Original BMW X5 Designer ROASTS The BMW XM!!

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welcome back today we're going to be speaking about the highly controversial bmw xm i thought about giving my first feelings my first gut reaction but honestly you know the only thing i could really say was [Music] i wanted to sit with it for a while absorb it digest it try to understand how this has happened you don't get to the level of an elite company like bmw without knowing where you're going where you're heading what your future strategy is so just to write this off as bad design foolish design is a bit naive so i'm going to expand on my theories of why bmw has done something so confusing and so controversial after i dissect the design so starting with the front view of this car which is just as debatable just as controversial and just as terrible as any other view on this car that front end does not make any sense to me they've actually accentuated it by putting those lighted rings those lit rings around the edges of the grille and then they've actually de-emphasized the headlights making them much more smaller squinnier which even makes the grille look even bigger than they actually are when you look at it from head-on count how many lines are going in different directions and this is going to be a common crit on the rest of the car lines that go in completely different directions as if they don't know where to go each line has a mind of its own there's a lot going on there's a lot going on let's just slowly or quickly actually let's move to almost a front three quarter the first thing that hits me is that wheel well opening those lines that describe the opening of the front wheel around it and there's a reason why this has never been done the reason why it's never been done is because it makes no sense at all in terms of design what benefit does putting so many lines around the round object have none except to be different i'm getting emotional i don't like it sorry it's just uh angles for angle's sake this is what we call ott design when they don't know where to stop the other thing that really pees me off from the front is the shape of the headlights now we try as designers to represent the sole of the vehicle with the eyes much as we do with people we represent the sort of character of the person but these headlights on here almost give you a a feeling that you can't be confident about who you're looking at who you're speaking to it's kind of like that back alley type of personality somebody's looking at you kind of with a mask on or without showing their real intent so enough said about the front end let's move to the side side view has to be for me probably the most ridiculous side view i've ever seen on a vehicle up to today and that includes more than 100 years of automotive design it's got a very very short front overhang granted a bmw characteristic but it's almost cartoonishly short the overhang from the center of the front wheel to the front of the vehicle on a vehicle of this stature of this magnitude of this importance for bmw m version needs to have presence this car gives me the feeling that ran into a wall got smashed and they left it like that maybe it was in the clay stage again not trying to be sarcastic but this car's front end overhang as we call it is much much too short in my view for a car of this size of this presence then as we move back from there and you start to realize what kind of surfacing is going on on the side of this car the line direction the flow of the lines they're all screaming and shouting at the same time for attention and that is not a good thing in car design because it's easy to add it's easy to put lines on to put curves on but you have to know when to stop things like that little black line that goes through the shoulder line just below the belt line that is almost relying on makeup to make this card look good and it's even badly applied because let's face it this line is a dud it's dead it's a parallel black line that means nothing we move to that rear wheel cut out much in the same vein as the front wheel cut out and it's just got angles upon angles and then we move just slightly behind that on the side view you look at this rear end behind the rear wheel they've overloaded it with radical angles radical surface development none of it relates to each other and then it stops all of a sudden that's the end of the car and if you try to compare the front of the car to the rear of the car they might be cousins but they're pretty far distant cousins and they don't really resemble each other in any ways painful as it might be i have to address the rear end of this car the rear end hurts i mean it does physically hurt me to look at it why do you need two logos on the rear windscreen one is enough i know it's in the history of bmw once to have done it this way on their m1 but on this car it just does not work it's floating on the black surface so it doesn't even look like it belongs to the car that doesn't give it the elegance that you would ask for of the statement of the bmw logo it's almost like it could have gone anywhere it just landed there and again it's like signing your name twice why would you do that move to the exhaust pipes or wherever these things are then on the bottom i guess they're the exhaust pipes then if you look at that tail light on there this line is something like i don't know uh a broken snake something that has gone wrong it's uh not really telling you what what direction it's going in it's going uh on the side it goes up then it goes horizontal then it goes diagonally down and then it decides to go horizontal again the line doesn't know pretty much where it's going it doesn't seem to have been designed with an intent to give you a memorable graphic or rear light signature as we call it proportion