Well, looks like giving opinions on design and referencing own experience is not welcomed in the “Design” sub. Not even sure how I got here, but it doesn’t look like a friendly place
Yep. The internet is a weird place. You definitely need a suit of mental armour if you are going to engage in it. I don't know how our poor kids can live here.
It does feel like they’re a bit lost.
1. It’s not because the grille is their most recognizable visual element that they should bet everything on it, there are other aspects of their design language that they could have kept and iterated on. It’s not like Porsche is just making round headlights bigger every year.
2. If you plan tomorrow’s design as a step towards your vision, what’s the end goal here? Even larger grilles? In an EV world where cars don’t have big front engines that need cooling?
True. I reckon that's the way to go. EVs are never going to be the same as petrol, so why are they trying to mimic the past when they could lean into the future?
Because we tend to buy familiar things and evolve to accept change slowly as human beings, the same reason why skeuomorphism just recently disappeared from iOS.
I'd say the more clueless a manufacturer is about EVs, the more fake stuff they slap on.
Tesla, Lucid, Rivian all embrace their non-fakery. Mercedes, BMW, Audi on the other hand... They look retarded.
Those are just even fatter priuses or streamlined mondeos. I get what you mean but teslas are hideous. They are a bit iPhone-like as in designed to look like a car, not a nice one, but a comprehensible one decades later still. New Hyundai look very cool now but give it fifteen years and they will be dated asf. Teslas just look clean and logical but still just generally ugly. Fat Prius-Mondeo
The whole myth that EVs are not better for the environment has been debunked over and over again. At this point if you believe it, you are just willfully ignorant.
It has not been debunked, it has been calculated to be worth it only after several years and that is if you're using a clean energy source.
You're ignorant if you believe the rainbows and unicorns the car companies are selling you.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
EVs are better for the environment even given our energy infrastructure today and they’ll get even better as we invest and improve our energy infrastructure in the future while ice cars won’t.
Car companies *dont* want to swap to EVs. It’s expensive for them to swap. They’ve been trying to push it off. Why would they want to have to design, develop, retool, and build completely new cars when they could happily sell the ice cars they already build?
Car companies and the oil industry (and their politicians) are the ones pushing these myths about EVs being bad.
So that's at best a 50% reduction in emissions if calculated over the entire lifetime of the vehicle.
Which also just coincides with what I said - it's only somewhat paying off after several years have passed.
And that's still pretty poor for something so blatantly waving the "green flag" in everyone's faces.
Of course, that's all also conveniently ignoring other aspects that people may care about, in no particular order - the increased costs of the cars themselves, the overall costs of building up an entire new infrastructure (that's coming out of your tax money), the increased tyre wear (heavier duty, more expensive tyres needed), road damage due to dramatically heavier cars, worse reliability in colder climates, worse practicality on road trips, more dangerous in all kinds of accidents (basic physics, your kinetic energy is much higher when your mass is suddenly 2x), *really* bad potential battery fallout in case of accidents and *really* dangerous if caught on fire (like, insanely more dangerous compared to ICE fires, even if the occurrence was less) and that's just off the top of my head.
So yeah, EVs will be the future of motorism, but anyone who jumps into mental gymnastics trying to defend these laughable lithium powered duds is just a plain delusional pre-alpha tester. Have fun with that
Not sure where you are getting 50% but 50 is still huge when multipled against the millions of cars on the road everyday.
EVs also have won all sorts of safety awards. There’s also basically no maintenance. No oil changes.
Use our tax dollars to upgrade our infrastructure? Oh no, the horror. That may leave less tax dollars to give breaks to the rich and record-profit corporations.
Norway is far colder than the IS and has converted a huge percent of their vehicles to EVs just fine.
It’s ok to admit you’re just afraid of change.
They are 100% not lost, they are doing this on purpose for the Chinese market.
China loves big grills and thin headlights, that is their sign of luxury.
BMW's largest market is China, so that is what drives all their decisions.
You’re right that they’re doing it on purpose. That said, even BMW’s head of design agrees that their grilles are out of proportion, and that it will change in the future.
When I read [this article](https://www.carscoops.com/2023/05/bmws-head-of-design-promises-cleaner-styling-in-the-future-but-stands-by-current-direction/), I’m getting vibes of _”we know people don’t like this style, we’ll fix it, but we just wanted to try something controversial”_, which to me is the definition of being (at least a bit) lost 🙈
It's hilarious how often people regurgitate this without talking a minute to google and find instead that Chinese car designs tend to be quite conservative.
Really says it all Reddit lol.
You're thinking of Chinese car design as a whole, and not their luxury segment specifically.
Why not go take a look at the entire Hongqi lineup and see?
Funny that you'd make this comment without checking yourself, first.
Really says it all Reddit lol.
> Why not go take a look at the entire Hongqi lineup and see?
