Chris Bangle Resigns from BMW

Breaking news: Chris Bangle has resigned from his post as head of design at BMW. Love him or hate him, this is big news.

According to Car Design News:

BMW today announced that Chris Bangle is resigning from his position as Head of Design for the BMW Group. Bangle will be handing over his post to current Head of BMW Automobile Design, Adrian van Hooydonk, when he leaves the company to pursue his own design-related endeavors outside the auto industry. Bangle has worked closely with van Hooydonk at BMW Group Design Development for nearly 17 years.

Over the years numerous (and often controversial) concept and production vehicle designs have been developed under Bangle’s leadership. As well as the 3, 5 and 7 Series, he and his teams were responsible for the design of a range of other BMW models, including the Z3, Z4 and Z8 sports cars, the X3, X5 and X6 SUVs, and the new 6 Series and 1 Series model ranges. Other developments under Bangle’s auspices include the new Mini range, Rolls-Royce models and a number of innovative motorcycle concepts. During his tenure, Bangle was also instrumental in building the company’s consultancy subsidiary, DesignworksUSA, into a global design agency for leading international brands operating within a wide variety of industries.

Read more:

• Car Design News on Bangle’s resignation, and Van Hooydonk
• New York Times

Designing the New BMW 7-Series

Sculpting clay on the 2009 BMW 7

Here’s an outstanding series of photos describing the design development for the new 2009 BMW 7-Series. It shows step by step from drawing to renderings and clay how the exterior and interior of the car have been refined. In particular there is a lot about the clay process, which is unique to automotive design. Even in this day and age of CAD and 3-D goggles, there’s nothing like seeing a car physically represented at full scale with masterfully crafted clay.

The BMW Group’s process of designing a new vehicle and finding the ideal shape is based on a concept of keen competition. In the development of each new model, several design teams compete with one another in their design of the exterior and interior in a truly creative contest. Made up of designers and modellers, the teams then, in the second phase of the design process, complete models in original, 1:1 size clearly showing the aesthetic harmony of the car’s proportions and surfaces. To do this they use a simple but very important material in the design process - clay.

I wasn’t a big fan of the last 7-Series (though the roof profile and side glass had great lines and proportion), but from the little you can see on this one it looks like the 2009 model could be very interesting and elegant.

Read more.