|
You can say a lot about Bangle and his styling designs for BMW about 20 years ago, but what you cannot say is that those designs were copies of others. Those designs were copied by other manufacturers to this day -that Bangle "butt" is everywhere now.
Fast forward 20 years, and this BMW styling is based on everybody else's. All BMW styling trademarks are dumped for what cheaper brands are doing. While the major styling complaint is about the new grill size -from BMW styling history, nonetheless- the rest of these cars look like some other brand. Lexus, Nissan, Audi, Hyundai styles are in there. This has never happened before, a BMW looked like a BMW and that was it.
There must be change in styling to keep being relevant in this business, that is not the problem. The problem, IMO, is that BMW is going lazy with the styling. From a position of having one of the few brands with a well-defined personality, they want to go to the favorite look of the week thing, regardless if the styling says other brand. Which may be acceptable if you are selling mainstream, inexpensive cars -and even then, Hyundai is saying that is not acceptable even for an $18,000 Elantra- but a $100,000 BMW looking like a Hyundai with a BMW roundel is not a good styling job.
|