BMW just pulled the pin on another design grenade, and is now sitting back watching us all reel from the shock of seeing the Concept XM for the first time.
But are we shocked because it’s a brilliantly forward-thinking bit of design that we’re not ready for, the automotive equivalent of Dylan going electric? Or is it just a dog, plain and simple? And did BMW’s first standalone M car in four decades really have to be an SUV? Two Carscoops editors battle it out. Who’s right?
Chris Chilton: Not Ready For The Future? You Stick to Your E36 And ’90s Tunes
Oof! I’m here to advocate for the Concept XM and BMW’s design team, and even I can’t hand-on-heart say I love the way it looks. Or at least I can’t suggest that this new super SUV can be considered beautiful by any conventional standards.
But that’s the point. The XM isn’t trying to be conventionally beautiful. It’s trying to be bold, memorable, to stand out in a sea of other big, expensive SUVs, which are either also in-your-face and not conventionally pretty (Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus, Rolls Royce Cullinan, Mercedes-Maybach GLS), or just forgettably bland (pretty much everything else).
And it’s doing what great art, architecture, music and product design often does, which is to put us out of our comfort zone and to challenge our preconceptions. Isn’t that what so many of our most favorite cars have done over the years? Consider the Lamborghini Countach, Austin Mini, Alfa Romeo SZ, Mk1 Ford Focus, NSU Ro80, Cisitalia 202 and ’49 Ford: these cars are considered design classics today, but each was so different to what had gone before that you just know they repelled as many people as they attracted.
I’m no design expert, but there’s plenty I find interesting about the Concept XM, even if I’m not sure I like it, from the way the lower bumper shapes give the impression of that giant grille projecting outwards, the horizontal black line across the bodywork that drops down from the rear window, and the unusual rear treatment, which does without a traditional rooftop spoiler. I love the way the rear lights wrap around the quarter panels, and I’m curious to see if the vertically stacked exhausts will become a BMW M motif in the final years of the marque’s gas motors.
Credit: RM Sotheby’sIt’s a brutal car, no question. But you know what else I see, beyond the sheer brutality of the design? I see echoes of classic (and classically beautiful) 1930s grand tourers from the coachbuilt era. Cars with imposing faces, huge long hoods, and low, sporty rooflines. Cars like the Bentley ‘Blue Train’ and Alvis Speed 20. And isn’t that what the modern high performance SUV is at heart? A 2021 take on a classic GT, something capable of carrying four people and their luggage in luxury across entire continents at huge speeds.
But even while accepting that truth, some people will be convinced that BMW M shouldn’t be building an SUV. Yes, I’m as disappointed as everybody else that BMW’s first standalone M car in 40 years is not a racy supercar, but car companies are not charities. They exist to make money and they do that by building cars people want to spend money on. And right now, like it or not, people want SUVs. We’ve accepted that Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley and even Ferrari can build SUVs, so why not BMW M, a company that has changed tack more than once before.
Let’s not forget that the original M3, a lightweight four-cylinder homologation special handbuilt at BMW M’s Garching facility, gave way to the E36 M3, a mass produced six-cylinder GT-like coupe built on the regular 3-series line at Dingolfing in the early 1990s. Yet despite some initial dissent, the E36 M3 was wildly successful and is now a classic in its own right. And the six-cylinder E46 M3 that it morphed into is now widely considered the greatest M3 of the lot.
Not that any of that is much comfort if you simply can’t get on with the way the XM looks, and plenty of you will find the looks of the XM offensive right now. Me? I was more offended that the boring 2022 2-Series made no attempt to be anything like as bold or interesting. Now that really was criminal.
John Halas: BMW’s Aztec Moment? More Like The Cartoonish Supervillain Of Automotive Design
Call me an old-timer, call me a traditionalist, call me whatever you want, but look Chris, there’s no way of putting this gently: the Concept XM is an incoherent mess of a design. Just when we thought we had settled the discussion that BMW couldn’t do any worse than Chris Bangle’s widely criticized and still frowned upon E65 7-Series, out comes the XM Concept. And it’s not just a study, as a production version is on its way to scare the bejesus out of your kids’ soccer gatherings next year.