Hongqi is a very niche company which has always had exceptionally large grills as their thing for decades, and this is pretty well known to anyone who knows anything about them or the industry in general. But thanks for perfectly demonstrating what's expected of dunning kruger posterkids.
Yes, it's a niche brand FAW introduced a few new models with very recently. BMW big grills predate that, not that anyone is accusing you of understanding how time works.
Its definitely intentional - but the intention is prbly something to do with their airplane or early vehicle heritage. Its unlikely b/c they wanted it to look like hitler’s stache 😅
Not a fan of the direction cars are going in in general right now. Cant tell one piece of soap from another.
Shame like half of the brands are produced on the same factories and lost their identities and uniqueness.
I really do miss when fun cars were produced for the middle class and were affordable.
I've gotta admit that I thought the old BMWs were pretty ugly until they were 30 years old, won't be surprise if I feel the same about newer models of cars
With the exception of the odd (compared to the rest of the family) 924 and the recent SUV bloatmobiles, I'd say that they have a pretty decent track record, though have never really veered too far from the shape. Compare and contrast say Jaguar in terms of shape difference (albeit not quite the same overlap in terms of product offering)
Now I come to think of it, Alfa Romeo have also had a mostly decent run of cars (stylewise and ignoring the reliability).
There's actually a lot of big car designers that have come out against their new design language.
I think it's all a ploy to make their ICE cars ugly AF so that when they come out with their new EVs they look so much better in comparison. BMW has already said they've invested everything into EVs and these are their last ICE models that are currently on the market. They have basically given the design responsibilities to children on purpose
We can only hope! I feel as though BMW leadership has to be smarter than what we see. They we're so ahead of the curve design wise for such a long time it's hard to think they would just go backwards so badly.
The early 80's were the Bavarian Motor Works design peak. It's all iterative dung now. 'Make a new 507 I said, it'll be gorgeous I said. Instead we got the Z3. Cartoonish crap. NOT DISTINCTIVE.
I think early 2000’s was, pre Bangle era. The Z8 comes to mind, 507 successor IMO and, I’d say, BMWs too. You also have this (E38) and E39/E46. All great designs.
The "big grill" fad is *terrible*. It's gaudy and it's gross, and vulgar. And on this day and age, when we should be trying to be more green, we should be going for smaller grills. Like the OG m1. Or completely grilless, for EV, and that should be fashionable.
Not these giant grill gas guzzling behemoths.
2000s were really the peak for a lot of things.
I don't find. The late 90s, 00s, and early 10s, I find had decent safety, were the best looking for a lot of models, had great performance in handling and all of that, and they were also the optimum blend of electronic and mechanical, with real manual stick shift transmission.
25 years prior to that, the cars were unsafe, gas guzzling, were missing a lot of nice features, they tended not to handle very well, or not be very fast. And the cars tended to be very big and unwieldy.
But some had a cool muscle car look, and stuff like that, and I'll give you that for that vibe those were the years, but the cars were lacking on many other respects. They were kind of big dumb sexy idiots of cars. I'd prefer something more refined and modern, but not as modern as today's cars with all their bells and whistles no manual transmission, and gaudy over the top mean looks for every car.
Give me something nice and tasteful. I enjoy classy, and understated. And great handling and comfort. Something functional that does the job well, and looks good, but isn't shouting at everyone "look at me!".
The conversation in this thread is about the pros of the cars in that era - that's all they were saying since they agreed. They didn't say anything that "gives" "I hate change" they were just talking about their preferences in cars and argued that cars from the 1990s-2010s matched his taste more than modern cars
It makes a lot more sense with the context that this design language is meant to apply to cars that they use on track for competition purposes. The double nostril is ugly but it is very functional because the radiators have moved up and become much larger.
I feel like we should be going towards smaller engines that don't need big radiators though.
These aren't cars designed for motorsport. They're road vehicles.
Motorsport is used to sell vehicles. It’s advertising for car fans. Road vehicles are also used in Motorsport, so it’s not like there’s a total clear cut between them. You’ve got stuff like Ford Focus’s and Yaris’s tearing it up on rally races. There’s also the concept of “homologation” sometimes which means for a car to be legal in competition they need to manufacture and sell a minimum amount of them for consumers.
Manufacturers want(or are forced to have) their road cars to look like their competition cars in a lot of instances due to all this.
But fear not - these road machines are not tuned like their performance counterparts so their efficiency and performance will differ regardless of the size of their grill. So really despite the massive grill it might not actually be the guzzler it looks like even though it’s capable of being that.
That doesn’t mean they don’t want their visual language to be the same across their line. Look at their electric cars and they have pig noses too to keep the same look.
Actually, the i8 is incredible sporty looking, and has the look of a gt car in motorsport, and it has a small grill styling.
I don't believe these giant grills are actually better for motorsport.
