Why the facelift failed to fix the BMW E65-generation 7 Series’ most egregious faults.
Someone much more literate in such matters than me once used the terms lumper and splitter in connection with automotive design. I find these terms useful and try to be a holistic lumper, but often find myself unduly irritated by what I perceive to be flaws in the detail execution, hence I am an inveterate splitter. This is why Adrian van Hooydonk’s(1) 2001 Siebener has always irritated me to an irrational degree, and why I feel the facelift did little to address its many flaws.
In the photos below, the blue car is the pre-facelift model, the grey is the facelifted version(2).
The most egregious of these flaws are to be found in the area of the rear door, rear quarter panel and C-pillar. The horizontal bodyside crease in the door skin appears to come to a dead stop when it reaches the door’s trailing-edge shut-line. It has to do so to avoid interfering with the curvature of the rear wheel arch. Actually, if you look carefully, you can see that the crease carries on fractionally into the rear quarter panel before fading out, but this is so minimal that your eye does not easily pick it up. Instead it focuses on the apparent mismatch between the profile of the door and rear quarter panel.
To make matters worse, the crease then reappears briefly behind the wheel arch (awkwardly crossing the fuel filler flap on the right-hand side) before coming to another dead stop at the tail light, where it fails to align with the joint between the red and clear sections of the lens. It also looks misaligned with the crease across the door skins, appearing to sag slightly towards the rear of the car. This is particularly noticeable in the rear three-quarter image below.
Why resurrect the crease in this way? Indeed, why have the problematic bodyside crease at all? If it is there to add length and take some visual bulk out of the bodysides, then it fails wholly in this regard. If anything, the crease is placed too high and simply draws attention to the depth of the bodysides below it. This is exacerbated by the lack of any significant ‘tuck-under’ in the (body-coloured) sills.
Incidentally, the door handles are a really clumsy and awkward shape, and have never appeared on any other BMW before or since.
I don’t find the clamshell boot lid design particularly unsettling in itself, but the manner in which the crease that forms the top edge of the boot lid forces itself onto the C-pillar before fading out is really awkward to my eyes. I suppose it mirrors the bodyside crease below, but these two wrongs do not make a right.
The manner in which the boot lid shut-line has to cross this crease diagonally to align with the bottom corner of the rear window adds to the visual clutter at the base of the C-pillar, as does the additional bright(3) trim running along the roof and down either side of the window, where it also terminates awkwardly at the bottom corner. At the root of this problem is the fact that the rear window is significantly narrower than the boot lid and, as a consequence, the C-pillars have a pronounced inward curvature in plan view. Presumably for reasons of cost, none of these issues was addressed in the facelift.
The shape of the main part of the tail light unit in the rear wing is perfectly fine to my eyes, and would have been large enough to accommodate the reversing and fog lights, so why force these onto the boot lid, where they look like an afterthought? The revised two-part tail lights on the facelifted car are little better in that their mismatched curvature (in plan view) stepped lower edges make them still look disjointed. The little filler strip beneath the main part of the light and its poorly placed vertical joint with the rear quarter panel also remains.
It is only at the front that the facelift made a positive impact, but did so possibly by also making it somewhat bland. The problem with the original headlamps wasn’t that they were oddly shaped per-se, but that they were too large in comparison with the uncertainly shaped and apologetically shallow double-kidney grille. At least on the revised car the lights and grille are of a similar scale.
To get an idea as to how the car might have looked without these flaws, I have produced the following image below. The production model, in facelifted form, is shown first for comparison:
The awkward bodyside and C-pillar creases are gone, as are the clumsy door handles and strips of bright trim either side of the rear window. The window is wider and deeper, so that it flows more naturally and directly into the boot lid, without the awkward intersection of shut-line and crease mentioned above. The tail lights are now confined to the wings, made deeper to eliminate the troublesome filler strips, and given a Hofmeister kink at their leading edge. The vertical surface of the boot lid is now flush with the rear lights.
By playing with the way the light falls on the bodysides, I have repositioned the apparent widest point of the door skins’ curvature so that it is now level with the top of the rear wheel arch, lowering the car’s visual ‘centre of gravity’. Previously, this was defined by position of the bodysides crease, which was too high, making the car look top-heavy.
