Just as the French Revolution began with a king and finished with an emperor (plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose) so the BMW Bangle styling revolution overthrew elegantly conservative car design and finished with... elegant conservatism.
Chris Bangle is the Ohio-born car designer who took over as BMW design director in 1992 and radically overhauled the marque's time-honoured design language. Instead of smooth, finely honed shapes, he brought a bold mix of concave and convex curves, headlamps shaped like bird- or fish-eyes, tail lamps that were more sharp dashes than large dots. The American wanted to shake up BMW, to give the cars more urgency, more youth appeal, and more stand-apart style. He was also conscious of the booming Chinese, Middle East and Russian markets, where tastes run bolder.
Bangle's first radical design, the BMW 7-series E65, was launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2001. After the shock — and outrage — other brave BMWs followed. The most visually successful, at least to my eyes, was the 5-series, and its estate brother the 5 Touring, launched in 2003. The 5 was Bangle's favourite too.
At first rival car designers mocked Bangle. Yet his deconstructivist design was copied by the likes of Ford, General Motors, Peugeot and Mercedes. And Bangle was not only influential, his designs sold: BMW became the world's best-selling premium car maker (overtaking Mercedes-Benz) under his watch.
Bangle left BMW last year, to lecture and consult. And the revolution quietly ended. There is still clear evidence of his influence — not least in the lights' shapes — yet BMWs have become more mainstream. Nowhere is this more evident than in the new BMW 5-series, just on sale. It's a handsome and wholly uncontroversial looking car.
The 5 has long been Britain's favourite big executive car, so the new one has quite an act to follow. It is bigger and more spacious, and has a better crafted cabin than the outgoing model. Order the more powerful engines available, and the suite of electronic handling aids — including four-wheel steering — and BMW still provides 'the ultimate driving machine'. Otherwise you'll get great dynamic competence but not dazzle.
More impressive are the engines, the key area — apart from stand-alone style — where BMW has recently differentiated itself from rivals. Its Efficient Dynamics programme — the most efficacious widespread reduction in fuel consumption offered by any car maker — has been astonishingly successful at cutting carbon while maintaining driving enjoyment. Not only do they typically offer more power than rivals, they deliver better fuel parsimony too. The big selling 520d — likely to constitute about half of all 5-series UK sales — combines 56mpg official average consumption with 0-60mph in eight seconds and 140mph top speed. Its 132g/km CO2 rating is astonishingly low for so large a car, offering important tax concessions. In these carbon-obsessed times, that probably matters even more than whether you drive something that looks Bangle bold or Munich moderate.
Gavin Green is a motoring journalist and consultant
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