The following article at the Belfast Telegraph has a good write up about the new BMW 118d. It seems the tiny car won over some automotive reporters.

Das Link

An interesting note about the engine though. It appears to be not as suped up as its 120d cousin but has the same displacement.

"The numerical credentials of this engine would have been close to science fiction only a few years ago. Ignore the 118d designation: like the more powerful 120d engine, this is a 2.0-litre unit but here producing 143bhp (21bhp up from the previous 118d) instead of 177. This is backed up by 221lb ft of torque to give the effortless pulling ability typical of the best modern diesels, propelling the 118d from a standstill to that arbitrary 62mph figure in 8.9 seconds."

The 118d’s 221lb ft of torque is not a huge surprise. Diesel engines have always produced more torque than regular gasoline-burning engines. BMW engines are also known for having a higher than expected amount of torque. Put the two together and you get that very high statistic.

Looks like BMW has a solid little car on its hands. Excellent.

Enzo Ferrari, that is. With the side air vents which echo the Ferrari Enzo, named after the famed Italian automobile manufacturer’s founder there is a design element which seems ripped from Ferrari/Lamborghini. The element in question? The entire car. Save the front kidneys and Z4 looking headlight/bumper assembly, the concept for the BMW super car is ugly and rather derivative at best (more after the picture):

Over the past 4 years BMW has slowly become a company of derivative design.

It is clear with the Z4, that the family of animal it most resembles is the Tiger Shark:

But the rest of the line, particularly the 3-series has sadly become more and more cookie cutter. Who should take the blame? Chris Bangle, BMW’s head of design.

When doing a search for Mr. Bangle, the following article at Slate.com came up:
“Are automotive aesthetics in our genes?”
Please do read the article yourself. I’m going to quote the four major points Mr. Bangle is quoted as presenting at the L.A. Auto Show:

1. Car design has closed the gap on architecture. Bauhaus modernism arrived in the 1920s, when cars were still in a near-baroque phase. Autos didn’t get Bauhausy until the 50s. Bangle proudly noted that it took only six years for him to echo the complex curves of Frank Gehry’s Bilbao museum in the BMW Z4 sports car.
2. Car design is technologically driven–specifically by the tooling. It’s all about “what kind of shapes you can get out of tools.” At the moment, the big tool is “multiple axis surfacing,” which allowed BMW to create its previously “impossible” convex and concave steel panels.” Bangle was especially proud of the “digital” technology behind the wrinkles in a new BMW’s hood.
3. Car design, and maybe appreciation of car design, is an elite occupation. Bangle noted that anyone with a computer and Photoshop could now alter BMW’s designs.** But just because you can buy a cheap machine and bake bread at home “doesn’t make you a master baker.” This was accompanied by lots of references to “professionalism,” “skill level,” the ability to understand visual grammar and reach the “highest audience.”
4. We should see beyond the single car and see how each product fits into the broad sweep of aesth etic progress. Bangle ridiculed designers who just come up with something they think is “cool.” Instead each design has a place in the “biggest single aesthetic undertaking in human history.”

Rebuttal:

1. Car design has closed the gap on architecture. I disagree. Car design may wish it has closed the gap on architecture, but it has not. Though the two are similar in the aspect of engineering a design, architecture is still quite ahead on pure design. The closest automotive design was to catching up with architecture was the dark period of post modern flotsam of the 60s and 70s. A great deal of it was spare, plain, and ugly. Sure, some buildings from the period look nice, I just haven’t seen them yet. A great deal appear to copy Frank Lloyd Wright with a healthy dose of communist architecture’s putrescent lack of personality. This was followed by car design in the late 70s, all the 80s and through to the early 90s. Remember the old Ford Taurus or the K car? Ugly, non-personal and sterile. For all the hype about the periods mentioned above culturally, the automotive industry produced bland crap here in the States (Bangle’s homeland).

Architecture was starting its revival with the shimmering glass towers of New York, the Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Petronas towers, the East Gallery of the United States National Museum, etc. They are graceful, interesting and quite unique. Some might go so far as to say beautiful. If it took Bangle six years to copy the complex curves of the Bilbao Museum, what is he using as a point of reference for the new 3 series? As for a relative time period, the cars from the 1920s and 1930s aren’t Baroque, they’re Art Nouveau and Art Deco in their celebration of stationary movement or embracing of visual lines. Sexy stuff.

