BMW begins to recover from Bangle

Automotive styling continues to develop in interesting directions. With the departure of Chris Bangle from BMW's design shopfloor, the design pedigree of one of Europe's top automotive marques has begun to recover. Bangle's efforts have been widely and rightly criticised; it is perhaps enough to say here that he created BMWs that looked Korean.

The first sign of improvement in the obese, banal and slackly decorative Bangle 'look' can be seen in the 2010 3-series coupe. For BMW improvement must mean a return to the sober and elegant lines of their 1980s- and 1990s-era vehicles. Eleven years of design history stand between the two BMW models shown below, but they share a number of cues.

Top: the E46 3-series coupe from the late 1990s. Bottom: 2010 3-series coupe.

The similarity between the old and the new is a sign of design success for BMW, for Bangle was obsessed with fixing unbroken designs. The boot-line, which in Bangle-designed cars appears as a shrunken, flat ledge glued on to a Porsche-like fastback tail, has been returned to a normal profile. The tail lights still have not recovered their correct BMW form factor, and their blobby look belongs to the cheap, poorly assembled American sedans Bangle was so much better suited to designing. The up-swept rear skirt ending in the rear diffuser makes a pleasing return, slightly more pronounced now than it was in 1999. In combination with the sloping boot-line, it recalls the tapered rear of classic models such as the 535i coupe of the mid-eighties. Body panels from the fashionably high belt-line down have straighter cut-lines and less fussy cross-sections, but they require further correction to achieve the sleekness of older designs. The side-skirts and nearby cut-lines at the lower edge of the doors still retain the Bangle touch - or rather fussy, sagging gesticulation. All that is needed to correct their line is a ruler. The lowered, swept-back greenhouse, borrowed from Aston Martin, suggests once more the purposeful, sport-oriented body that BMW, years ago, could design in its sleep.

The profile of the 2010 3-series still strikes me as ill-proportioned compared to the 1999 model, because the high beltline when compared with a lowered greenhouse creates a slabby look suggestive of a car not tall enough for its length - a 'microcephalic' effect. This is not an unusual problem in contemporary car design. The current Lexus IS series sedan, widely acknowledged as beautifully engineered and constructed vehicles, suffers from the same thing.

The 'Korean look' in vehicle design is, ironically, far better now than five or ten years ago because of its manufacturers' recent borrowings from the work of European designers. It is through this strategy that Kia has produced an attractive, if stupidly named, car which borrows successfully from the best-designed sedans in the world.

Above: the 2010 Kia Cerato Koupe.

The rear quarter around the C-pillar and boot-line to the tail lights is successful, recalling the superbly resolved Alfa Romeo 159 sedan; the car's face is borrowed from the Honda Accord Euro, which itself followed the 'if you can't do it, steal it' design strategy with great success. From a little below the belt-line, the design becomes clumsy. The absurdly over-emphasised rear bumper is a gross mistake, as is the sagging part of the door sill that flows away from the A-pillar. The transition from the upper corners of the bonnet through the base of the A-pillar to the belt-line is a challenging one in any vehicle design. The Koup's wheel-arches repeat the ugly motif of exaggeratedly angular cross-section found in a number of cars today. Overall, the design has a freshness that could not have been predicted from the nation responsible for some of the dullest road cars ever made.