I think the result of these changes is a design that is much cleaner and more coherent than the production car, and one that is certainly less controversial, while still retaining the distinctive silhouette of the E65. Some might see it as perhaps rather lacking in BMW identity(4), but BMW was trying to achieve a decisive break with the past, so my rework should be viewed in that context.
Others might still regard the E65 as simply a lost cause and irredeemably flawed. The contrast between it and the 2003 E60 generation 5 Series, designed at around the same time by Davide Arcangeli(5), is very striking. The E60 is a far more cohesive and assured design, and very much the best looking BMW of this era.
However, I hope that, in undertaking this exercise, I have demonstrated that beneath all the messy detailing there was hidden an interesting and potentially sound fundamental design in the E65.
(1) The E65 is often incorrectly attributed to Chris Bangle, who was Director of BMW Group Design at the time, but it was van Hooydonk who penned the design. It was approved in controversial circumstances, which are explained here.
(2) Photos from http://www.7-forum.com
(3) This strip was body-coloured on some versions.
(4) My redesign is indeed somewhat redolent of the 2004 fourth-generation Honda Legend (Acura RL in the US).
(5) Another design often incorrectly attributed to Bangle. Sadly, Davide Arcangeli, shortly after he was diagnosed with leukemia, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in December 2000, so never saw his creation in production.
Author’s note: After writing this piece, I stumbled across a video featuring an alternative proposal for the E65, which makes an interesting contrast with the production car. The video may be found here.
Driven To Write 
Good morning, Daniel. I agree with all the points you make. Good work on the redesigned car. I like it. I’m not sure though if I agree the E60 is the best looking BMW of it’s era.
The E60 is even worse in exactly those aspects Daniel rightly criticises.
The E60’s beltline sits even higher than the E65’s and the same lack of ‘tuck-under’ for the sills creates a cliff like side aspect that makes the car look unnecessarily heavy and clumsy. The E60 also shares the lack of discipline in shutline management and its door handles are similarly ugly. The E60’s manages the impossible by having even uglier light units.
Maybe Daniel should have a good at the E60? Just a tought 🙂
I can´t agree with Dave on the E60 though I see the character of the element he draws attention to. The E60 got it all right other than the bootlid shut line which I have learned to accept rather than actively like. The car still looks very fresh to me and I think it´s a design that will last whereas the E65 look decidedly of a very particular Thursday afternoon where the designers flung down their pen and the clay modellers cast their scrapers into the air while senior management ambled away for a stiff drink, all in despair.
Good morning gentlemen. Actually, the E60 is, I think, an easy fix. All it needs is to get rid of those funny ‘ears’ on the headlamps and to change the shape of the rear lights so they no longer fall towards the centre of the rear end:
The crease running from the top of the boot lid through the C-pillar makes perfect sense on the E60 because it aligns with the base of the DLO.
Here’s something interesting I stumbled upon while researching this piece, a sketch for the E60 apparently drawn by Davide Arcangeli:
The sketch makes the boot lid shutline look tidier than it is from every other view; the sculpting of the boot to rear wing is fudged in the drawing too. I read it as being like the E65 in principle – the final car is not like it at all in that regard.
No, I never liked the BMW E60 either. Even today, I still cannot understand the design chosen for the exterior. But what appalled me even more at the time was the design of the interior, which completely abandoned the noblesse of its predecessor (E39) in favour of a look that I still find both banal and cheap.
Hi Mark. BMW interior design has been pretty poor since the company abandoned the highly logical and functional, driver-focused layout in favour of increasingly stylised layouts. Here’s the lovely E39 you mentioned, without the wood trim that many had:
While I remain highly ambivalent about Bangle’s exterior design oeuvre, I wholeheartedly and decisively lament the interior designs he oversaw – E60’s Karim Habib-styled cabin being a particularly nasty offender.
In terms of ergonomics, perceived (and actual) quality, as well as appearance, I regard the final Claus Luthe-era BMW cabins the marque’s apogee. One crucial aspect to consider in this context would be that those interiors had been overseen by Hans Braun, whom I consider the finest German automotive interior designer of them all. Braun left BMW at some point in the mid to late ’90s.
The E39 had a great interior. I spend a lot of time there. The photo does show a horrible accelerator pedal and after market gear knob.
Sadly I am not convinced by your E60 efforts, Daniel. The car still looks weird to my eyes. I did enjoy driving the E60 M5 though.