Automobiles don’t quite fit into the same categories as you would use for architecture or sculpture. They’re engineered art which is skillfully wrought by a large number of people. Today’s cars are more than a one person venture. Bangle shouldn’t be acting like the Jonathan Ivy of the Auto Design world. Bangle is like the fairly bright kid in high school or college who got by solely on his abilty to copy the work of others. Jonathan Ivy’s designs look good. Bangle’s are just derivative.

2. Car design is technologically driven–specifically by the tooling. Yes and no. The tooling process makes the pen&paper or CAD work come to life quickly. Those flashy wheels and sexy curves are realized in days/weeks when months were necessary. Car design starts off as a man or woman going “Oh, now wouldn’t this be interesting?” or “Holy [stuffing], I’m on to something here!” Designs are made/rendered, put before a committee (usually accountants and lawyers who have no taste), then put before the lawyers, then the engineers, then back to the designers, all until you have a finished car:

Tooling? The advances in the tooling of automobiles make it easier to reproduce designs in a manner which is more cost effective than in previous years. This is a case of vaccuform following function.

3. Car design, and maybe appreciation of car design, is an elite occupation. Now I won’t discount my penchant for snobbery, but to say appreciation of car design is an elite occupation reeks of mediocrity. It’s like the perception of the art community in New York. If you don’t get it, there is something wrong with you. You are retarded or have a midget for a right leg. Appreciation of car design is deeply personal. It is looking at a car and saying “That looks cool.” Now, truly understanding and seeing the provenance of a car’s styling does take more than a “That looks cool.” Appreciation of car design does require some recollection and the ability to say confidently that this fender or tail-light resembles another car’s light from two years ago because of a particular shape or line it has. Look at the Jeep Commander, I mean the Range Rover Discovery, I mean the Ford Fairlane Concept. You get the point. I hope.

4. We should see beyond the single car and see how each product fits into the broad sweep of aesthetic progress. Ok, I’ll agree with this. Cars from a particular manufacturer should resemble cars from a particular manufacturer. The point being there should be a broad swath of aesthetic progress for the brand as a whole, not just one car. BMWs should look like BMWs, Mercedes Benzes shouldn’t look like their Chrysler knock-offs, Pontiacs should look like Pontiacs. Ford is a brand enshrined in the great hope their other cars will sell because they release a new Mustang design. Sure, everyone loves a Mustang, except Camaro owners, but does anyone really love a Ford? I liked my 95 Camaro a lot, but I LOVE my BMW.

Recently a topic arose on the Z3 forums at bimmer.roadfly.org regarding what color of a hard top someone ought to purchase. Here was my reply:

For what it is worth, when looking at the issue from a sheer visual-design perspective, both colors look “off” because the hard top doesn’t look right on the car. While the roundness and sleek design of the Z3’s body are stunning, the addition of the hard-top gives it a stilted appearance, it’s a bit visually jarring and there is something a little disjunct about it. I’ve seen one color look good with it, that was the dark red on another early model Z3 who stopped as I was going into a local AC Moore in Delaware.

If you are going to have a light color with your car, the dominant color being dark green, any light color should serve as an accent. Otherwise, you are left looking like you couldn’t get the right color. Worse, you were attempting to paint it yourself, leaving it looking “primer grey” from a distance. If you are going to get one of the two, get the one that matches your car and get a spoiler/wing for the trunk. Otherwise, shoot for a black hard top. It’s there, but you register the car’s body first, rather than a hard top which doesn’t fit the lines of the car very well.

Choosing the black hard top, or none at all, will keep the lines looking even and clean as the designers originally intended with the rear humps. Part of the benefit of the black convertible top is its visual disappearance at first glance. Mainly the issue is with the curvature of the rear of the roof and the humps on the rear fenders. The line would be much cleaner on an earlier model of Z3 with out the humps. It is the visual line created by the vertical rear curvature intersecting with the horizontal curve of the humps. The intersection is stilted and slightly jarring. Granted, the silver top does a better job of being a visual non-entity, but black would be best.

As a rule, the color black is more “ignored” as a color when on an object, than say, bright, shiney Artic Silver (a color near and dear to my heart). It’s a slimming color for a reason. It takes visual information away from your eye in one area and makes you focus on another part, be it colourful, shiney jewelry, or simply the person’s face. That and the little black dress looks good on a lot of women. Much in the same way a lot of women look good in a black Z3!

Then again, the whole thing could probably use a consistent angle on the car for a real comparison. The picture with the silver top is at too high an angle.

My two cents.

This more expensive version of an already expensive car sold out in 92 seconds. I can see why. Click the Image for the article at windingroad.com.

Original Press Image (sourced from windingroad.com)
Nieman Marcus Image from corresponding website.
BMW Image from corresponding website.

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