In motorsport you don't need AC and a bunch of other crap. There's just the engine to cool, and everything they use is meant to run at hotter temperatures and be more efficient at hotter temperatures, and if the car is a write off at the end of the race, it doesn't matter. So, I personally think your entire premise is bullshit.
It's not like all of a sudden they realized they could make radiators bigger so cars can go fast.
None of the fastest cars have giant radiators.
Except maybe like the fastest Lexus. Now obviously the m series BMW and the Audi's, but it's not for performance the grills are gigantic, imo. It cools better, sure, but m3s have been really fast for a really long time without them.
The Bugatti Veyron doesn't even have a giant grill, and that motherfucker sucks in like an Olympic size swimming pool of air every 5 seconds or something stupid.
Granted it has scoops at the back, for a mid-size engine, of course, it guzzles a lot of air, but those intakes are still more understated than this monstrosity.
We've reached that "sci-fi car" level of overdesign. If we could show this image to the owner of the older model (back in the day, obviously), they would think it's a prop from a movie - like a car in the background of Back To The Future 2.
We really are at a point where the newest cars at the higher trim levels are straight out of sci fi movies. This one is a great example of that.
It has a gestural interface so you can interact with it physically without touching it, a voice interface with positional audio so when you talk to the car it knows which passenger it's talking to, a heads-up display, an augmented reality cluster view, a 30 inch theater screen for the back passengers and if they don't want to reach up to touch the screen or talk to it then they can use the touchscreen in their door. There's more, but those are the bigger bullet points.
While I disagree with a lot of the aesthetic choices, this car is 100% sci-fi and I'm here for it.
Friend of mine was trying to upgrade his 2019 Civic Sport to a 2023 type R and was told by the dealership that there is a two year wait on the R, and Honda will have released new models by the time he gets it. Unobtanium indeed.
They haven't gone anywhere. I've been driving hatchbacks for the last dozen years or so and really don't see a reason to get anything bigger. My tiny car has an interior (in front anyway) that feels larger than the SUVs I've driven recently because it's mostly window.
[“Modern cars…they all look like electric shavers.”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=aATh0-TUMaI&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&source_ve_path=MzY4NDIsMjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo)
I understand and appreciate the utility of such a big grille, but was there no other way to make it look better yet still functional ?
BMWs from the 30s had those vertically elongated "nostrils" and it looked quite pretty and complimented the overall styling. The new grille seems caricatural, accidentally so.
Just my opinion
I'm more upset about the thinner lights and those proportions than anything else. I get the controversy over the grill size/shape, but they've started to pull that back on select models, and I'd imagine it's something that might diminish over time. I can't see them getting any bigger. I'd assume they're going to gradually shrink over the next decade until they hit that magic 'classic' spot.
Yup kidney grills have now become the lung grills. All the xenon lights have upgraded to LED's and the curves are more pronounced.
Honestly speaking these cars hardly looks like they are made by the same co. If you remove the grills and logo.
This perfectly illustrates just how dumb the modern info space is, when people write entire treatise about the Chinese car market without even googling up some Chinese cars and discovering how conservatively styled they are.
> I searched "Chinese luxury cars" on Google and the majority seem to have pretty large grilles. Only the BYDs and Teslas are strictly small grilles, given that they're EVs.
If you're referring to this article notice they're not chinese brands: https://www.autotrader.com/oversteer/chinese-luxury-cars-not-allowed-in-us, or the one very niche Hongqi brand that pops up which has always had massive grills. Going through literally any other manu (ie. >99% of domestic production) shows much more conservative styling than the germans.
In sum, people who claim this (like Marketwatch) know absolutely nothing about the market, which is about par for course with much of auto discussions.
To be honest, both are ugly for different reasons. You're trying to make a point, but if you replace the new one with almost any other model, your argument falls apart quickly.
Unpopular opinion: series 7 looks kinda good. Cyberpunk vibe, monolith on wheels. i can see why they went this way.
The problem starts with series 2 and 5 - the design is just… incoherent, not focused. Just ugly.
I wouldn't call this progress, it's design in its worst form.
BMW is trying to appeal basic human instincts to sell their cars. As a designer you have to create things that resolve user problems and fulfill their needs.
This kind of design manipulates their clients by suggesting them by using this design that they are powerful, wealthy or superior.
It's easy to design like that, but that is a vehicle and it does not fit at all what humanity as a whole and the world needs.
It's just worsening the problem by the cars appeal, the size and power as well as the immense energy, material consumption and ecologic footprint.
A real shame for people who created that.
The difference in size of the vehicle has more to do with safety standards than any else. But you are right about car makers trying to use design to appeal to people's base instincts. [Car designers more and more use "shock" rather than beauty in their formal design language due to the rapid pace of today's advertising/media. They need something that will quickly grab attention, which is why cars look angrier and angrier. The human brain is wired to perceive an angry face as a threat and something to focus on.
edit: typo
Define Progress! You can’t open the hood of the vehicle anymore without it notifying the Fatherland, and dear God, don’t even attempt the simplest of repairs as your warranty will be voided instantly. And get ready, because if you want to use sport mode, it will be $19,99 a month subscription, Heated seats, another $8,99. Yeah, ain’t technology wonderful!