The core of the lamps´ problem in the original iteration lay in the vertical “wedges” of body colour between the grille and the inboard edge of the lamps. They point upwards. They corrected this on the revised version by re-alligning the edge of the grille and lamp so the “wedges” are narrower and point downwards. The under-bumper grille didn´t need any revision at all. The rear graphics are improved on the revised car though the essential geometrical problem of the boot remains and the shut-line is a incongruent. I can imagine that the clay modellers assigned to this car must have had a hard time because of the amount of re-working this area must have had during the car´s initial development. Someone out there with Chavant clay under their nails knows the truth. Conversely, it could have been a case of the car not being modelled long enough so there was soak-time to absorb the new shape. It might be a case of there not being enough time to assess the merit of the shape. If I was a chief designer I´d demand days to be able to sit by and walk around the car so as to take in the shapes to avoid results like the E65.
In their first E65 test German magazine ‘auto motor und sport’ had a picture of the car’s front with the caption ‘Der Chef hat Tränensäcke’ (the boss has eye bags). From a notoriously BMW-friendly magazine this says it all.
The dark indicator bars make the headlights look like a pair of those old fashioned spectacles with a nickel frame and a strip of dark plastic at the top. And then the light unit suddenly looks like sagging eyes.
I think Daniel’s E60 and E65 changes make both cars look oriental. I never saw the problem with the E60’s headlight ears.
Given the attention to detail that is often a feature of Japanese designs, I’ll take that as a compliment, John! 😁
Congratulations Daniel, your changes do create a much stronger and simpler design which is easier in the eye. They make that rear view of the E65 look more like that of our old friend the RB1 (4th generation) Honda Legend of the mid to late noughties. They also achieve your aim of demonstrating that the fundamentals of the E65 were fine. Finally, I like the way you achieved your point by not lingering on the front and rear lamps and ‘bunny-hatch’ boot lid. Your changes would not have been cheap, though, if they were to be proposals for the facelift.
I always thought the facelifted E65 much worse to behold than the original, because the changes were so obvious and incongruous with what was carried over from the earlier version.
Overall, nice job, well argued.
Dear Daniel
Many thanks for this great analysis. One of your observations, namely the disproportion between the design of the headlights and that of the kidney, is, in my humble opinion, one of the main reasons why I still have little sympathy for this vehicle design.
Obviously, the proportions are not right; the headlamp units are clearly too large in relation to the kidney. I can’t see any visual connection between these elements. It almost seems as if the elements were designed independently and then simply integrated without further coordination.
Some years ago, I had the opportunity to talk to a BMW designer involved at the time about this dilemma. He admitted that the headlights had to be changed at the last minute because the original lighting technology for the turn signals ( allegedly that of the BMW Z8), which were supposed to be much slimmer, turned out not to be suitable for series production.
Irrespective of this, I find the design of the kidneys almost somewhat banal and uninspired. Whereby, in my view, this is true of most of the vehicles that were created under the aegis of Chris Bangle. Which is not to say that the current designs, which seem to be completely out of control, impress me more in any way.
I am relieved that I am in good company with my abhorrence of the E60.
Regarding the E65, I think it would have been less controversial if presented at the beginning in ‘face-lifted’ form.
I just want to say at this point, in the face of a tidal wave of derision, the dished alloys on the blue car pictured from the rear three quarters (third image down from the top) are gorgeous and among my favourite ever allows. Those with finer vanes on the bronze coloured car used by Daniel to show his tidied up version are not bad either (not sure I have noticed those before). They are up there with those on the E60 5 Series of which I wrote here a long time ago now: https://driventowrite.com/2015/09/17/theme-wheels-bmw-e60-5-series-19-inch/.
After all the insights I have read so far, I am still in the ‘for’ camp rather than the ‘against’. This remains an impactful car, imposing and a statement about the future direction of car design in its broader sense. It changed the dynamic in the market such that I think it forced Mercedes (for example) to follow BMW in this sector for the first time. I think the stance and basic proportions are fine and the details, for all the fact that they jar, create interestingly irrational effects for the eye to take in and for the brain to try to understand. Most of all, it still looks modern and not out of place on today’s roads – and there are few car designs which are now 20 years old of which one can say the same thing.
