+1
Hard to say there are many visionaries left at the company, design wise, performance wise, and future technologies wise (way too late to game in e-vehicles). The departure of Bangle was the first signal that new ideas and experimentation were too "risky" (or potentially costly) for management to bear in the pursuit of easy cash-cow profits. This was followed by numerous departures/defections at key company positions (Biermann to Hyundai of all places, as mentioned below) and the almost complete loss of autonomy at the ///M division when it was formally consolidated into BMW GmBH. Capital and talent resources were massively diverted to the i-division only to produce poor price/value vehicles behind in e tech (any real response to Tesla delayed until 2021) and a management team (i-division) that got lifted out to work for a Chinese startup.
Sadly the most praiseworthy performance car in years (the M2) was essentially derived by going back 10-15+ years to the basic formula of what it means to drive a fun BMW. Really the only new innovation in that car is an e-diff, whereas the rest was easily gleaned from replicating pre-2008 successes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by c63er
Wow. Can't say I am shocked.
Reading Scott's hardcore right winger / afd type posts as of late it seems the culture at bmw might be a hostile one to someone with his last name.
Pure conjecture but wouldn't be surprised if he was either pushed out for that reason or left of his own accord because of something like that. If it is true then the bmw m2 designer is on his way out next.
Bmws of late, while conservative are some of its best designs yet and their major saving grace (in the face of large cars with numb steering). I'm a little worried that their designs are now going to go south the same as every other aspect of the cars that were "bmw". Every other aspect of bmw seems to be Toyota now, so I'm guessing we are going to get more Toyota like styling now?
He saved mercedes design for a while (especially with the compact sports coupe) and if he goes back that would be bad for us (since they are currently in the pits with the e class vs 5 series).
We lost Bierman (who's blood pumped ///m) and got a downgrade with van meel (awd and electric ///m). Question is who is our downgrade in design going to be now ?
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