Don’t get me wrong, for all we know, the XM might be the fastest and best driving gasoline-fueled large SUV the world has ever seen, and I’ll end up biting my tongue for turning a blind eye to its shocking looks after getting behind the wheel. But for now, all we have to go upon is what we see – and man, this thing makes the E65 look like a supermodel.
Listen, if we were talking about the umpteenth addition to BMW’s mainstream SUV / SAV range, call it the X8, I’d be fudge it. It is what it is, just another market-driven, money-snatching effort. But it’s not. At least that’s not what BMW is portraying it to be. Instead, they’re making quite a fuss about it being their second-ever dedicated ‘M’ model after the acclaimed, Lamborghini-derived, M1 in 1978.
Fun fact; did you know that BMW has more separate lines of crossovers (9 if you include the production XM next year) than the complete model range of the Dodge, Chrysler and Alfa Romeo brands combined (7) here in North America?
Let that sink in for a moment. The XM is BMW’s first performance-halo vehicle in nearly four-decades, and quite possibly, the last ever gasoline-fueled one at that, before the brand turns to battery-power for good. What a slap in the face for hardcore enthusiasts who were waiting decades for BMW to give them one last traditional performance car hurray.
And the elephant in room isn’t even the fact that it’s not a proper sports car in any form or shape, be that a coupe, a roadster or a sedan, but a huge-ass SUV. Just look at this thing. Where BMW sees flashback styling cues from the M1, all I see is an amalgam of design ideas taken from a napkin after binge-drinking at Rezvani’s backyard.
Even if it has the largest kidney grilles of any BMW to date, capable of swallowing an i3 in a single chomp, that’s the least of the XM’s styling worries. I don’t even know where to begin here; the shepherd’s crook-shaped taillights, the seemingly randomly styled and unconnected headlamps, the poacher beams on the roof or that 1970s jumble of interior material choices? I’m surprised no one thought about wrapping the rear seat bench in a plastic slipcover (light-bulb moment zings across BMW HQ’s design center).
Where’s the shark nose, where’s the Hofmeister kink, where’s the pinched beltline smoothly running across the profile, where are the lightweight purposeful lines going somewhere? In other words, where are all those long-standing design elements that subtly but clearly connected the family line for generations of BMW vehicles? To answer my question, they’re all gone the way of the dodo with BMW succumbing to – and fusing in the weirdest way possible – every single global styling trend into one chunky lump of metal and plastic.
Some of us might have craved a return to purer forms but the reality is that BMW has long ceased to be interested in confining itself to an ever-shrinking set of Western enthusiasts yearning for the good ‘ol days of elegant evolutionary designs, like the 1960s E9 coupe and Michelotti’s 2002 or the more recent E46 Coupe and the E39 sedan.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you surely must have noticed that over the past couple of decades BMW has tremendously expanded its footprint both in terms of market and segment reach – from frantically covering every fictional SUV niche to selling ice cars to Eskimos. It’s become a different company altogether.
The E30 always springs to mind when talking about classic BMW designs, but the Bavarians have had their moments of zen, like that time with the “Clown Shoe” Z3 M Coupe
Despite some flashes of glory like the E46 M3, 1M Coupe and M2, BMW is no longer being driven by the ‘Ultimate Driving Machine’ motto but by an unrepentant ‘Ultimate Selling Machine’ philosophy. And we have to admit, it’s pretty darn good at it.
Now, BMW has always had its kooky moments – does “Clown Shoe” ring a bell? But it was just that; moments, a playful break from sensibility. That I get and perhaps even like. But back in the day, it also felt the need to shield most of its traditional machines from the quirky design whims and convoluted wants of its marketing division(s). That’s not the case anymore. Now it’s as if most of their cars are being imagined by cartoon artists.
The XM is an unapologetic German middle finger to anyone who held the slightest glimmer of hope that BMW would return to its roots even if it was for one last time before the end of the gasoline world as we know it. And it’s only the start, as the next X7 and 7-Series will continue this streak of “shock-value” designs. BMW has moved on and maybe you should too.
Who’s right? Did BMW balls up a great opportunity to create a standalone M halo car that could make every BMW fan proud, or will the XM go down as design classic? Leave a comment and let us know.
Keyword: Is BMW’s Concept XM Genius Or Madness? Two CarScoops Editors Argue It Out