It might seem paradoxical that something Modernist could look both fresh and not modern at the same time. The E65´s freshness is what dates it. The stale and inert character of much of the current car fleet makes it looks old already. So: if it´s stale it´s new and if it´s fresh it´s probably 20 years old already. Noble exceptions are the i3, Volvo and Polestar and Hyundai´s formally thrilling EV6 (see what they did with the bumpers and lights). That said, the E65 is a failed triumph or a triumphant failure. The hard part with innovating is choosing different-good and not different-bad. We are still discussing it in the way we aren´t discussing other designs attempting to serve the same market. I would very much like it if Chris Bangle was still designing cars as part of a concept design team.
A very interesting series about a vehicle that never interested me.
I also didn’t understand the discussion about the design at the time, because the vehicle simply didn’t interest me.
Above all, I thought until today that the criticism then and now was (only) about the strange shape of the boot lid.
As Daniel has shown in his modifications, the shape of the boot lid is not the problem. It’s the poor detail solutions – and it’s easy to imagine today, in hindsight, why the basic shape of the design was passed off as good by the executive suite at the time.
It will probably always remain a mystery for what reasons these poor detailed solutions were accepted, because as Daniel showed with a few mouse clicks, it could have been better.
It can’t have been the money, because whether a vehicle would have cost 1000 or a little more can’t have played a role in this price range. I doubt that Daniel’s changes would have cost much more money to produce.
Good morning, Fred. I think that’s the tragedy of the E65. As S.V. says above, my revisions would have been too expensive for the facelift but could easily have been incorporated into the original design, turning the E65 into a clean and handsome looking car. Even the clamshell boot lid looks pretty well integrated and now makes sense.
I agree with S.V. about those lovely alloy wheels (although I’d have hated having to clean the multi-spoke items on the bronze car!)
Here’s a sketch I found by Adrian van Hooydonk for the E65:
Perfect, as long as the occupants can put their heads in the boot…
That van H sketch is like the Z9 theme. It only works if the wing to boot crease has surfaces running into it at the right angle. But how it ends is fudged on the Van H sketch and so is the boot-to-c pillar blend. It´s a nice drawing but quite hard to implement. I don´t know if its conflicts are readable to non-design people…
That’s the issue, Richard. The sketch is great fun, but totally impractical for production, as is the case with most such sketches. The contrast between it and Davide Arcangeli’s E60 drawing above, which is rather more realistic in its proportions, is instructive.
Such sketches are fine for generating ideas for further testing and it is good if a pleasing character in the sketch can be retained when applied to a package. That was not the case with the E65 where the theme in Van H´s sketch simply didn´t fit the requirements for a huge boot and many other factors.
It’s odd that designers, knowing they are to produce a comfortable four-door saloon, start out by sketching a sports coupé and then adding an extra door shutline. It seems like setting yourself up for a fall. Having said that, I can clearly see what he was getting at thematically in the sketch, in marked contrast to the production car.
It’s interesting to see how divisive the E60 is proving to be in the comments section. I’m very firmly in the fan club: A car that still looks fresh and modern, like the first new Audi A6; in marked contrast to their successors.
Hi Chris. The 1997 C5-generation Audi A6 makes for an interesting comparison with both the E60 and E65. Like BMW, Audi appeared to want to try something different, but the result was much less polarizing than either BMW:
I didn’t warm immediately to the unusual treatment of the bumpers, which aligned vertically with the lights rather than wrapping around to the wheel arches, but I really like it now. It’s a slight shame that Audi reverted to a rather more conventionally handsome design for the C6:
(Off the topic: The C5-generation Audi A6 is one of the best-looking-cars, outside and inside – and I´m a complete “Oh, no-not-an-Audi” type of guy.)
Chris: the A6 is another ageless beauty. It seems that applying “standard” industrial design principles, established by the Ulm School in the late 50s produces work that stays looking good but also hard for fashion driven manufacturers to use consistently.
I’m not design-literate enough to properly express myself on this point but it does, indeed, seem very much the case that something modern in the proper sense, remains modern in the colloquial sense. That first generation A6 looks as fresh as a daisy, whereas its successor looks dated; which has nothing to do with the condition of the examples Daniel kindly posted.
Richard’s comment made me think of the watches Max Bill designed for Junghans in the 1960s; well over half a century old at this point, also still fresh as a daisy.
I really liked the C5 when it was introduced and still do. Too bad it wasn’t that good to drive. Nice to see a Kappa in the photo of the C6.
I´ll take the Kappa, please. It´s amazing how readily identifiable it is given it´s canal-water calmness.
