BMW E60 by Chris Bangle and Davide Arcangeli, 2000.

To understand the importance of the E60 on worldwide automotive design is, not to overly focus on the step-change departure from its predecessor (the E39), but to see what happens when the E60 gets compared to the designs of its then contemporaries – and where rival design houses went next.

This is what the Audi A6 C6 (2004 – 2011) and Mercedes E-Class W211 (2003 – 2009) design teams were designing at the same time as Arcangeli and Bangle:

and then, the Audi C7 (2012 – 2018) and the Mercedes W212 (2009 – 2016) is what automotive design aesthetics brought them to:

Arcangeli’s E60 design was approved by BMW as far back as 2000. Rival designs looked immediately dated – the Mercedes until 2009 and the Audi until 2011.

Do you see?

Structural car design and production is, necessarily, slower-moving than an art movement; which is why it is only a generation later – that Bangle’s design meme has emerged in other automotive design houses. As such, this is arguably the definition of an art movement. Bangle might laugh, after all, he was only solving a design question for BMW. However, his answer was an art expression. A motif that forcibly created an automotive design movement.

We can assert a measure of validity to what Bangle did at BMW by referencing American automotive design of the 1950’s and 1960’s – where we can see the influence of the post-war optimism of a ‘space-age’ on automotive design. This design meme spread between automotive manufacturers competing for the same aspiring consumer market.

So what did Bangle do?

Bangle was no more ‘ahead of his time’ than perhaps Georges Seurat was. Art expression is simply just that, expression. An expression that thrives becomes an art movement. Bangle’s expression was important enough to alter peer automotive design.

What Bangle did was to lead a talented design team to make an evolutionary leap from the previous generation E39 to the E60 – but driven by using his personal automotive design penchant and supporting Arcangeli’s eye for beauty.

You can see Bangle’s design penchant; for accentuated angular forms that were – and this is very important – resonant in line, and not dissonant, in his Pininfarina design of the Coupé Fiat Type 175.

You will see from the lines of Arcangeli’s celebrated Pininfarina design of the Peugeot 406 Coupé, what he brought to the E60.

Look at the headlights that begin at a point, then flare upwards and outwards into the wing panel. A feature, astonishingly, accentuated on the e60.

Look at the flared skirting, how it bows at either end.

Look at the rear bumper, that gentle upwards curve into the rear lights.

Look at the rear lights, angling 45 degrees into the rear panel.

Most importantly, look at the resonant curves. It’s a masterpiece of styling.

But now at BMW, Archangeli penned ‘negative’ curves; beautifully evolving his previous design signature. You should be able to see that Arcangeli’s E60 exterior design is different Joji Nagashima’s stablemate E90 exterior design.  A new and innovative flair for automotive design. Just look at the bloated and block-like Peugeot 407 Coupe after Peugeot decided to bring it’s design in-house to Peugeot after Pininfarina. You can see the difference in Peugeot without Arcangeli’s eyes.

There are many aspects of the E60 design that are worth calling out – but, let’s limit ourselves to one. Look at the GPS sender and receiver unit on the roof. It could have been a rubberised stick, left to other auto houses. Instead, the GPS electronics are encased in what looks like a stylised shark’s fin. It’s innovative; a carved-out negative space, aerodynamic and a statement design piece.

Importantly, Bangle’s automotive design prompt (and beautifully expressed, by the automotive design genius that was Davide Arcangeli) is that form – in automotive art expression – doesn’t have to follow function.

Acknowledgements:

[1] Audi A6 C6, Audi A6 C7, Mercedes W211, Mercedes W212, BMW E60, Peugeot 406 Coupe car brochures.

[2] Unknown attribution: Davide Arcangeli with Boyke Boyer, Head of BMW Exterior Design, with an E60 in design.