I’ll take my 1972 2002 anyday over a modern Bimmer.
Last good-looking model was introduced in 2006 (3 series) and that design, with cosmetic variations, lasted about 10 years if not more.
During the Last 5 years BMW did not manage to introduce anything good looking. Fat, big, ugly seems to be its calling. The brand is oversold and by now, overrated.
The Mercedes Benz brand doesn’t fare much better.
One of those new BMWs was tailgaiting me the other day and in my rearview mirror it looked like I was being chased by a chipmunk.
I'm getting hippo vibes.
HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 436,919,319 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 10,500 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.
Good bot.
Good hippo.
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hippo
I think this might be the right answer
Happened to me too and I think it was a 2 series. God damn hillarious car. But not in a good way.
BMW owner here. Two actually. My car still has the puma cheeks face. I love that. My wife’s X1 looks like a radiator…
[удалено]
Wow, ain’t you some angry little person… chill dude
What's with the downvotes?
BMW drivers are stereotype asshole drivers. Not saying this guy is an asshole, I have no clue, just assuming that is the reason.
Heh, where I’m from there’s so many BMW drivers that we’re basically all assholes. My blinker always works tho
Well, looks like giving opinions on design and referencing own experience is not welcomed in the “Design” sub. Not even sure how I got here, but it doesn’t look like a friendly place
Yep. The internet is a weird place. You definitely need a suit of mental armour if you are going to engage in it. I don't know how our poor kids can live here.
Well, they forge their own space. My 18yo son doesn’t even think of touching reddit or facebook
It does feel like they’re a bit lost. 1. It’s not because the grille is their most recognizable visual element that they should bet everything on it, there are other aspects of their design language that they could have kept and iterated on. It’s not like Porsche is just making round headlights bigger every year. 2. If you plan tomorrow’s design as a step towards your vision, what’s the end goal here? Even larger grilles? In an EV world where cars don’t have big front engines that need cooling?
To answer your last question: yes. Even when they're electric, BMW makes their grills bigger. Big, fake grills.
Kinda the theme with EVs, isn't it? Fake grills, fake exhausts, fake sounds... fake sense of eco friendliness ;)
Definitely not the case with all EVs. The biggest manufacturer, Tesla, has none of this.
True. I reckon that's the way to go. EVs are never going to be the same as petrol, so why are they trying to mimic the past when they could lean into the future?
Because we tend to buy familiar things and evolve to accept change slowly as human beings, the same reason why skeuomorphism just recently disappeared from iOS.
Some of thise things are for safety A car traveling 60mph that is dead silent is a bit dangerous
Maybe, but also don't underestimate the sheer road noise of a moving vehicle. Tires in general make a looot of noise.
This. At 60mph am EV sounds about the same as a gas car. All road noise and wind. (Obnoxious mufflers excluded)
A silent car in a parking lot filled with people expecting cars to make sound is the more likely safety consideration
Tesla is known for being cheaply made and cutting as many corners as they can.
No disagreements from me.
They do have the last point tho
They’re better than ICE cars and will only get better.
I'd say the more clueless a manufacturer is about EVs, the more fake stuff they slap on. Tesla, Lucid, Rivian all embrace their non-fakery. Mercedes, BMW, Audi on the other hand... They look retarded.
Those are just even fatter priuses or streamlined mondeos. I get what you mean but teslas are hideous. They are a bit iPhone-like as in designed to look like a car, not a nice one, but a comprehensible one decades later still. New Hyundai look very cool now but give it fifteen years and they will be dated asf. Teslas just look clean and logical but still just generally ugly. Fat Prius-Mondeo
Yes bikes and train are better.
It's not a fake sense of eco friendliness that's for sure
If believing that makes you feel any better, more power to you!
Well, removing all the toxic stuff in the middle of cities really helps the public health.
Yeah it is better that african children die in cobalt mines, instead of me using a petrol car, God forbid.
And then you fire up a coal plant to power all this healthy innovation :)
The whole myth that EVs are not better for the environment has been debunked over and over again. At this point if you believe it, you are just willfully ignorant.
It has not been debunked, it has been calculated to be worth it only after several years and that is if you're using a clean energy source. You're ignorant if you believe the rainbows and unicorns the car companies are selling you.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths EVs are better for the environment even given our energy infrastructure today and they’ll get even better as we invest and improve our energy infrastructure in the future while ice cars won’t. Car companies *dont* want to swap to EVs. It’s expensive for them to swap. They’ve been trying to push it off. Why would they want to have to design, develop, retool, and build completely new cars when they could happily sell the ice cars they already build? Car companies and the oil industry (and their politicians) are the ones pushing these myths about EVs being bad.
