Aufwiedersehen: Goodbye Chris Bangle, BMW's lead designer

Chris Bangle, controversial but undeniably influential lead designer for BMW, has retired. Above, a 2002 talk at TED about "Cars as Art". Note particularly his notion of "cars as avatar".

Autoweek has this profile:

So where does that leave the 52-year-old Bangle, who took the helm at BMW just before his 37th birthday? For now, perhaps a semiretirement of sorts involving wine-making at a house he is renovating in Tuscany, Italy, said Jim Hall, an analyst with 2953 Analytics in Birmingham, Mich., and a close friend of the designer.

"He was getting ready for retirement anyway. . . . I think he thought it was time to go," Hall said.

Bangle has been fond of Italy since working at Fiat Centro Stile from 1985 to 1992, briefly holding the title of director for about less than a year before bolting for BMW. But Hall left open the possibility that Bangle could resurface, though the depressed car industry is hardly a market for free-agent executives.

I find Bangle a fascinating theorist and a capable, interesting designer, but I'm just as excited to see what the new direction of BMW will be as to see what Bangle moves on to next. [via Core77]

[#1 posted by pberch , February 3, 2009 1:13 PM]

Aufwiedersehen

[#2 posted by Anonymous , February 3, 2009 2:52 PM]

aren't most of his designs for BMW considered ugly? i won't consider it bad news for BMW to get new designer(s)

[#3 posted by adam , February 3, 2009 3:20 PM]

I (and all of the BMW fans I know) rejoiced when we heard this news this morning. Bangle has taken some of the most beautiful contemporary cars in existence (see, e.g., the E39 5 series) and turned them into crap (e.g., the 7 series he butchered). Before BMW could see what a mess he was making of things, he got his filthy hands on every model.

Bangle was a reason why I replaced my last car with my current - a BMW to a MB.

Now, finally, he's leaving at a time when I can safely wait the BMW model redesign cycle to flush the Bangle Butt (and the rest of the Bangle filth) out of the pipeline. In 2015 or so, BMW should be producing beautiful cars again.

(Was I able to tame my vitriol enough?)

[#4 posted by Blackhat , February 4, 2009 10:04 AM]

It's amusing to me that there's been such an enthusiastic response to this news on the auto forums. I haven't seen a single person who was disappointed by Bangle's resignation; the most support he's gotten was from posters saying that he wasn't totally to blame for BMW's recent bad design decisions! However it appears that a lot of the stuff that he gets blamed for was actually the inspiration of his successor in this position, so I don't expect a quick turnaround there....