BMW Vice President Adrian Van Hooydonk has confirmed that upcoming products from the Bavarian manufacturer will adopt the large kidney grilles as seen on the current BMW 4 Series. Beyond this, he also confirms that upcoming products will remain uniquely distinctive.
Speaking to BMWblog, Van Hooydonk says “I would say we are in a constant transformation because the speed of change in terms of technology has picked up dramatically,
“So we feel that our speed of change and design needs to grow accordingly. We are now in a period where we want to make a form language that has fewer and reduced lines. The lines that we do have should be super sharp that and meaningful and we try to actually express a character stronger character with fewer elements.
“We want each of our products to have a stronger character of its own because each of our products has different competitors, and it needs to then fend off,
“So for example, the 2 Series Coupe we just launched. That was a deliberate choice to go to single headlamps, single tail and a little bit going back to the BMW 2002. We felt that that car’s character should be like that. Then, of course, for the major lineup we have double round headlamps, but it’s all evolving.”
When asked about the oversized kidney grilles specifically, Van Hooydonk says “We want to spread it out a little bit more: vertical kidneys on some cars, horizontal on others. We want our customers to be able to recognise the BMW in the rearview mirror, not just as a BMW but also, after a while they know what BMW that is.”
“We are now working on cars for 2025 and beyond. And [the design] will continue to evolve. We want to keep these strong characters. And, yeah, the brands I think will develop faster now. With BMW i, we started a cleaner form language for the electric cars and now that electric is going to be part of the core of the brand, of course, you’ll see that the design of the i products will begin to influence the core of the brand so it’s going to be a cleaner look.”
