BMW M Division’s new halo car rings the division bell.
When they ship the next tranche of recorded human history data files off into outer space, may I propose that, under the section entitled “Automobile – sub-section Supercars”, they include the BMW M1 alongside the McLaren F1 and the Gordon Murray Automotive’s T.50. Before you set a Twitter mob on me, however, allow me to explain.
It’s not that the BMW M1 was blindingly fast, or achingly beautiful – although in fairness, it was both pretty and sufficiently quick in its heyday – it is just that few cars can match its legacy as the progenitor of such a prolific line of hugely desirable performance offspring. As the machine that started the M-car Empire, the BMW M1 is halo-car royalty.
The original BMW halo car, the M1 is still a sight to behold 40 years down the line.
Just look at it! It’s clear Giorgetto Giugiaro’s 1970s folded-paper design language forms the basis, but as ever, it’s the proportions and the details that deliver the excitement: the low nose, dinky kidneys, pop-up headlights, heavily raked windscreen, vented C-pillars, louvred rear screen and those signature sink-strainer rims. The Paul Rosche and Martin Braungart-engineered M88 3.5-litre 24-valve inline-6 motor was a masterpiece. That same engine also powered the M635CSi and the first M5 – two of BMW’s most successful and influential cars of the 1980s. As a machine designed for pure driving pleasure, the M1 was so significant that BMW decorated its rump with two blue-and-white propeller badges instead of the usual one.
Poring over the design of this patriarch of all BMW sports machines, you get a sense of the way things were, and the way things should be. Sadly though, it appears BMW does not agree. You see, there’s a new M-car in play and it’s so disruptive it’s tearing a hole in the space-time continuum. It’s called the BMW Concept XM and it has me deeply vexed.
A change in design themes or a deliberate shock and awe tactic?
It’s like the Tesla Cyber(dump)truck happening all over again. Here’s another new design that purports to be futuristic, but riffs off a 40-year-old car instead. Whereas the Cybertruck might as well have been a DeLorean pickup, the Concept XM wears two badges on a rear end that is clearly styled to channel the distinctive flying buttresses of the M1. Sporting two BMW roundels was perfectly correct on the 2008 M1 Hommage and again on the astonishing 2019 BMW Vision M Next, but seeing them on the eyeball-assaulting behemoth that is the Concept XM is sacrilege. That’s like Mercedes-Benz unveiling a next-gen Gelandewagen Coupe with gullwing doors and then announcing that it channels the 300SL!
The heritage-sullying silliness of twin badges on a monolithic SUV would be a fraction more palatable if the vehicle had been styled to beguile. But no, it has not.
Visually incomprehensible from every angle, the Concept XM is an utterly graceless mishmash of conflicting lines, unhappy proportions and exaggerated details. Just look at the size of those kidneys! Bizarrely, it appears to be both chiselled and fat at the same time – like some sort of low-polygon hippopotamus.
Two propellor badges on the rear end, just like the M1…
What happened to BMW’s once-perfect grasp of the balance between elegant restraint and sporting intent? 2002, 3.0 CSL, E24 6 Series (the 1st generation), E38 7 Series… I could go on, but they all struck that balance beautifully. Even the mighty E30 M3 with its blistered arches, deep front spoiler, side skirts and be-winged boot lid managed to project a deeply desirable level of stylish menace.
Just about every production model that BMW has released over the last 4 decades has stuck, in varying degrees, to the trusted recipe of twin-headlight, double-kidney grille, a continuous rising beltline and Hofmeister kink. Even the excursions into “flame surfacing” and coffin boots (from the Chris Bangle era), while mildly disturbing at first, didn’t stab at your eyes as this Concept XM does.
What’s most puzzling is these designers actually know what they are doing. BMW’s design team contains some of the finest talent around, meaning this is a conscious effort not just to paint outside the lines, but to paint on another canvas altogether. Restraint has been cast off, the once-sacrosanct boundaries have been breached. Right or wrong, the legacy of Wilhelm Hofmeister, Paul Bracq and Claus Luthe is being cancelled right before our eyes.
Good design doesn’t require constant explanation.
I have so many questions: Should design be led by marketing department clinics, or by artists? Is it okay to plaster halo heritage cues onto inappropriate new models? Is there really no such thing as universal beauty, or at least something close to that? Has BMW deliberately designed this vehicle to jar and provoke… or is it merely a product of a globally shifting customer base with wildly diverse tastes?
Great design does not need to be justified. I’m convinced BMW will be justifying this for years.
So, with this monstrosity of a design masquerading as M Division’s new halo car, is this the end of the M-car as we have known it? Or more crucially: Is this M-pire Down?
I will leave you with these lyrics from English Goth rockers, The Sisters of Mercy…
I hear the roar of a big machine
Two worlds and in between
Hot metal and methedrine
I hear empire down
Related content:
New M3: Why did BMW ‘mess with Coke’?
