Can it be true?????
BMW's Bangle bids adieu
Word out of Munich this morning is that Chris Bangle, 52, the U.S.-born, Art Center-trained designer who has shaped BMW styling since 1992, is leaving the company to pursue other design work “beyond the automotive industry,” according to a company statement.
So ends the tenure of a man who is certainly among the most controversial and derided car designers in history, a man whose name became synonymous with a kind of artsy over-reach and peculiar, consensus-of-one design vocabulary. Bangle will forever be remembered for the 2002-08 7-series (E65) trunk lid, a prominent and distracting form nicknamed the Bangle Butt (pictured right). The trunk lid, however, was as much Adrian Van Hooydonk’s work as Bangle’s. Hooydonk, 44, will succeed Bangle as BMW’s chief of global design....
It’s an open secret in the car business that after the controversies surrounding the Z4 and 7-series, Bangle was demoted up in 2003, from head of BMW brand design to the global design chief for BMW Group, overseeing but not quite leading the designs of BMW Mini, Rolls-Royce and BMW brand. In recent years, the fire of flame surfacing has been put out and BMW cars exhibit a more determined and sober styling.....
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