Monday, December 20, 2004 |
11:01 - Germany has lost its way
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The long-standing ascendancy of the German automakers has been based as much on a consistently excellent visual design sense, in the cases of all the major automakers, as on actual design and build quality. You could always count on a Mercedes to look like a Mercedes, or a BMW to be true to its square-jawed-with-a-cultured-accent shape. A VW was always unmistakable. But is that changing?
First we have this news of Audi of America CEO Axel Mees being fired for daring to suggest in an official capacity that VW has overreached its grasp into the luxury market in recent years with the Touareg and the Phaeton, both of which have been selling less well than hoped (much less well, in the case of the Phaeton), and both of which, according to Road & Track, suffer from a weird pathological problem of blurry, ripply windshield glass. And as I've noted before, the new Jetta and Golf/GTI designs are uninspired departures from all genetic VW roots. As for the rest of that corporate umbrella, Audi itself is doing well, and Porsche enjoys one of those charmed existences—but who can really claim to be happy with a turn of conditions that produced a Porsche SUV?
And now—via Chris M.—it seems that BMW is beginning to rethink the Bangle Revolution.
BMW has finally admitted what everyone in the car world has long known: the current 7-series is a disaster. In an interview with American business magazine Fortune, Helmut Panke, BMW's chairman, said: "I admit the intensity of the public debate over our new design (which began with the 7-series) did suprise me. There are still too many articles focusing on 'I wish this car looked different blah, blah, blah.' The 7-series was a combination of completely new technology with new design direction. The key point is that we should never make big steps in strategic directions without preparing our customers."
Panke is the first BMW executive to publicly acknowlege what many Munich insiders have privately been saying about the 7-series - that BMW made a big mistake in launching Chris Bangle's new design direction and the complex i-Drive system at the same time in the most conservative sector of the market with no explanation.
Panke's comments have been greeted with relief in Munich. "It's a weight off everyone's shoulders," one insider said.
Now, I should point out that I don't personally think the 7-series is the worst-looking car in the world. If (and that's a big "if") you can overlook that awful trunk, I've always thought that the current 7-series has a slab-sided tanklike presence that completely rules, especially combined with those alloy wheels that work so well with its contours, and the thick chrome curve-following strips along the roofline. Were it not for the trunk, I've always thought the 7-series was something any high-powered executive could be thrilled to step into.
But the 5-series, with its bizarre eyebrow headlights, its excess of interacting surfaces on the front shoulders, its dorky angular taillights, and its confused side-profile where it looks like it's standing uncomfortably on tip-toes, is just a big steaming pile. Every time I see one come up on me in my rear-view mirror, I'm filled not with the deference I'm supposed to feel toward such a privileged driver, but a temple-throbbing cacophony of mingled pity and anger. Who thought this shape looked like a BMW? What purpose do these shapes serve? Is "looking different" that holy a goal as to render inadmissible any argument in favor of restraint and tradition on a line of cars that's supposed to be marketed at people who want something that looks dignified and unmistakably represents its market segment?
The new 3-series is going to be more subdued than this, but it still has weird pointy/roundy taillights whose outlines veer off from horizontal to intersect and sail off into the distance, like the cut-lines on the side of the Z4, whose sales are apparently crashing horrendously. Are buyers starting to think that BMW has permanently taken leave of its design sense, the thing that had attracted them to the company in the first place—the one aspect of their cars they couldn't afford to monkey with?
I don't know if Bangle is on his way out or what, or if he has established enough of a legacy that his design sense—which I can only think looks like the work of an overfunded, undertrained "modern artist"—will live on, zombie-like, long after his departure. But irreparable damage may be done. German car design is no longer de facto the best there is. Now that Japanese and American automakers have discovered that they possess the capability of producing good-looking cars after all; and now that VW is losing loyal customers, Mercedes has slipped precipitously in initial quality (now Buick, of all companies, tops the rolls), and BMW has pulled a New Coke on its most loyal customer base, the age of German ascendancy in the auto industry may be drawing to a close.
UPDATE: Chris M. notes:
I'm dismayed to read that Panke thinks "we should never make big steps in strategic directions without preparing our customers." In other words, we're slow, and need to be educated as to why the 7-series is really good, not bad! Bah.
Yeah. What is it with automakers who conclude that if their products aren't selling, there's something wrong with the customers? Apparently it's not just GM in the 70s that cops this 'tude. Maybe it's a universal harbinger of an auto industry segment's imminent downfall.
Who the hell was it that had that quote about how "If the American public isn't buying our cars, then there's something wrong with the American public"? I can't find hide nor hair of it in Google. This is going to drive me nuts.
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