badbadm
08-13-2002, 03:33 PM
By Bill Green Fast Company, Sept 2002...
The redesigned 7 Series is leading the charge, and it has met with plenty of return fire. Bangle's design team reshaped the 7's back end by raising the trunk lid and widening the opening. It also introduced a digitized system, dubbed iDrive, which enables drivers to control 270 features-from the navigation system to the built-in phone to the surround-sound stereo-by using a mouse-like device to scroll through menus on a screen situated atop the dashboard. The radical look and the attempt to reimagine the human-computer interface in a car have shocked some critics and buyers. More than 2,000 people have signed a "Stop Chris Bangle" petition on petitiononline.com, calling on BMW to fire its design chief. (Presumably, the entry "I hate myself for that design!" signed by one "Chris Bangle" is a fake.)
BMW counters that sales are running 17% ahead of those for the previous 7 Series during the same early months of its life in the mid-1990s. Adrian Van Hooydonk, president of Designworks and the man who first sketched the new 7 and developed its styling, contends that BMW's flagship car was in danger of being stifled by the weight of its own history.
"Over the years, we've been very successful in defining the BMW look, which we've done by being very precise in our designs," he says. "But when you make only incremental changes, you find yourself in a corridor that gets narrower and narrower. Finally, you reach a dead end, and by then, the customer has abandoned you for a car that's fresh and new. We had to break through
that corridor. The goal for the new 7 was to push the boundaries as far as we could. You can't be a leader if you're not out in front."
The redesigned 7 Series is leading the charge, and it has met with plenty of return fire. Bangle's design team reshaped the 7's back end by raising the trunk lid and widening the opening. It also introduced a digitized system, dubbed iDrive, which enables drivers to control 270 features-from the navigation system to the built-in phone to the surround-sound stereo-by using a mouse-like device to scroll through menus on a screen situated atop the dashboard. The radical look and the attempt to reimagine the human-computer interface in a car have shocked some critics and buyers. More than 2,000 people have signed a "Stop Chris Bangle" petition on petitiononline.com, calling on BMW to fire its design chief. (Presumably, the entry "I hate myself for that design!" signed by one "Chris Bangle" is a fake.)
BMW counters that sales are running 17% ahead of those for the previous 7 Series during the same early months of its life in the mid-1990s. Adrian Van Hooydonk, president of Designworks and the man who first sketched the new 7 and developed its styling, contends that BMW's flagship car was in danger of being stifled by the weight of its own history.
"Over the years, we've been very successful in defining the BMW look, which we've done by being very precise in our designs," he says. "But when you make only incremental changes, you find yourself in a corridor that gets narrower and narrower. Finally, you reach a dead end, and by then, the customer has abandoned you for a car that's fresh and new. We had to break through
that corridor. The goal for the new 7 was to push the boundaries as far as we could. You can't be a leader if you're not out in front."