wise if i just drew a line around the outside of this vehicle and use that as a starting point for a theme maybe it's not too bad it's got shoulders that have a greenhouse sitting on top of it that's fairly robust fairly wide and strong that's not badly done if you look down the middle of the car and you balance it left to right you'll see that it's quite a symmetrically driven type of design so then why would you not position the logo xm in the middle of the car for this reason when everything is absolutely identifiable as being symmetrical xm off to the side ruins that symmetrical look maybe that's breaking the rules maybe that's bmw's approach this design will put a beauty mark on the car just to give it some interest now it's not all bad there are actually two things on the xm that i do like one being the front bonnet the front hood of this vehicle it's a mini clam shell as we call it something that not a lot of companies do because it's very hard to manage gaps and tolerances as we call them i like that feature because it really does clean up the front hood when you're looking at it it's not nice to see two split lines over the fenders coming down it kind of cleans it up with a very mono sort of surface that comes over and down so it does work well for them on this design here and the other point that i really like is the way they've actually used that black applique or that dark feature that runs along the side which i don't like in itself but it is a way to manage the design of the door handles to eliminate that clutter on the side of the vehicle they've integrated it seems within that that black applique so you don't see them at first instance and it's a nice way to like i said to desensitize or or to declutter actually the side of of the vehicle itself now the interior on this xm in the front is quite modern it has that very lounge chair feeling in the front with that leather that's been used kind of has that that used personality to it something that if you scuff it it really doesn't matter move to the rear and suddenly you're sitting in almost a boudoir look at the ceiling how it's got sort of that what we call parametric design surfacing to the headliner you can see those angles you can see that as you come to the seats it suddenly changes into a different type of usage of design language becomes that very traditional sort of plushness of of crushed velvet something very colorful very alive very moody as i've said before in my videos i have a huge emotional attachment to bmw not only have i worked and designed cars for bmw i've also grown up in the back seat of my mother's bmw 2002 ti so with that in mind i want to give bmw the benefit of doubt and try to understand what bmw's intention is with these new designs theory number one in 1985 coca-cola revealed their new formula for coke aptly called new coke people reacted extremely bad to it there were pickets there were protests there were petitions everybody was against the new coke and that was reflected by a significant plummet in the stock market for the company but then fast forward six months and coke releases coca-cola classic well we read and we listen and you know the rest which then triples their stock market value so some people believe this was actually a marketing ploy which obviously coca-cola will always deny but you can't deny the actual results and this happened somewhat similar also in the hollywood blockbuster sonic the hedgehog they released their first trailer which featured a version of sonic which quite honestly was horrific fans of the franchise much like the fans of coca-cola demanded a change so three months later the film was released with a much nicer version of sonic the hedgehog so in both cases what you got was an outraged client base that got exactly what they wanted so is this actually a play by bmw where the outrage of the emotional investment is turned actually into a financial investment when bmw eventually turned back into more acceptable design cues now if that isn't the case i still have an alternative theory [Music] theory number two is bmw actually the modern martyrs of design now it's no secret that modern design is leading us towards more aggressive surfacing comically and almost cartoonishly large grills lines that don't go anywhere designs with no purpose and exaggerated proportions is it a type of martyrdom that bmw is attempting to take the least desirable design tropes to their logical conclusion and shows us designers that we're not walking down the righteous path of design as is the eleventh commandment thou shalt not design ugly cards i sincerely hope it's one of these two ideas or it's some other clever plan because if not bmw have really lost their minds now i have to give this car's design a rating as i typically do with all the cars i'm reviewing but to be truthful bmw has now entered a league of their own so i think you'll understand and feel the reason that i cannot give this car a number but rather a letter and that letter has to be an f for failure sorry that's my opinion i'd love to know your opinions we love conspiracy theories tell us why you think bmw is doing this to themselves the more outrageous the better please let me know what your thoughts are i look forward to reading them as always so be sure to subscribe so that you know when the next video is coming out and i look forward to seeing you in the future
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Channel: Frank Stephenson
Views: 873,034
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: frank Stephenson, bmw, bmw XM, X5, car design, how to design, donut media, Chris bangle, 4 series, bad design, how to draw, how to sketch
Id: Q0JXN__wX_A
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)
Published: Thu Jan 06 2022
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