Is BMW in a mess? Or are they pioneers? Things are definitely different these days at BMW. Will the "new" look of BMWs be accepted? Will enthusiasts accept the "new" BMW? Lets look first, at why BMW is where it is today.
BMW has been run by a string of car guys. The last ones were Dr. Bernd Pischetsrieder and Wolfgang Reitzle. That pair presided over the definition of BMWs as great driving cars and pillars of good taste in design. In a Board of Directors coupe d'etat, both were fired and the replacement was found in a matter of hours. Joachim Milberg wasn't a car guy, nor is his successor Helmut Panke. In fact Panke is a modern business-oriented CEO. He has the right set of acronyms for every occasion. Is this good for BMW? Probably not, but this is a longer-term problem.
As a footnote, Pischetsrieder went on to succeed Dr. Ferdinand Piëch as Chairman of Volkswagen and Reitzle went on to head Ford's high-end marques and was fired for spending too much money on product development.
One of the significant "problems" with current BMWs is their design. They hired Chris Bangle, an American, to head the design department. His first creation was the 7-Series which has been widely criticized, but has been quite successful commercially. The Z4 was another "Banglized BMW" that isn't quite so radical as is the new 5-Series. Personally, I dislike the 7-Series, neither like nor dislike the Z4, and with the exception of a couple or minor details like the 5-Series. Is he moderating his designs, or am I warming up to Bangle? I guess the answer is in the individual designs because the new 6-Series is horrible, but will likely be successful here in Los Angeles.
Bangle has a huge ego apparently stroked by the BMW Board of Directors. He is adamant that people just don't understand his great designs. I wonder why I have to "understand" a car design to appreciate it. Can't I just look at it and tell right away? The Ferrari 456 is beautiful from the first look. The Ferrari Enzo isn't. The past-generation 5s and 7s from BMW were beautiful: simple, elegant and masculine. I could see that right away.
The problem with those "old" BMW designs was two fold. First, they had been criticized for a long time in Germany as "the same sausage sliced at different lengths". And the other problem was that copies of BMW's cars had been showing up elsewhere in the world for years. BMW management decided that their cars needed to be different! Well, that's exactly what they got in the 7-Series. Rumor even has it that Bangle proposed several different 7-Series designs to the Board and they authorized the most radical. So if that's true, don't completely blame him.
With the stubbornness of the German mentality, the BMW Board has decided that they are right with Bangle and that their different designs are right. After all, Bangle tells them they are. He's a designer and they aren't so he must be right.
Another problem in current BMWs is the take-over of electronics. iDrive is the way the driver controls the communication, navigation, entertainment, and climate for the driver and passengers. This also has been widely criticized, with Panke insisting that it is the future and we should get used to it. Fortunately or unfortunately I agree with him. Having literally a hundred little pushbuttons on the dash to control all the electronic stuff in the car just isn't practical or easy to use. Is iDrive easy to use? Yes and no. If you are a computer geek it is perfect. If not, it probably seems horrible. Even to the geeks, the problem is that it takes too many menus to do simple things. In other words, the concept seems good, but the implementation isn't so good. To show my bias, I'll point out that it is based on Windows CE, so that probably is the problem.
The validation of the iDrive concept probably lies in the fact that Audi adopted a similar idea for their new A8 and the spy photos of the new S-Class shows another similar idea.
But why did BMW go with this concept? And why are they so stubborn about it? There is another simple answer: BMW and Mercedes are in a very highly charged contest to deliver the most high technology to their customers. And to Germans, iDrive was a perfect example of that contest. Mercedes had been criticized for too many buttons (Amadeus: "too many notes") so BMW trumped them with iDrive. No buttons. And to Germans it was the answer. Their mentality is that the buyer must show off new technology to their friends and aren't afraid of reading a 300 page manual to do it. Americans think that technology should be obvious and never consider reading a manual.
With all the people in Los Angeles wanting to be different and also being tech-savvy, the 7-Series has been accepted, though there certainly are more 7-Series cars waiting for a buyer at BMW dealers. Mercedes probably still outsells BMW with their S-Class here, but there are a lot of new 7s on the road. BMW really needs a uber-performance 7-Series to counter the AMG Mercedes varieties, but BMW has said that they won't do that, only the 3 and 5 get "M" treatments. Oh yeah, there were a few custom built M7s a long time ago.
That's it for this week, but I'm continuing this topic next week. I'll look more into BMW's technology quest and where it is going, plus some detailed looks at new models.
