WHEN CHRIS BANGLE left BMW in 2009 to pursue a design career outside the automotive business, there was a huge sigh of relief from many of the brand’s devotees. Bangle had overseen the most significant change to BMW design since perhaps Frenchman Parl Barcq’s work on the E21 3 Series, E24 6 Series and E32 7 Series. More so, even, than Turin-born Michelotti’s Neue Klasse BMWs of the 1960s, too, which were echoed by Ercol Spada. Trouble was there was a substantial rage over what Bangle had done.
Bangle was a controversial appointment when he took up the reins of BMW design in October 1992. It wasn’t that the German carmaker had replaced Deutsch designer Claus Luthe with a non-German; after all, the aforementioned French and Italian designers were pillars to modern Munich’s success and celebrated as such. It was more that BMW’s new design chief was – gulp – American.
While hardly synonymous with style or flair in the same manner as the French or Italians, Bangle wasn’t new
