Yahoo Finance This BMW Concept Corrects One of New Car Design's Worst Trends
BMW is promising a "new class" for late next year, the second time it has used that exact phrase. The first time heralded the company's early Sixties line of sport sedans and compacts. This upcoming second "Neue Klasse" is a complete lineup revitalization that will have BMW building more competitive electric cars on a unique 800-volt architecture. The transformation will eventually reach across cars and sedans of various sizes. But for now, the focus is on a compact sedan and a similarly sized crossover.
Showcased as two concepts, the Vision Neue Klasse, revealed last year, is a generalized look at the brand's future sedans. The larger Vision Neue Klasse X, shown at a recent event in Los Angeles, displays how BMW will evolve its crossovers and SUVs.
The two have clear similarities, like glassy cabins awash in natural light and sharp overhangs that reflect the famous shark noses of BMWs past. One big difference, however, is at the front. Each car has a very different interpretation of how the company's signature kidney grilles translate into a world that... doesn't need grilles at all. The sedan features two wide-set kidneys that stretch across the breadth of the car, wrapping up dual headlights represented by diagonal LED strips on either side. The SUV goes more traditional, with smaller, thin, centered kidneys as on the original New Class, flanked by housings that integrate the headlights.
As BMW Designworks LA CEO Julia de Bono confirmed to Road & Track at the Vision Neue Klasse X's American debut late last week, that difference in face design will carry over to the finished products. The sedan face will be used on sedan body styles and the X face will be used on SAVs, BMW-speak for "Sport Activity Vehicle." That's SUVs and crossovers to everyone else.
"What we want to highlight with a sedan is always a certain width of the car, the car has to stand well on its wheels," said de Bono. "We do that by giving it width in the face as well as giving it shoulder over the wheels. With an SAV, we want to have a certain kind of presence, a certain kind of ruggedness in its appearance. You do that by highlighting the vertical, and at some point that evolves into a certain kind of look, and that's the look we, after many many models, we felt right with it."
The Los Angeles debut of the Vision Neue Klasse X is a major moment for BMW, which U.S. market's love of premium crossovers early and profited off the opportunity. De Bono's Designworks LA office plays a big part in designing these crossovers that will become so important in America, and many of these products will later come to life at the Spartanburg, South Carolina factory the company has operated for 30 years. That facility builds all of BMW's X models from the X3 up for the whole world. The future of BMW SAV design may be bigger news in America than in Munich.
When that moment arrives, expect the Vision Neue Klasse X to be a replacement for the iX3 offered in other markets. Similar cars built on the platform should be sold in other sizes, and all of them should share this general design language. If you despise the look of the existing iX, the Vision Neue Klasse X is a promise that future BMW EV crossovers will not look like, well, that.
Both Vision Neue Klasse concepts put a heavy emphasis on light, both natural and artificial. De Bono calls the natural light brought into the cabin through a low beltline "a car design thing that got lost." She notes that "there was so much light" inside the original Neue Klasse concepts, and that bringing the sunlight back in saves energy in addition to adding a sense of warmth to the cabin.
Vehicle-generated light will be mostly seen outside, where de Bono repeatedly asserted that light is used as a styling element in the same way chrome has been in the past. This is seen most notably in the kidney grilles, which are not only etched out in an LED outline but are themselves a sort of three-dimensional light sculpture. It gives the kidneys a bold flat shape from a distance, but a closer inspection reveals that the light sculpture actually wraps inward. The Hofmeister Kink, a signature BMW design element that debuted on the C-pillar of the first New Class sedan in 1961, is also represented in light. While the traditional kinky shape is also present, a more exaggerated version is etched into the back of the rearmost side window to replace the chrome trim that highlighted the kink on past BMWs.
Inside that airy cabin, cloth seats with a unique texture are finished in white and a shade of red that would be at home in a coral reef. The choice of fabric over leather, metal, and wood is a continuation of something already seen on the latest 7-Series, where a cashmere interior stands out from the leather-bound competition. The color is nothing like the yellow used in the Neue Klasse sedan concept, but both are citrusy shades that reflect the brand's push toward welcoming comfort.
Like the insistence on natural light, BMW Designworks LA Director of Automotive Design Hussein Al Attar says that this is part of a focus on creating a "warm and cozy" environment. Al Attar says that "we want the car that's very technologically advanced to feel very human, almost like a homely space that you're in. The materials are softer, the colors are lighter." The result is a space that draws attention away from, not to, the massive screen in the middle.
This is still a 2024 concept, though, and that means there is a new technology suite to show off. Fortunately, the latest BMW infotainment OS appears to be more intuitive and pleasant. The signature iDrive control wheel is tragically missing in action, but the limited version of a touchscreen interface available to media at the launch brings some of the visual appeal of the complicated Mercedes-Benz MBUX system to the car without any of the clunky, frustrating things that come with such an overstuffed and intrusive system.
The bottom of the windscreen is lined with a wide screen, serving as both a dashboard and home to a customizable selection of widgets like the ones you might find on the home screen of a smart phone. The demo featured 18 options for six spots, all of which could be easily interchanged with the intuitive touchscreen interface.
One unique feature, which BMW bizarrely calls the "HYPERSONX WHEEL," allows drivers to customize the tone of the various beeps and dings the car makes. In reality, this is a selectable grid that allows drivers to choose their own balance between a range of sounds that are "calm," "free," "agile," and "expressive." Pretentious and unnecessary as that may sound, each of the sounds feel equal parts futuristic and comforting. Add in the ability to pick one and it all plays well into the idea that this is a high-tech space meant to welcome the driver as part of the experience rather than keep them placated while they wait to get to their destination.
Last time BMW threw around the name Neue Klasse, it was the leap forward from Isettas and 507s that then led to the 3-Series and 5-Series. Neue Klasse cars and immediate successors include the 2002 sport compact, the Bavaria mid-sized sedan, and the E9 grand tourer. It is a name that represents a complete transformation, and that resulted in BMW's decades-long golden age. Will the second Neue Klasse bring as much positive change?
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