There is already a fairly precise answer to the frequently asked question about what the future of the automobile looks like: the time of the all-rounder is over. The time when people drove the Volkswagen Beetle (in the past) or the large SUV (today) to work or on vacation, to the bakery or to kindergarten, will soon come to an end because of many of the planet’s current problems This is due to the fact that many people find it appropriate to drive a one-meter-tall toddler to kindergarten and other short inner-city journeys in a comfort vehicle that weighs over two tons and travels at over 240 kilometers per hour, and the air there too. Wouldn’t it make much more sense to differentiate between very compact, very light vehicles for the city center and intercity cars for long journeys – and between the car as a means of transport and the car as a work of art that is not used for everyday transport, but for trips and for fun moves?With some of the sheet metal-covered, heavy sofa sets that BMW is currently rolling out in the SUV segment, you can ask yourself where the much-vaunted “joy of driving” is supposed to be – and you are correspondingly relieved that the car manufacturer Despite the aberrations in taste of the marketing department and customers, it is still apparently able to return to the point at which the brand’s good reputation as a manufacturer of light, elegant, rather compact sports sedans was once established. The “Vision Neue Klasse” is reminiscent of the 60s and 70s without being retro – and with an electric motorBMW AGRecently, BMW presented the “Vision Neue Klasse”, a bright concept car that stands out with its small shark nose, the Hofmeister kink and the A lot of glass reminds us a bit of the good old sports sedans of the sixties and seventies without being too retro, and this time it is moved by an electric drive. Inside, to improve the CO₂ balance and mood, there is yellow corduroy and white recycled materials instead of thick chrome and real leather; the taillights are architectural and clearly designed like an Ulm School coffee table. The exterior of the concept car is as smooth as an iPad or iPhone. The object that shapes the 21st century, the cell phone, today also influences the design of the automobile that shaped the previous century. New M2 is reminiscent of the classics from BMWBefore the new class comes onto the market, BMW is adding a car to its range , which highlights the old virtues that have been lost in the SUV age: The current 2 Series Coupé embodies everything that the 2002 BMW and the first three-series once stood for: small, fast, compact, far-set Greenhouse, short notchback, two round headlights , clear shape. The new model is available with a semi-decent four-cylinder engine and – for those who do not primarily see the car as a sensible means of transport, but as an entertaining work of art made up of engine sound, body acceleration and shape – also as an “M2” with a three-liter in-line six-cylinder and 460 hp. This model can be recognized by a front where there is no chrome at all. While the competition from Mercedes is increasingly falling for tinsel kitsch – bright Mercedes stars as the radiator grille, Swarovski stones in the headlights, fake, heavily chromed imitation exhaust pipes – the design department at BMW is relying on an aesthetic that is reminiscent of that with the geometric plastic nose of the M2 Italian industrial design and the brutalist architecture of the 1970s. “M2”: a total work of art made up of engine sound, body acceleration and shapeBMW AGThe front of the M2 with the chrome-free nostrils is plastic in two senses – as a material and as a synonym for “sculpture”. Which is perhaps no coincidence when you know the background of the man who designed it: José Casas, Senior Exterior Designer at BMW, was born in Mexico City, in the country where the car is also built, his parents are Architects. As a child, he says, he always went to their office after school and drew. From an early age he became enthusiastic about German and Italian cars and the idea that you could design an object that would actually be on the streets en masse appears “that you can touch and use” and that moves people in a double sense, says Casas. Eventually he ended up on adventurous paths as an intern at the Italian bodywork manufacturer Pininfarina – and then at BMW, where he designed the “Vision M Next” study, which the car magazine “Autostrada” hailed as “the best-looking BMW in about 15 years, no since 1979”. became. The study was stylistically groundbreaking: the thin taillights, the profiled nostrils that emblazoned on the front of the car like two tunnel tubes and the kidney motif varied geometrically complex – everything about this shape was more architectural than baroque-biomorphic and completely different from so many other cars of the last few years, which were more reminiscent of swollen Chinese dragons. Many typically German cars are designed by foreign designers. Casas’ idea of car design is reminiscent of a great in the field, the recently deceased Marcello Gandini, who in 1968 marked the age of the car with a radical cut anthropomorphic automobiles with their swelling sheet metal bodies and round headlight eyes and instead made architecture on wheels: Gandini’s Alfa Romeo Carabo and the Lamborghini Countach he designed were wedges whose flat surfaces were artfully composed, there was no chrome and no decorative wood, and except There was nothing round about the wheels and steering wheel. Mexican-born BMW designer José CasasBMW AGA, says Casas, is also a fan of simplicity; he doesn’t want hundreds of holes and bulges and air intakes and textures. The fact that the shape of his BMWs becomes geometrically complex and dynamic is perhaps due to Casas’ interest in the 2002 BMW from the seventies, which he cites as a reference, but perhaps also to his enthusiasm for the other major area of contemporary design, in which there is even more Money is spent on technical optimization and seduction through form: the designer has a large collection of sneakers. One can suspect the roots of Casas’ penchant for pastels, neon and signal colors here, but also in the company’s history with the 1972 BMW Turbo concept car, designed by legendary French car designer Paul Bracq, now 90.
A story from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Quarterly, the F.A.Z.’s future magazine.
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An astonishing phenomenon must be pointed out here: How is it that so many cars that are considered typically German, typically French or typically Italian are the work of foreign designers? The most elegant Mercedes vehicles of the 1960s, the Pagoda SL and the 8-series, were designed by Paul Bracq, who, after switching to BMW in the early 1970s, designed the five-series and then the three-series BMWs, which still have the image today shape the brand. The American Tom Tjaarda designed the 124 Fiat Spider as an expression of total dolce vita – and the De Tomaso Pantera at the same time; the most futuristic Porsche, which is still groundbreaking today, the 928 model, was designed in 1977 by the Latvian Anatole Lapine; the legendary French Citroën DS is the work of the Italian Flaminio Bertoni and the Renault Clio is the work of the Dutchman Laurens van den Acker – and if no Frenchman designed the five-series, it was an Italian like Ercole Spada (1988) or an American like Chris Bangle (2003 ).More on the topicSometimes someone may have to come from afar to show the locals what their qualities are or could be, and perhaps car design and design is always a longing projection from abroad and into the distance. In times of growing nationalism, that would be good news.
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