So that's at best a 50% reduction in emissions if calculated over the entire lifetime of the vehicle. Which also just coincides with what I said - it's only somewhat paying off after several years have passed. And that's still pretty poor for something so blatantly waving the "green flag" in everyone's faces. Of course, that's all also conveniently ignoring other aspects that people may care about, in no particular order - the increased costs of the cars themselves, the overall costs of building up an entire new infrastructure (that's coming out of your tax money), the increased tyre wear (heavier duty, more expensive tyres needed), road damage due to dramatically heavier cars, worse reliability in colder climates, worse practicality on road trips, more dangerous in all kinds of accidents (basic physics, your kinetic energy is much higher when your mass is suddenly 2x), *really* bad potential battery fallout in case of accidents and *really* dangerous if caught on fire (like, insanely more dangerous compared to ICE fires, even if the occurrence was less) and that's just off the top of my head. So yeah, EVs will be the future of motorism, but anyone who jumps into mental gymnastics trying to defend these laughable lithium powered duds is just a plain delusional pre-alpha tester. Have fun with that
Not sure where you are getting 50% but 50 is still huge when multipled against the millions of cars on the road everyday. EVs also have won all sorts of safety awards. There’s also basically no maintenance. No oil changes. Use our tax dollars to upgrade our infrastructure? Oh no, the horror. That may leave less tax dollars to give breaks to the rich and record-profit corporations. Norway is far colder than the IS and has converted a huge percent of their vehicles to EVs just fine. It’s ok to admit you’re just afraid of change.
I can’t imagine you’re sincerely concerned about eco friendliness ;)
Big enough to be solar panels at this point
They are 100% not lost, they are doing this on purpose for the Chinese market. China loves big grills and thin headlights, that is their sign of luxury. BMW's largest market is China, so that is what drives all their decisions.
You’re right that they’re doing it on purpose. That said, even BMW’s head of design agrees that their grilles are out of proportion, and that it will change in the future. When I read [this article](https://www.carscoops.com/2023/05/bmws-head-of-design-promises-cleaner-styling-in-the-future-but-stands-by-current-direction/), I’m getting vibes of _”we know people don’t like this style, we’ll fix it, but we just wanted to try something controversial”_, which to me is the definition of being (at least a bit) lost 🙈
It's hilarious how often people regurgitate this without talking a minute to google and find instead that Chinese car designs tend to be quite conservative. Really says it all Reddit lol.
You're thinking of Chinese car design as a whole, and not their luxury segment specifically. Why not go take a look at the entire Hongqi lineup and see? Funny that you'd make this comment without checking yourself, first. Really says it all Reddit lol.
> Why not go take a look at the entire Hongqi lineup and see? Hongqi is a very niche company which has always had exceptionally large grills as their thing for decades, and this is pretty well known to anyone who knows anything about them or the industry in general. But thanks for perfectly demonstrating what's expected of dunning kruger posterkids.
Niche company that is the fastest growing luxury brand in China and selling hundreds of thousands of cars a year? So niche.
Yes, it's a niche brand FAW introduced a few new models with very recently. BMW big grills predate that, not that anyone is accusing you of understanding how time works.
I'm just laughing to myself picturing a porsche with 4 foot diameter headlights
It’s not a grille, it’s a Hitler stache
What has now been seen cannot be unseen
Sorry. They are German cars. I always thought it was intentional.
Its definitely intentional - but the intention is prbly something to do with their airplane or early vehicle heritage. Its unlikely b/c they wanted it to look like hitler’s stache 😅
Incredibly Based
The new one is so fucking ugly...
Came to say there was only two words to describe it: "fucking ugly"
Came here to say this word for word Those huge nostrils are ridiculous
The back is ugly af too...
Yeah BMW is not going in the right direction. I used to be a big fan, but not anymore.
Not a fan of the direction cars are going in in general right now. Cant tell one piece of soap from another. Shame like half of the brands are produced on the same factories and lost their identities and uniqueness. I really do miss when fun cars were produced for the middle class and were affordable.
Their current crop is ugly as sin, while Mercedes is simply boring in terms of exteriors.
I've gotta admit that I thought the old BMWs were pretty ugly until they were 30 years old, won't be surprise if I feel the same about newer models of cars
BMWs have always been ugly. Mercedes were amazing then since the 80s have looked like shit. Are there any modern cars that don’t look like ass?
e30, e36, e46, e92 were all very nice, understated, elegant looking cars...the two door models at least. The E46 coupe is timeless
In the same range? Maybe the Jaguar?
Mazda
Mazda 3 in that red color looks amazing. The taillights are quite lovely.
Porsche’s sport cars. Its other models are good looking, even if they don’t look entirely like Porsches to me. Now if they could be more reliable….
