Excerpts from interview from Channel 4
Chris Bangle, director of design for the BMW group, is probably the most controversial car designer currently working in the industry.
Indeed, such was the ire generated by the radical "flame surfacing" - a term Bangle coined to describe a surfacing technique that allowed light to be reflected differently off the metal - on the 5-Series that an online petition was started to try and get him fired from BMW.
4Car: So in the BMW cycle of revolution and evolution, where would you say you are at the moment?
Chris Bangle: Well, if you follow the historical precedents, we are concluding a more revolutionary phase and going into a phase where things are more progressively understood. We don't like the word evolution anyway, but it's more a continuum of progression, rather than a large step.
4Car: If cars are emotionally relevant, does that make the controversy surrounding recent BMW designs inevitable and if so, how do you deal with some of the more pointed criticism?
Chris Bangle: I like the idea that cars are emotionally relevant. I would argue that when there is no emotion from you, then the focus is going to be on the people who are raising the blood pressure.
Sometimes I think that maybe, in absolute terms, what BMW design has been doing in the last couple of years might not be as radical or as shocking as the media would like to paint it. It is just, in relative terms, finally somebody moved on.
There's also a feeling that the whole industry got a little bit energised by what we're doing and that feels good. I get a great deal of positive feedback on that.
4Car: So what would you say is your favourite car or project that you've been responsible for the design of at BMW?
Chris Bangle: My favourite? That's like asking a parent which is their favourite kid.
Some projects that you would think are an absolute dream, actually go so simple and so clean that you just have a nice warm glow from it. But you don't conjure up great war stories and wonderful escapades that somehow colour your memories, like you do on the projects which turned out to be maybe less spectacular, from a customer point of view, but internally required a lot more, as the Germans would say, jumping over our shadows.
So when I think about the progression that we made on the 5-Series, for instance, the E60 was a project which required huge breakthroughs for us in understanding design language, to be able to put these types of surfaces into a very classic car concept.
Z4 marked a turning point in car design, says Bangle
I think that we were super-successful, but that was a really tough and exciting project.
And when I look at some of the cars that we're doing, like the Z4, like the 5-Series, they stand out because they marked a turning point in car design away from pure rationalism into rationalism-based emotionalism.
The cars aren't any less usable - in fact, they're even more functional - but they have an enormously high emotional content. I think BMW design has turned that corner and since we turned that corner, a whole lot of other people have decided they want to take that corner too.
Chris Bangle, director of design for the BMW group, is probably the most controversial car designer currently working in the industry.
Indeed, such was the ire generated by the radical "flame surfacing" - a term Bangle coined to describe a surfacing technique that allowed light to be reflected differently off the metal - on the 5-Series that an online petition was started to try and get him fired from BMW.
4Car: So in the BMW cycle of revolution and evolution, where would you say you are at the moment?
Chris Bangle: Well, if you follow the historical precedents, we are concluding a more revolutionary phase and going into a phase where things are more progressively understood. We don't like the word evolution anyway, but it's more a continuum of progression, rather than a large step.
4Car: If cars are emotionally relevant, does that make the controversy surrounding recent BMW designs inevitable and if so, how do you deal with some of the more pointed criticism?
Chris Bangle: I like the idea that cars are emotionally relevant. I would argue that when there is no emotion from you, then the focus is going to be on the people who are raising the blood pressure.
Sometimes I think that maybe, in absolute terms, what BMW design has been doing in the last couple of years might not be as radical or as shocking as the media would like to paint it. It is just, in relative terms, finally somebody moved on.
There's also a feeling that the whole industry got a little bit energised by what we're doing and that feels good. I get a great deal of positive feedback on that.
4Car: So what would you say is your favourite car or project that you've been responsible for the design of at BMW?
Chris Bangle: My favourite? That's like asking a parent which is their favourite kid.
Some projects that you would think are an absolute dream, actually go so simple and so clean that you just have a nice warm glow from it. But you don't conjure up great war stories and wonderful escapades that somehow colour your memories, like you do on the projects which turned out to be maybe less spectacular, from a customer point of view, but internally required a lot more, as the Germans would say, jumping over our shadows.
So when I think about the progression that we made on the 5-Series, for instance, the E60 was a project which required huge breakthroughs for us in understanding design language, to be able to put these types of surfaces into a very classic car concept.
Z4 marked a turning point in car design, says Bangle
I think that we were super-successful, but that was a really tough and exciting project.
And when I look at some of the cars that we're doing, like the Z4, like the 5-Series, they stand out because they marked a turning point in car design away from pure rationalism into rationalism-based emotionalism.
The cars aren't any less usable - in fact, they're even more functional - but they have an enormously high emotional content. I think BMW design has turned that corner and since we turned that corner, a whole lot of other people have decided they want to take that corner too.
