Major changes are happening across the BMW Group design teams beginning October 1. Adrian van Hooydonk is still the big boss, but future BMWs will no longer be penned by Domagoj Dukec. The Frankfurt-born Croat who once said that a “good design is not about pretty or ugly” has led the design team at the core brand since April 2019. He is now moving to Rolls-Royce where he will take on the same role.
Future BMWs will be designed by two people. The models in the upper mid-size and luxury class will be the responsibility of Maximilian Missoni. He’s the former man in charge of design at Polestar. After spending six years at Volvo’s spinoff brand, he’s been tasked to draw BMW’s biggest vehicles as well as the upcoming BMW Alpina-badged models. As a refresher, the BMW Group acquired the Buchloe-based niche automaker in March 2022.
The compact to mid-size cars will be styled by Oliver Heilmer, the design boss at Mini since 2017. In addition, his team will also be responsible for how M cars will look. In his place at the helm of Mini’s design department will be Holger Hampf, the former head of the Designworks division. Going forward, Rolls-Royce’s ex-design chief Anders Warming will lead Designworks as well as “Advanced Design topics.”
Elsewhere, BMW has appointed Claudia Braun as the leader of a new cross-brand department for Color and Material Design for BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce. Christian Bauer remains the leader of the digital customer experience.
It would be easy for us to jump to conclusions about why BMW is shaking up its design team. If you follow the company on social media, you’re aware of the mostly negative comments about how the cars look. However, sales figures tell a different story; BMW had a record-breaking 2023 after delivering 2,252,793 cars.
Could that number have been even higher without such polarizing designs? I guess we’ll never know the answer. The fact of the matter is BMW is doing better than ever if we’re strictly talking about sales. It also helps that the Bavarian marque has a vast portfolio of models with a rich mix of combustion cars, plug-in hybrids, and EVs to cover the entire premium segment.
Although BMW’s days of being “the ultimate driving machine” might be over, it still sells performance cars with a manual gearbox. Not only that but it just resurrected the M5 Touring and is bringing it to America, making it the first M wagon sold in the United States. In other markets, there’s also a smaller M3 Touring. The Z4 roadster is still around, now with a stick shift for the M40i.
But the sad reality of 2024 is that BMW’s commercial success isn’t attributed to cars that excite traditionalists. Crossovers and SUVs do the heavy lifting, and the Munich-based marque has plenty of those. As small as the X1 and as big as the X7, with the XM serving as the ugly duckling.
Although BMW interiors are now dominated by huge screens that have swallowed most physical controls, people don’t seem to have a problem with that. Even the signature iDrive controller is starting to disappear but that’s not stopping people from buying X1s. The fact that prices have gone up substantially in recent years hasn’t hampered demand either.
It goes to show we are not BMW’s target market anymore. By “we,” I mean people lusting for the days of the E46, E39, or other internal codenames that first spring to mind. Although the latest designs work from a business perspective given the strong sales, the Germans are preparing to shake things up. The Neue Klasse concepts have strongly suggested fresh styling is planned.
The design of these new EVs has likely been finalized already. Don’t expect the newly appointed people to influence the appearance of next year’s iX3 crossover or the i3 sedan coming in 2026. A car’s design is locked in several years ahead of the official debut, so these new teams will likely leave their mark on vehicles scheduled to be launched around the end of the decade.
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