BMW Provoked Global Reaction To Oversize Grille On Purpose

German premium brand BMW knew it the grille on its upgraded 7 Series this year would draw a massive reaction. And it did.

It is the grille that gave birth to a thousand memes and it continues to be pilloried in social media. Worse, it took the focus off the upgrades to the flagship limousine and then found its way onto the gigantic X7 SUV as well.

The image of BMW as a design leader took off in the 1970s with the 3.0-liter CS and the 2002, but BMW’s embattled design chief Adrian van Hooydonk admitted he had steeled himself for a backlash to the work his team had done to the 7 Series.

“The briefing we got was to make sure people understood the difference (between the 7 and the 5) and notice it,” the Dutch designer explained.

“We are not a start up. We are not looking for 100,000 new customers, but we have to bring two million with us every year.

“When we launched the car (the pre-facelift 7 Series) it was quite smaller. The feedback we got on that was that people couldn’t see enough difference to the predecessor.

“On the 7 I understand that people can be shocked. I notice the criticism. I think in a way it’s inevitable. My objective is to do something that everybody likes but it’s not always possible.”

van Hooydonk admitted he had been hurt by the criticism of the grille, which took the original kidney concept of BMW and turned it more into a set of lungs. From a racehorse.

He still argues, though, that the much-criticized grille was more at home on the gigantic X7, where the sheer size of the 5.2-meter SUV gave it a more natural home.

“It’s more a 7 Series discussion than anything else and the backlash is more or less the same as we expected,” he said.

“The X7 was launched at the same time and that’s why it’s thrown into that discussion but the X7 grill is proportional to the size of the vehicle.

“All the cars in that segment are typically quite big.”

That grille became a BMW fan lightning rod for what is perceived as a loss of grace and athleticism and design courage at the Bavarian brand, with the mainstay 3 and 5 Series models creeping forward incrementally, rather than pushing design forward.

In his defence, van Hooydonk suggested the car’s awkward note was largely struck because of different customer priorities around the world, with the strongest criticisms coming from Europe.

“The 7 has always been the hardest to bring the expectations of the entire world into one shape. The customers are very, very different in China, the US, the Middle East and in Europe,” he explained.

“In Europe, people don’t want to get noticed. They don’t like being asked what they paid for a car and they like things in black, like a stealth mode. They want the grille in black because they don’t want people to notice it.

“The rest of the world is the opposite. We tried to give the Europeans what they want as well but the strongest market for the 7 is not Europe.”

The numbers back that up. Its strongest markets are the US and China, with Europe a distant third.

Welcome relief may be on its way, though. van Hooydonk insisted the world’s customer tastes were converging, rather than pulling apart, and that the painfully obvious grille of the current 7 Series might not be needed on the next generation.

“For the next generation 7 our job will become slightly easier. It’s usually only in the 7 that these tastes are diverging so much but the customer profiles will be less different in five or 10 years. People’s tastes are converging.”

There’s another upside for the most criticized design chief on any of the European premium carmakers. The BMW is selling more current 7 Series models than it did of the pre-facelifted versions.

Another point of defence from van Hooydonk is his insistence that the near future will be more about interior designs than exteriors.

“I believe that in the interior we will see the biggest changes in the next three to five years because they will become more intelligent. You will have to tell it less because it will learn,” he insisted.

“Interiors will become a lot cleaner and we are on a quest to delete as many buttons as we can.

“We are maybe thinking of eliminating all screens in the future. In cars today these functions are separated. You have a decorative surface or a display surface and an input surface.”

The central part of the dash on all BMW models are tilted by six degrees towards the driver, which van Hooydonk insists helps make it easier for drivers to operate and control, but some of the screens will change in the near future.

“We see things merging. The iNext concept had two touch screens; one that was wood and one that was fabric, and you need to think about this.

“It’s quite hard to incorporate 12 airbags without people noticing it. I hope one day we can offload some of that passive safety equipment because vehicles will be able to avoid accidents more.

“If we do that then a car interior becomes more of an environment like a living room or a hotel lobby. So far people  are very busy doing the driving thing but in the future they may have time to notice more things around the car.

“It is our idea that high tech is when tech is in your face, but shy tech is when it’s hidden except when you need it. And we will go for shy tech.”

But just when we thought van Hooydonk was moving into more sustainable, mainstream thinking, the enigmatic Dutchman moved once more into shock and drama and, dare we say it, confusion.

BMW last year launched the small, crossover X2 with its blue-and-white round logo on the car’s C-pillar, which it had not done since the 3.0-liter CS ended production in 1975.

And yet it refused to put it on the new 8 Series Coupe, which is a natural successor to the classical coupe, following a line from the M635i and the 6-Series.

And his defense of that strategy was simply befuddling.

“There’s no historical reason to put it there on the X2 because it doesn’t have an historical predecessor. I guess as a company we dared to be different on an x2 more than the luxury products.

“We had a lot of debate around it when we first showed it. Everybody internally asked us ‘why are you doing this?’. It’s a small thing that people will remember it for that detail alone and it’s at eye height in traffic.

And its absence on the 8 Series?

“If we put it on the 8 series it would make us look like we are desperate to reference the past.

“We are looking forward. In every design you see traces of the past but it doesn’t have to be linear and literal. I think that would be boring and strict.”

Err, OK. Consistently inconsistent, then.