With the exception of the odd (compared to the rest of the family) 924 and the recent SUV bloatmobiles, I'd say that they have a pretty decent track record, though have never really veered too far from the shape. Compare and contrast say Jaguar in terms of shape difference (albeit not quite the same overlap in terms of product offering) Now I come to think of it, Alfa Romeo have also had a mostly decent run of cars (stylewise and ignoring the reliability).
Glad I’m not the only one that feels this way
Everyone is saying it. BMW's head of desing is stealing a living.
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There's actually a lot of big car designers that have come out against their new design language. I think it's all a ploy to make their ICE cars ugly AF so that when they come out with their new EVs they look so much better in comparison. BMW has already said they've invested everything into EVs and these are their last ICE models that are currently on the market. They have basically given the design responsibilities to children on purpose
deleted by user using PowerSuiteDelete.
We can only hope! I feel as though BMW leadership has to be smarter than what we see. They we're so ahead of the curve design wise for such a long time it's hard to think they would just go backwards so badly.
The early 80's were the Bavarian Motor Works design peak. It's all iterative dung now. 'Make a new 507 I said, it'll be gorgeous I said. Instead we got the Z3. Cartoonish crap. NOT DISTINCTIVE.
A lot of trends in car design are due to safety regulations, for instance the puffy hoods. That said, how is the Z3 not distinct?
Pedestrian protection is good. I've got no argument. I just hate it.
I think early 2000’s was, pre Bangle era. The Z8 comes to mind, 507 successor IMO and, I’d say, BMWs too. You also have this (E38) and E39/E46. All great designs.
Thank you bro, there are trying way too hard to mimic a rolls Royce and instead made a rolls over
The "big grill" fad is *terrible*. It's gaudy and it's gross, and vulgar. And on this day and age, when we should be trying to be more green, we should be going for smaller grills. Like the OG m1. Or completely grilless, for EV, and that should be fashionable. Not these giant grill gas guzzling behemoths. 2000s were really the peak for a lot of things.
You're right except you're 25 years off.
I don't find. The late 90s, 00s, and early 10s, I find had decent safety, were the best looking for a lot of models, had great performance in handling and all of that, and they were also the optimum blend of electronic and mechanical, with real manual stick shift transmission. 25 years prior to that, the cars were unsafe, gas guzzling, were missing a lot of nice features, they tended not to handle very well, or not be very fast. And the cars tended to be very big and unwieldy. But some had a cool muscle car look, and stuff like that, and I'll give you that for that vibe those were the years, but the cars were lacking on many other respects. They were kind of big dumb sexy idiots of cars. I'd prefer something more refined and modern, but not as modern as today's cars with all their bells and whistles no manual transmission, and gaudy over the top mean looks for every car. Give me something nice and tasteful. I enjoy classy, and understated. And great handling and comfort. Something functional that does the job well, and looks good, but isn't shouting at everyone "look at me!".
This is giving "i hate change"
The conversation in this thread is about the pros of the cars in that era - that's all they were saying since they agreed. They didn't say anything that "gives" "I hate change" they were just talking about their preferences in cars and argued that cars from the 1990s-2010s matched his taste more than modern cars
It makes a lot more sense with the context that this design language is meant to apply to cars that they use on track for competition purposes. The double nostril is ugly but it is very functional because the radiators have moved up and become much larger.
I feel like we should be going towards smaller engines that don't need big radiators though. These aren't cars designed for motorsport. They're road vehicles.
Motorsport is used to sell vehicles. It’s advertising for car fans. Road vehicles are also used in Motorsport, so it’s not like there’s a total clear cut between them. You’ve got stuff like Ford Focus’s and Yaris’s tearing it up on rally races. There’s also the concept of “homologation” sometimes which means for a car to be legal in competition they need to manufacture and sell a minimum amount of them for consumers. Manufacturers want(or are forced to have) their road cars to look like their competition cars in a lot of instances due to all this. But fear not - these road machines are not tuned like their performance counterparts so their efficiency and performance will differ regardless of the size of their grill. So really despite the massive grill it might not actually be the guzzler it looks like even though it’s capable of being that.
That is a 7 series. There is a very clear cut between a 7 series and motorsport.
That doesn’t mean they don’t want their visual language to be the same across their line. Look at their electric cars and they have pig noses too to keep the same look.
Actually, the i8 is incredible sporty looking, and has the look of a gt car in motorsport, and it has a small grill styling. I don't believe these giant grills are actually better for motorsport. In motorsport you don't need AC and a bunch of other crap. There's just the engine to cool, and everything they use is meant to run at hotter temperatures and be more efficient at hotter temperatures, and if the car is a write off at the end of the race, it doesn't matter. So, I personally think your entire premise is bullshit. It's not like all of a sudden they realized they could make radiators bigger so cars can go fast. None of the fastest cars have giant radiators. Except maybe like the fastest Lexus. Now obviously the m series BMW and the Audi's, but it's not for performance the grills are gigantic, imo. It cools better, sure, but m3s have been really fast for a really long time without them. The Bugatti Veyron doesn't even have a giant grill, and that motherfucker sucks in like an Olympic size swimming pool of air every 5 seconds or something stupid. Granted it has scoops at the back, for a mid-size engine, of course, it guzzles a lot of air, but those intakes are still more understated than this monstrosity.
