Chris Bangle: Love Him, or Hate Him

[carlover]

Only a few of Chris Bangles designs are good. Actuelly only 1, the 6 series. That car looks nice but every other car is horrible.

[GT500]

meh....I don't liek any of his ideas at all. Basically he just killed BMW imo. However, his designs do appear to be taking a turn for teh better.....

[Batmobile_Turbo]

Originally Posted by mechanixfetch

I think that the current BMWs are without a shadow of a doubt the worst BMW designs ever made. Chris Bangle deserves to be fired and Hired by some tiny company where he can spend the rest of his career redesigning the Yugo.

hate him only because of his bad designes for BMWs. however he is good at designing, but his designes don't fit with BMW. i saw the 6 series in person, and it is much better looking in real life, but still uglyish.

[IBrake4Rainbows]

Bangle, i'm sorry to say, is just a persona. He talks the talk, about creating a new emotive design language for BMW, no more cookie cutter cars. and in that sense he has suceeded, no two BMW's look the same, which is a good thing. the bad thing is that they all look ugly. some marginally less so than others, the new 1, i'm sorry to say, could only be classed in the interesting box. while the 6-convertable has a fantastic roof, the boot still irks me, and sit's uncomfortably with the rest of the car, which is in fact a nice shape.

Now i know i'm going against common opinion here, and i know he isn't responsible for designing all of these cars, but being the persona that he is, he would have to had influenced it.

he has suceeded at making BMW look different, but where can they possibly go from here with the design, they'll just do the same as they did before and refine the design ad nauseum, until finally we will have ugly cookie cutter mobiles. Surely this is not the way......

[Falcon500]

Cant you just leave the poor bastard alone?...jesus christ....

[mechanixfetch]

For the design crimes he has comitted against a beautiful car company he deserves to be anonomusly (sp?) picked on by internet car lovers.

[Spastik_Roach]

I like all the designs, especially the new M5, looks brilliant. I saw some computer generated pics of the new BMW M3 and M4(Car To replace M3, the new M3 is to be Sedan and Wagon, M4 is Coupe) and they all look great aswell. But the 6 series is a bit of a let down in design in some places.

[aaronius25]

bmw's today aren't what they used to be. the last generation 7 series was the best looking large luxury sedan on the market - it was luxurious inside and had a sleek and aggressive exterior. The new 7 looks just like every other large luxury sedan today. They are all really big and tall and, as someone stated earlier, they look inspired by Jennifer Lopez.
The 6 looks good from the front and from a front-side angle, but the back is also very ugly looking, it doesn't look at all like a BMW from behind. It also doesn't drive like one, it has this automated drive control thing and it acts as if the car, rather than the driver, is driving itself.
The 5 has some good features; I like how it looks very sculpted, definitely very unique. But once again I don't like the back of the car. The front headlights could use a little work.
The current 3 series, is, and will forever be, a classic. It drives better than any other 4/5 passenge sedan/coupe on the market except those that are twice its cost. It's one of the most visually appealing cars.
iDrive should be made OPTIONAL because I know that a lot of people hate it and don't buy BMW's because of it.
Basically everything that Chris Bangle did has ruined BMW - he's turning it into a brand like Lexus. He's making the brand into the car that people buy just to show their wealth, not to enjoy driving. There are some good ideas at BMW but if the company keeps going in the direction that it is going then it will turn into a company that is no longer founded upon the premise that it's the "ultimate driving machine."

[Coventrysucks]

Originally Posted by aaronius25

The new 7 looks just like every other large luxury sedan today.

Hmmm.

Originally Posted by aaronius25

The current 3 series, is, and will forever be, a classic. It drives better than any other 4/5 passenge sedan/coupe on the market except those that are twice its cost. It's one of the most visually appealing cars.

A Bangle design...

Originally Posted by aaronius25

Basically everything that Chris Bangle did has ruined BMW - he's turning it into a brand like Lexus. He's making the brand into the car that people buy just to show their wealth

Ok.
Chris Bangle is in charge of DESIGN
Show me a car company run by the design department.
The people who signed off on the designs are the ones responsible, not Bangle.
If the top BMW bosses didn't like what he was doing they could easily have said: "No, this isn't right" and replaced him.
But they didn't.

In other news, people were considering BMW as a statement of wealth long before Bangle came along.
You can't tell me the millions of E36 3 series, and E39 5 Series owners bought the car on its driving prowess alone?
Especially all the saps who bought poverty spec 316's, which didn't even come with a stereo as standard, just so that they could say "I own a new BMW"

[lithuanianmafia]

well, simply put, at first I didn't like bangle's designs, but now I've grown to appreciate them, especially the new 6-series and M5

[IBrake4Rainbows]

Just a little fact for you guys.

the E46 3-series was designed about 1994, or pretty early on into bangles tenure.

Secondly, Claus Luthe, the previous BMW design boss, was the major hand in shaping the E39 5 Series. in about 1991/2, just before his untimely exit from the post. Claus Luthe was a man who was, put simply, really good at designing classy cars. the NSU RO 80, E30 3 Series and E36 were all his designs, he carefully moulded BMW design into one of the most desirable images in the Car world. It's pretty tragic what happened to him.

thirdly, Bangle is also responsible for the Z8 (A universally liked car around these parts, i've noticed) and the Z3, both nice looking cars.

BMW is now a family car brand, in danger of Overexposure. just remember, brands like Rover were some that people used to be proud of owning, now look at them.......

Oh, and for you point, CovSucks, name a car company run by the design department: Renault comes pretty close. Le Quement reports Straight to Schweitzer, and so his designs are really the backbone of the company.