word) 'butch' to the car's stance IMO.
>> Edited by s3am on Friday 3rd March 19:20
andysv said:
does any one else think this? the first time i saw the new small lexus i thought that's how the 3 and 5 should have looked. it's got a similar style but looks right.
Dunno. Thought it looked OK in the magazines. But, have seen a few on the road now and think it looks a bit awkward from some angles. Having said that, the ones I have seen look like lower end models which could have done with larger alloys. That can make all the difference. So I'll withhold judgement for now.
>> Edited by disad-vantage-d on Friday 3rd March 21:29
>> Edited by disad-vantage-d on Friday 3rd March 21:30
s3am said:
I agree with your impressions. It's a contrarian design philosophy. It is not cohesive. The boot is a good example of the awkwardness that results in applying a single idea onto various shapes and planes, and onto all models, sports cars, saloons, and SUVs. The boot design looks as if lifted from a basket hamper attached to a veteran car. The shut line has a number of planes, turns and angles it has to negotiate, but on BMWs each alteration of line causes severe alterations in gap widths: it meets the body work at the rear of the window, gets wider across the flanks, and sticks up over the rear lights because metal over plastic doesn't work. In other words, the line is not uniformly resolved on all its length.
The headlights make no sense either. They are a collection of novelty jewelery. It is interesting to note that the famous kidney grille, the icon of BMW, together with the flick-forward return line of rear side windows, is an icon that, by management decree, is sacrosanct, it cannot be altered except for size, we rarely hear criticism that those aspects have been fugli-ised.
Invariably, a car designed by Chris Bangle is ill-proportioned.
To my mind, the new BMW cars are collisions of opposing lines and shapes, their volume at odds in relation to the next shape, as if the designer has studied a Picasso abstract portrait, the kind that has both eyes on one side of the face. By throwing the car's surfaces at all angles on the same plane, the designer seeks refraction of the light to make interest. By jettisoning previously held design rules, he or she (there is a team) hopes to achieve some tension, like a Japanese garden path in which every stepping stone is square but one suddenly appears oblong, set in the earth at a weird angle. However, in this instance the automotive designer forgets that a painting and a path are inanimate objects, something fixed. A car is a three-dimensional object that moves. A sports car or saloon is meant to offer an image of speed even when standing still. The current crop of BMWs are at odds with that philosophy.
There are stylists, designers, and there are gifted engineers who design. The great Malcolm Sayer of Jaguar fame is one such engineer-designer. He had the true artist in him. (He claimed to work with mathematics and aerodynamics, not arty-farty theories.) And he tested the cars he designed. His hands were ingrained with engine grease, not perfectly manicured for holding pencils.
Chris Bangle, chief of BMW design is, in my view, a stylist. What he does is no different from what the stylists of Renault do, except with less success. He creates the latest BMW fashionable look. He may justify his philophy with all sorts of plausable theories but in the end it just does not work. A real artist would abandon that path for like Jackson Pollock, Bangle's work is a dead-end. You cannot develop it anywhere. Indeed, there are signs others are removing its most extreme aspects. (All of Pollocks contemporaries developed their work in other directions. Pollock killed himself with booze and a car crash.)
I am sure Bangle - a charming, articulate, dedicated man - thinks he is breaking with tradition, the mold, the rules, creating works in progress, but in fact what we see is what we get, a car designed by a group of stylists signed-off by Bangle, the proverbial camel created by a committee. I have it on good authority (ie: from other eminent stylists) that he enters the design studio last, when the vehicle is all but complete and adds those clumsy slashes and lines! Now car hacks boast other stylists are following his lead - groan! - well, such folk used to be called lemmings.
You and I know that the great car designers followed their instincts because they were talented, stubborn sods, not fashionists. Who knows, perhaps Bangle's philosophy will coalesce into an harmonious design ... one day. That is why, when arguing for and against aspects of contemporary automotive design, I usually end by quoting the great Scottish architect, designer and artist, Charles Rennie MacIntosh:
" There is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist."
LA
>> Edited by los angeles on Friday 3rd March 18:30
Great post, I'm constantly impressed by the quality of some posts on PH.
Edited to add, I'm not a fan of the new 5 series' looks but the bigger haunches and alloys of the M car add some needed solidity and (for lack of a better word) 'butch' to the car's stance IMO.
>> Edited by s3am on Friday 3rd March 19:20
Great post LA, a pleasure to read it.
As an Architect, rather than a stylist, couldn't agree more.
mondeoman said:It's funny how different people perceuive things. THe E39 now looks very dated to me.
I don't know the details behind the theory, I just think they look shite.
The 3 series is a Honda / Renault / Ford / Toyota missmash pile of poo and the 5 hasn't grown on me at all .
The E39 is a much better shape.
Zod said:
I don't know the details behind the theory, I just think they look shite.
The 3 series is a Honda / Renault / Ford / Toyota missmash pile of poo and the 5 hasn't grown on me at all .
The E39 is a much better shape.
As an E39 driver, I can agree with that. Everything gets dated - the problem is that the newer cars just look awful.
It doesn't really matter though because new design is automatically percieved as worse but inevitable.
Too many designers want to put a stamp on a design and don't understand that function has its own design, which has little to do with an artistic flare. The best you can say about car designers is that less is generally better.
If you don't believe that go for a trawl of military equipment. Some of it is really very pretty but hopefully no money was spent on artistic design.
Too many designers want to put a stamp on a design and don't understand that function has its own design, which has little to do with an artistic flare. The best you can say about car designers is that less is generally better.
If you don't believe that go for a trawl of military equipment. Some of it is really very pretty but hopefully no money was spent on artistic design.
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