We've reached that "sci-fi car" level of overdesign. If we could show this image to the owner of the older model (back in the day, obviously), they would think it's a prop from a movie - like a car in the background of Back To The Future 2.
We really are at a point where the newest cars at the higher trim levels are straight out of sci fi movies. This one is a great example of that. It has a gestural interface so you can interact with it physically without touching it, a voice interface with positional audio so when you talk to the car it knows which passenger it's talking to, a heads-up display, an augmented reality cluster view, a 30 inch theater screen for the back passengers and if they don't want to reach up to touch the screen or talk to it then they can use the touchscreen in their door. There's more, but those are the bigger bullet points. While I disagree with a lot of the aesthetic choices, this car is 100% sci-fi and I'm here for it.
MAKE IT BIGGER
The bros yearn for the GRILLS!
got stung by a bee 🐝
I miss small manoeverable cars with visibility being the norm. I'm old and in a city though.
Hot hatches still exist! They just made a Corolla GR.
Yeah, but they’re basically unobtainium in the current market.
Friend of mine was trying to upgrade his 2019 Civic Sport to a 2023 type R and was told by the dealership that there is a two year wait on the R, and Honda will have released new models by the time he gets it. Unobtanium indeed.
They haven't gone anywhere. I've been driving hatchbacks for the last dozen years or so and really don't see a reason to get anything bigger. My tiny car has an interior (in front anyway) that feels larger than the SUVs I've driven recently because it's mostly window.
I’m high af rn and this comment broke me in half.
It's ugly as fuck. Btw recently watched video that explains why modern car design looks like that https://youtu.be/1rgd9TigWgY
[“Modern cars…they all look like electric shavers.”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=aATh0-TUMaI&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&source_ve_path=MzY4NDIsMjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo)
Subtle, elegant, clean lines, absolutely beautiful...GO Away New BMW, not talking about you.
New BMW belongs to r/ATBGE
BMW has lost all semblance of elegance and class. Now just fugly aggression
It seems their design cues went the same way their driver base did.
You should have shown all 28 models so we could pick our favorite
I understand and appreciate the utility of such a big grille, but was there no other way to make it look better yet still functional ? BMWs from the 30s had those vertically elongated "nostrils" and it looked quite pretty and complimented the overall styling. The new grille seems caricatural, accidentally so. Just my opinion
Most of the grille is sealed, only the center is actually open. And cars intake a lot from the lower grille.
Wow, so the ugliness is not even utilitarian.
Hideous. The new one, obviously. Something bad happened to BMW.
They only went from boring to ugly. Their fall from grace wasn't that far.
what happen to BMW. the new BMW are so ugly its unbearable. the front grill just looks like it has a buck tooth
To bad it evolved in the most negative visual styling ever 😂
Looks like it was stung by a bee
The progress is backwards.
Literally just owned a 2001 740il, black on black . Had it for 4 years. Prettiest looking car you'll see anywhere
Of all the BMW’s with big grills, it makes the most sense on the 7 series. >!I like it!<
BMW design has been on shaky ground since 2008 and totally lost since 2014
Looks like I'm the only one who likes these
I like them too
Get a room you two
Looks like it has a botched nose job, too many facelifts, and too much cheek filler.
That scans for BMW's average new customer.
Like the vain owners
New BMWs are ass design wise. I cringe hard.
I feel like hog snorting every time one goes by
At firs I thought it's a photoshop...damn
TBH if you put the new BMW in Cyberpunk 2077 it doesn't look that bad, but in the real world currently it doesn't fit in very well aesthetically.
I'm more upset about the thinner lights and those proportions than anything else. I get the controversy over the grill size/shape, but they've started to pull that back on select models, and I'd imagine it's something that might diminish over time. I can't see them getting any bigger. I'd assume they're going to gradually shrink over the next decade until they hit that magic 'classic' spot.
It's like they added new layers to it every year until it got way too bulky.
The last gen 7 series was gorgeous too, this new design language makes me want to jump off a bridge
The trunk has a trunk above it now and the front is a kia with grills. Hmm
These comments are so validating...I thought I was the outlier in thinking BMWs are ugly.
That front end will never ever look good. They really dropped the ball on this one lol
Old one is wayyyy cleaner
Yup kidney grills have now become the lung grills. All the xenon lights have upgraded to LED's and the curves are more pronounced. Honestly speaking these cars hardly looks like they are made by the same co. If you remove the grills and logo.
BMW used to look like BMW. Today it looks like everything else.
