It all boils down to the car’s personality.
It is very difficult to design a car. It is not enough to design the car, you must also predict what customers will like. Or not. A professional Nostradamus is required to judge consumer trends in the future, whether they are five, three or five years away. One could have saved BMW from the backlash against its larger grilles. However, the styling feature could soon be available on more BMW models.
Adrian Van Hooydonk (BMW Group Vice President for Design) discusses how the company could use the large feature on other models in a new BMW blog interview. When asked about large grilles, he said that “we want to spread it out more”. Some models will feature vertical kidney grilles, while others will use horizontal ones. The company hopes its cars will be easily recognizable and have a strong personality.
Van Hooydonk stated that customers should be able recognize the BMW in their rearview mirror. He also said that they want people to recognize it as more than just another BMW. The company’s lineup has seen large grilles increase in number, including the 4 Series, M3 and M4, as well as the upcoming all-electric iX/i4. BMW could redesign more models to accommodate the larger faces as it updates its lineup over time.
Van Hooydonk did not speculate about what to expect from the company next, but he did say that BMW is already developing cars for 2025. This means that engineers and designers are already making predictions about what people want. These designs may still be available a decade later. There are many things that can happen between now and then. It is not easy to predict the design trends for a multimillion-dollar product. The iX, which will go on sale next spring in the United States, was designed almost six years ago.