Agreed the Kappa is readily identifiable and restrained at the same time. Like Fred I am not an Audi person, but isn’t this true for the Audi C5 as well?
Here’s another, higher resolution image of the E65 rework:
The Wikipedia entry for the E65 says that van Hooydonk’s initial sketches were of a fastback body style and I think your rework as pictured here actually brings that out.
Daniel, I’m afraid I don’t get your c-pilar treatment. It would seem you’re aiming for the pilar to be flush with the outer edge of the boot lid – this would necessitate some kind of sail panel, which I cannot identify. Moreover, you kept part of the bowed ledge on the boot lid, but image makes this detail appear somewhat arbitrary.
Thank you for clarifying these aspects.
Hi Christopher. I think I understand what you mean: in the image above, the horizontal surface of the boot lid seems to continue forwards between the C-pillars, almost as though they were ‘buttresses’.
What I intended was that the rear window would be both wider (the same width as the boot lid) and deeper, and still flush with the trailing edges of the C-pillar, so there would be no need for any sort of filler panel between the glass and the boot lid. I have tried to show this in the amended image below:
Regarding the vertical surface of the boot lid, I would make it and the new tail lights align to make a smooth arc in plan view at bumper level.
I’m only a designer and am sure the body engineering department can make it work – that’s what they get paid the big bucks for!
Now just pull down the rear window’s lower edge to the level of the rear side panels’ upper edge and make the lid smooth bow from the lights without that Carrera RS duck tail.
I’ll get straight on it, Dave. 😩
Daniel, why do you persist in trying to make a silk purse out of a sows’ ear ? Let it lie/die. It isn’t the worst looking car ever, and is no longer the worst looking BMW…
Fair comment, Mervyn. The object of the exercise was to show that there was merit in the underlying concept of the E65, but it was completely undone by the shocking lack of attention to detail in its execution. It might never have been a silk purse, but it didn’t have to be a sow’s ear.
To put the debate about the merits or otherwise of the Bangle-era designs, it’s worth taking a few minutes to appreciate one of van Hooydonk’s current creations:
Where does one even start to try and make sense of the iX?
I am in favour of reviewing the minutes of the last DTW annual meeting in relation to the posting of indecent images.
(…and I’m not talking about pictures of animals…)
I’m astonished by the production iX because, somehow, BMW has managed to make it even uglier than the concept, by tacking on a load of shiny black plastic to its nose and sills.
Sorry for upsetting you, Fred. 😉
This vehicle design has said goodbye to really all the brand’s own particularities, which BMW has developed, preserved and cultivated with painstaking discipline over the last 50 years. The only exception is the kidney, which is presumably why it has been distorted into these absurd dimensions. Thus it hurls a resolute “yes, it is” at any observer who must be taken totally out of his or her senses at the sight of it, unable to grasp that this is supposed to be a BMW.
Daniel, was that really necessary? I just finished dinner…
I think I can (he says, modestly). The car itself is apparently very good – comfortable, big range, fast, good handling, hidden tech that works (called ‘shy-tech’ – I’m not making this up), quiet, etc.
The styling is all about getting noticed. Quiet elegance, as far as that’s possible with an SUV, isn’t going to cut it. We all said how boring the Aston Martin SUV is, recently, and that’s quite a nice-looking car – just generic.
This car actually has bantz value. ‘I see you got one of them, then, hurr, hurr.’ ‘Yeah, not much to look at, but goes like a train, hurr, hurr’ etc.
It’s kind of the automotive equivalent of having an exotic pet.
Have you been watching Mark Nichols’ review of the iX on Vanarama, Charles? He likes it very much, but he’s a youngster!
Maybe I’m just too old to ‘get’ the iX.
The iX is the modern equivalent to the 1959 fin-tailed cars from Detroit: too much of everything. Peugeot ´phoned to say they wanted their wheel arch styling treatment back. Opel have asked for their C-pillar concept to be returned. And Hyundai might consider legal action for the way the BMW grille is beginning to look their old ones.
Hello Daniel,
The ones I’ve watched are Autogefühl and Carwow. The iX genuinely does seem to be fun to drive. I’ll give the Vanarama review a look, too – I find Mark Nichols quite entertaining.
“Where does one even start to try and make sense of the iX?”
If you think that the ultimate driving machine is some sort of SUV, then visit a Range Rover dealer, and while you are there perhaps look at an I-Pace.