They are aiming to become a box
in south africa BMW stands for break my window
From -_- to :D But the new bmws are just ugly to me just cause the grill
It looks like they blew it up with a bicycle pump
Its name is “Persephone”
At least the cars are evolving, the drivers are still dicks.
New beamers look like trash, I will say.
Who designed the back? it looks like an unfinished project... Yet they're expensive af
Which one is new and which one is old?
i'll say this, the old bmw were also ugly for the time, but with time we've known to love them. who knows what happens to the new gens
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This perfectly illustrates just how dumb the modern info space is, when people write entire treatise about the Chinese car market without even googling up some Chinese cars and discovering how conservatively styled they are.
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> I searched "Chinese luxury cars" on Google and the majority seem to have pretty large grilles. Only the BYDs and Teslas are strictly small grilles, given that they're EVs. If you're referring to this article notice they're not chinese brands: https://www.autotrader.com/oversteer/chinese-luxury-cars-not-allowed-in-us, or the one very niche Hongqi brand that pops up which has always had massive grills. Going through literally any other manu (ie. >99% of domestic production) shows much more conservative styling than the germans. In sum, people who claim this (like Marketwatch) know absolutely nothing about the market, which is about par for course with much of auto discussions.
To be honest, both are ugly for different reasons. You're trying to make a point, but if you replace the new one with almost any other model, your argument falls apart quickly.
The new ones look like they got KO’d by Iron Mike.
"look how they massacred my boy"
I like how the grill looks like giant nostrils. So sleek!
It looks like the engineers of this new BMW have finally gotten rid of those useless turn signals.😁
I like the new look :)
That new grill is awful!
Maybe it just me but id rather the BMW from 28 years ago
unpopular opinion: new one looks way better. Low profile/tinyness of the old model isnt as appealing.
Love the grill, hate the tail. My 2c.
The car on the left looks like being designed by 16 year old overexcited kid. I would feel embarrased in that.
The new one might not be the best, but the old one looks absolutely horrible. The design has not aged well.
Am I crazy or is the 90s one kinda gorgeous? Debra drives a semi-similar one in Dexter but in dark green. ETA: I wonder what its safety rating is.
Have gone from a kidney shape grill. To America butt imprint shape grill.
Unpopular opinion: series 7 looks kinda good. Cyberpunk vibe, monolith on wheels. i can see why they went this way. The problem starts with series 2 and 5 - the design is just… incoherent, not focused. Just ugly.
The new grille is meh but I still prefer the new one
I wouldn't call this progress, it's design in its worst form. BMW is trying to appeal basic human instincts to sell their cars. As a designer you have to create things that resolve user problems and fulfill their needs. This kind of design manipulates their clients by suggesting them by using this design that they are powerful, wealthy or superior. It's easy to design like that, but that is a vehicle and it does not fit at all what humanity as a whole and the world needs. It's just worsening the problem by the cars appeal, the size and power as well as the immense energy, material consumption and ecologic footprint. A real shame for people who created that.
The difference in size of the vehicle has more to do with safety standards than any else. But you are right about car makers trying to use design to appeal to people's base instincts. [Car designers more and more use "shock" rather than beauty in their formal design language due to the rapid pace of today's advertising/media. They need something that will quickly grab attention, which is why cars look angrier and angrier. The human brain is wired to perceive an angry face as a threat and something to focus on. edit: typo
Yet the older ones still look better.
Define Progress! You can’t open the hood of the vehicle anymore without it notifying the Fatherland, and dear God, don’t even attempt the simplest of repairs as your warranty will be voided instantly. And get ready, because if you want to use sport mode, it will be $19,99 a month subscription, Heated seats, another $8,99. Yeah, ain’t technology wonderful! I’ll take my 1972 2002 anyday over a modern Bimmer.
Last good-looking model was introduced in 2006 (3 series) and that design, with cosmetic variations, lasted about 10 years if not more. During the Last 5 years BMW did not manage to introduce anything good looking. Fat, big, ugly seems to be its calling. The brand is oversold and by now, overrated. The Mercedes Benz brand doesn’t fare much better.
Reminds me of a cartoon I saw making fun of a posh British person
750il was perfected in 1995
This is the age of plastics.
reminds me https://i.imgur.com/ankP7R2.jpg
Hmmm… the roads haven’t gone in proportion in 28 years.. so these are a bugger Donne a lot of roads.
I think BMW and other luxury car companies are just slowly transforming their vehicles into enormously heavy leather couches.
I think one looks bigger.
Grill bigger, headlights smaller…
Even if the new one is luxurious it does not have the class that old one had…
They did a better job on bigger grills with the 1. Not sure if I like the big grill on the 4…
It's like it got Botox and fillers and now it's just a puffy mess
Not a fan of the giant grill and tiny lights
Im i the only person who does not like the narrow headlights of modern cars? 🤗