BMW Designers Have Lost Their Minds and We’re All Just Along for the Ride

There’s something terribly upsetting going on at BMW. We’ve gone from welcoming beautiful new models such as the G20 3 Series, G30 5 Series or the G05 X5 (just 5-6 years ago), to getting a temporary new design language (as seen on the G80 5 Series and now the all-new X3), to having no choice but to try and get used to their Neue Klasse models, which are coming as soon as 2026.

They’re running around designing different-looking cars left and right like chickens with their heads cut off. Whatever happened to brand identity? You can’t just cycle through three completely different design languages in the span of 6-7 years. It’s literally unheard of as far as the automotive industry is concerned.

Usually, you go through one design language shift once every six years or so, but ever since Elon Musk turned Tesla into the most valuable carmaker in the world, rival companies such as BMW and Mercedes have scrambled to replicate the EV-maker's success, by building a wide range of quirky and “electric-looking” cars of their own.

BMW already committed to this big time, to the point where there’s no turning back. We’ve seen the Vision Neue Klasse and Neue Klasse X concepts, and their own designers have spoken about how that’s pretty much what the production models are going to look like – at least from a design philosophy standpoint – the low shoulder line, massive windows, clean yet monolithic aesthetics... better get used to those.

This feels like the automotive equivalent of woke culture at its “finest”. It’s stubborn and new, and everything is being taken to its extreme because they’ve already committed to trying to keep up with Tesla. The problem is they’re doing this at the expense of their own identity, and if you think I’m exaggerating, just listen to what Mercedes’ VP of car engineering, Christoph Starzynski, had to say on the matter of future designs.

“We have had that comment, and we are taking this comment seriously,” he stated when asked whether or not Mercedes are ready to move away from the quirky teardrop styling of their EQ-brand models.

“Looking at the [design] language in the Concept CLA, and maybe looking a little bit more into the future, I think we can definitely see there’s going to be adoptions to that.” - keep in mind the Concept CLA is a lot more conventional-looking than the EQE or the EQS sedans.

He’s basically saying that future cars designed for optimal aerodynamics and driving range are on their way out, and that Mercedes could opt instead for a unified brand design, like the one they had before this whole EQ brand debacle. They would be right to do this, because people simply want a good-looking car that happens to be electric, not an electric car that doesn’t look good because the design team needed an extra 0.01 cd to boost aero efficiency and range.

Kudos to them for figuring this out. Unfortunately, it appears to be too late for BMW. They’ve gone all in on their Neue Klasse design language, which looks quirky and futuristic simply for the sake of it. I’ve seen multiple interviews in which BMW designers have failed to offer a proper justification for why they’ve decided to go this route. Their explanations were superficial at best.

I mean, you’ve got one design language for the 7 Series / i7, a whole different one for the new 5 Series and now the new X3, the XM doesn’t look like anything else from their current line up – and pretty soon, we’ll have an all-new 3 Series based on the Vision Neue Klasse concept, followed by a wide range of new SUV models based on the Vision Neue Klasse X. Again, totally different designs.

What happens next?

Frankly, I don’t know. I’m sure we’ll all get accustomed to their next-gen styling eventually, but I don’t think that a carmaker that held an identity that read “Ultimate Driving Machine” for several decades should mess with that – like at all.

Alas, they’re messing with it, and again, it’s all Elon Musk’s "fault", followed by BMW’s design people and whoever gave their ‘okay’ for this new direction. The good news is that if/when it all blows up in their face and sales begin to trail off, shareholders are going to be screaming for somebody’s head, and that’s when major changes tend to take place.

If that happens, their PR people will likely put out a statement about how they’ve decided to go back to their old identity, with cars that look predominantly dynamic, as opposed to monolithic (or “electric”, as I like to say). It’s basically what Mercedes are already doing.