No worries. Now there is color changing paint on the iX:
https://motorsport.tv/embed/8SmCUC46-bmw-ix-flow-featuring-e-ink
It’s only black and white for now, but what if they had color? The iX could become invisible that way 🙂
The complex, inharmonious, and highly reflective folds of this car’s surface resembles accident-crumpling in places. In three dimensions the viewer could walk around the machine and check that it was basically symmetrical, but that’s not immediately apparent from a single photo. An expensive consumer product shouldn’t look damaged, indecisive, improperly assembled or crudely formed.
I looked at the iX video. Does anyone else think it was especially unfortunate that the background changed colour too? This distracted from the effect, like playing Mozart in the background of a Mozart performance in case the performance isn´t Mozarty enough.
There was a comment in the video appraisal of the E65 (yesterday?) that it sold quite well, partly because of Chinese sales. Clearly the Chinese market is key for the iX.
Hello Mervyn, I’m sure that you’re right – China is a key market and the iX’s design isn’t amazingly unusual compared with some others in that market.
https://carsalesbase.com/category/car-sales-china/china-by-model/
Here is my final (I promise!) iteration of the E65 rework. I’ve raised the belt line to the level of the boot lid so that it has conventional shut-lines with the rear wings. Production car first for comparison:
Sorry, Dave, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the integral spoiler!
Oh, one more go please, Daniel!
What bugs me most on the E65 is the top line of the DLO. It‘s one continuous arc from the side mirrors through the c-pillar. I think that feature works just fine on the E60 (on which I am on the fan-side), but it’s not doing any good for the E65, with all its horizontal linearity. Maybe something similar like the DLO of the VW Phaeton (whose quiet, but still imposing elegance I quite like)? Granted, the result would probably have not much to do anymore with the original …
Hi CX.GTi. That’s the thing with these redesigns: one ends up getting further and further away from the production car. You’re right about the arched upper DLO line though. It’s really quite noticeable on the standard wheelbase blue car above. I think my rework works better on the long wheelbase version (the brown car in the piece) where the arched roof is less prominent. I’d also like to make the boot 50 to 75mm longer as it looks a bit manx-tailed at the moment.
Fortunately, I will be away from my laptop for the next three weeks, so will have to stop at this!
Thank you, Daniel, for creating this version wchich for me looks infinitely better than the awful original. I don’t mind the integral spoiler as such, just the way it was done on the E65 with concave surfaces and a stupid duck tail. The E32 shows how it can be done with convex surfaces and the spoiler lip pointing upwards rather than rearwards and your proposal looks similar.
I still wouldn’t have liked or bought this car.
Daniel’s first restyle of the E65 is AOK. I’d have purchased that car (appropriately spec’d) except… the in-cabin train wreck of i-drive. If i-drive were a delete option, then the car would have been a buy. They were a nice drive.
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Unlike E65, the E60 was an intriguing design. One feature I noticed was that in profile the angle of the c-pillar was the aligned to the leading edge of the tail lamp assembly. This can be observed in a picture at http://www.ausmotive.com/images2/BMW-E60-M5-04.jpg
It provides an unexpected effect as an E60 drives past. The change in perspective makes it visually interesting.
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Of all the E60 variants the M5 was the pick (still is). It was a hoot to drive, although let down by that infernal i-drive torture device (forcing upon the driver the tedious business of searching menus to reset all the important stuff prior to each drive- just appalling really). The M5 (especially the transmission) was hostile unless all the correct settings were enabled and you really drove it hard (as is said, drive it like you stole it). Do that, thrash the crap out of it and it was brilliant. Not a restful or peaceful car to drive though. Too much encouragement to go all in.
…and it had a fabulous sound track.
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The iX is just so very bad taste. You’d never live down being seen in one (even as a passenger). A real three bagger if ever there was. Ugh.
What has happened to BMW? Imagine those poor Turkic line workers in Munich wasting their talents on manufacturing that thing. This really shows a damning lack of respect by BMW’s “stylists” for their colleagues (engineering, production etc.), not to mention the whole of the public (not just customers, the public in general). Oh, the shame!
Hopefully BMW will be forced to stop producing iX and similar uglies for the rest of the Europe energy winter. Maybe that gives them the time to introspect, do a Ferrari and start thinking about beauty…
Maybe.
Perhaps.
Ok.
One can hope they do.