Patrick Le Quement and Chris Bangle: Style Masters Or Disasters?

[IBrake4Rainbows]

Both of these two designers, one working for renault, the other for BMW, are both making waves in the car styling world. Bangle by creating more differentiation of the BMW style ideas: you need only look at the E65 7-Series and Z4 for proof of that. And Le-Quement by moving bog-standard renaults such as the Megane/Megane Scenic into trend-setting family cars. And his luxury Vel Satis and Avantime have also raised eyebrows due to there van-like proportions. What are your thoughts on these matters? are they bungling up the Image of there respective car companies or are they paving the way for more interesting designs in the future? your call.

[hotflank]

hopefully for the good of cars, it's called contervirsail styling

[Egg Nog]

In most cases, "controversial styling" is otherwise known as "ugly car"...

I don't mind the new 7 or the Z4 too much, but I'm not too happy about the new 5-series (especially the rear end). He's managed to take a design with a lot of potential and change exactly what was right about it before.

[IBrake4Rainbows]

what i'm trying to do here is to draw a line as to where people think ugly begins and controversial stops. So far it's been pretty blurry and whats good in some eyes is trash in others.

[hotflank]

erm....no?

[motorhead]

what you mean controversial styling means ugly car. thats the worst theory i have ever heard. have you seen the ford GT90, Gt40 and the vette c3. they are all controversial stylings but all looks absolutely fantastic. basically i can call those two designers something, brave very brave

[Egg Nog]

Originally posted by motorhead
have you seen the ford GT90, Gt40 and the vette c3. they are all controversial stylings but all looks absolutely fantastic. basically i can call those two designers something, brave very brave

I completely agree. Hence, as I said "in most cases", they would qualify as one of the ones which I don't consider ugly. Also note how I said I liked the looks of the new 7 series and Z4, both cars that are considered to have controversial styling.

[kinan.f]

I can't think of controversial styling as beautiful.Take a look at the Fiat Multipla presented years ago.It definetly was ugly but it got many rewards for its practicality(six people on two seats) with small outer dimensions..

What I'm sure about is that new Renaults & BMWs are not that ugly!!
http://www.bergasramos.com/images/Fiat%20Multipla.jpg

[motorhead]

people do not buy cars because of looks alone. take the new 5 series, no the z4. it looks strange to some and very good looking to the other set of people but have you driven it. this is the thing with bmws. "their cars may looks like crap(well not to me)but dynamically they will blow you away. they are so nice to drive that you basically forget about the styling" and that was my fathers friends words but he drives an alfa 156(LOL)

[Egg Nog]

Originally posted by motorhead
people do not buy cars because of looks alone. take the new 5 series, no the z4. it looks strange to some and very good looking to the other set of people but have you driven it. this is the thing with bmws. "their cars may looks like crap(well not to me)but dynamically they will blow you away. they are so nice to drive that you basically forget about the styling" and that was my fathers friends words but he drives an alfa 156(LOL)

Thank you for making a great argument. I do not doubt by any means that the 5 series will be an amazing machine. I don't really find it ugly, but I think that it has more potential to look good based on viewing the new version. Tweaked rear end and shortened headlings would make it stunningly beautiful. Just for the record, I'm not at all saying that cars that I find ugly are "bad" cars. I just happed to find them ugly :)

Thanks for listening...

[henk4]

of course everybody in this thread is concentrating on BMW, but I guess in case of Renault, the market has already spoken resulting in the early demise of the Avantime after less 5000 cars were sold. I doubt whether the Vel Satis is a great success, and I haven't heard anything about prolific sales figures for the Megane. These cars are controversial because of their rear window styling, which reminds me of the Ford Anglia, the Citroen Ami6 and some Mercury from the sixties which had an inclined rear window, which also failed to make a lasting impression, although it may come as a surprise to some that the Ami was during a number of years the best selling car in France.

I agree that BMW's could be great cars if in the right hands. Unfortunately a number of BMW drivers tend to spoil the image of the car but serious aggressive driving and speeding in places where this absolutely makes no sense.

[cro]

take alfa romeo- none of their cars look like anything else-- all their designs are fairly controversial and original and different but they are all beautiful. You have cars like an audi that people say are beautiful but really any carmaker can do one the same. not many car makers can make a car like an a.r. and thats why they are so good lookin- the 156, 147, gtv, spider, brera, kamal, 166, 156 SportWagon even the 146 and 155 are good looking cars. So you can still be controversial but create a car that is simply beautiful. Chris Bangle and Partrik le Quement are trying to do what alfa is doing by making originally beautiful cars- Bangle is just making cars that are difficult to look at (i get the impression this is done intentionally to creat intimidation) and Patrik le Quement is just doing something that people invisage as the car of the future (but is just a fantasy because the future ain't gonna be all space ships- not yet anyway).They just can't do it like alfa!