Why this is interesting: the democratisation of music production might help us understand what’s going on with BMW design.
BMW’s pugnacious new 7 Series has caused more than a few raised eyebrows and clutched pearls.
With its launch, many have decried the death of the sporting elegance for which BMW was once renowned, much as they did when Adrian van Hooydonk’s equally contentious E65 7 launched in 2001. Indeed this latest car just another in a line of recent BMWs that challenge notions of good taste and good design.
But what if the new 7, and its similarly outrageous brethren, the XM and iX, are just rational responses to a rapidly changing world, one in which BMW is fighting to retain its relevance?
BMW’s XM Concept against a flattering background
In his superb newsletter Culture: An Owner’s Manual, W. David Marx talks about how the proliferation of cheap musical hardware, largely originating from China, and the emergence of AI-driven sampling, have democratised the production of new music. It’s now relatively easy for anyone to take the hooks, loops and beats from other artists’ songs, and produce their own.
I would argue that we’ve seem a similar democratisation in the automotive industry, driven by Japanese, Korean, and latterly, Chinese manufacturers.
Although they often started out producing kitsch replicas of Western designs, rapid increases in design maturity and manufacturing quality, and the reduction in the time and cost of production, mean that there are many more cars of good enough design quality on the market.
Just as in the music industry, however, there’s a downside to this democratisation: the design themes that signal quality and innovation become exhausted far more quickly as they replicate across manufacturers.
This raises a tough question for a brand like BMW: when everyone is looking good enough, how do you stand out? How do you make people feel something - anything - for your brand?
There’s technology, of course, and BMW continues to pursue the technological supremacy that has made its brand among the most admired in the world.
But as an experiential technology - something you take in with all your senses - electrification is, fundamentally, pretty boring. Once you get over the neck-snapping performance, the technology is more about what you take away - emissions, maintenance, cost of ownership - rather than what you gain in emotion.
Other technologies, like drivetrain enhancements, driver assist systems, entertainment and connected services are other areas in which manufacturers can innovate. However, as most OEMS outsource the development of their latest tech to a small handful of suppliers, it’s not long before the competition has a comparable bell or whistle. Very quickly, your tech stack becomes commoditised and, well, common. Technology is also largely hidden from view. You need to read a spec sheet or a review to know whether there’s anything interesting under the skin.
So in the age of Instagram, how something looks becomes everything.
Marxs says of music:
As once-innovative sounds become pure kitsch, it forces ambitious artists to seek out new techniques (or re-appropriate the kitsch in new ways). If cheap gear devalues all the classic sounds of electronic music in their conventional form, talented producers will push towards something new
And I think that’s what we’re seeing with BMW - a push for something new in an attempt to stand out against a sea of good-enough sameness. There’s also a parallel here with the emergence of postmodernism in furniture and architecture as a riposte to the high rationality of modernism.
My good friend Christopher Butt said in his review of the car:
By this point, it has become absolutely and inescapably clear that BMW are not interested in beauty any longer. At some point, some years ago, someone within this organisation clearly came to the conclusion that beauty stands in the way of the brand’s future and must hence be purged.
Perhaps BMW’s approach is as intentional as Chris imagines. Perhaps the company’s designers are like those talented musicians pushing for something new. Perhaps there really is a big idea behind these grotesque new cars. If so, and in time, we may see this uncomfortable first album resolve in to something more harmonious but no less impactful.
But for now, I’m just living in hope.
Post-script: after I shared this piece with Chris, he directed me to a piece he wrote in 2021 which explores the topic of visual novelty from a same-same-but-different angle. It’s well worth a read.