This is part 2. (The whole interview was apparently well over an hour). Part 1 was posted here last week ("Another Bangle Interview").
Part 2
Q. The media said your 'promotion' was a move away from designing. You said it's not a promotion, and your job remains the same. Did that hurt you when you saw the media report that you've been taken off the crayons.
A. Believe me. I've had to live through so many things reported sideways, upside down, inside out. Nothing really phases me any more.
Q. Is it a concern that the media are the only ones who seem to not go with the flow [of your designs]? The customers are clearly buying the cars; is this more of a media issue than a customer issue?
A. You could argue that. We never had a media that was so much media before, if you think about it. I was talking to a guy the other day who has a complete collection of magazines from day one, right. And I said 'OK, you go back and dig out the first report on the Miura. You tell me how many inches of column space that merited. Then you go find the most banal car coming out of who knows where, something that, compared to a Miura looks like nothing, right. And then you tell me how many inches of column space it got.' Right.
You've got so many more cars to talk about now. It is such a competitive world of information flow. The media is something to deal with. I'm not upset, it's just different.
Q. Do think it's a media whirlwind? Fuss over nothing? Storm in a teacup? Choose your own cliché...
A. If you go the extremists about it, then yeah. You have to say "back off, we're talking about cars here". We're not dropping bombs on people. There are probably limits to emotional attachment to this whole issue. On the other hand I don't have any problem with it. It's OK.
Q. So has there been an article where you've been tempted to pick up the phone and ring the journalist?
A. Only if there has been a really blatant misrepresentation of the facts. Occasionally it happens. Well, I don't pick up the phone, because by the time it has gotten to me, five of his cohorts (points to his BMW minder) have already picked up the telephone.
I have begun writing journalists, praising them -- I've been told I don't do enough of that. I thought maybe I should be a little bit more overt in that. Recently somebody wrote a column about a speech I gave in London and they got it dead right. They understood it perfectly. They had a real experience and wrote about seeing things differently. It was a woman. I wrote her a letter and said I really enjoyed seeing that somebody else had the same experience I had.
Q. How many letters have you written to journalists?
A. Not that many. I have no idea. It's not something I keep track of either. I don't have file copies on this thing. If it just occurs to me to do it then I do something. Give me your address and we'll see if you get one.
Q. Before the 7 Series hit the streets and after you'd designed it, were you aware of the controversy it would cause?
A. We had done the Z9 GT in 1999 at Frankfurt and it was already a pretty heavy duty controversial vehicle. Four years later we brought out a 6 Series and everybody loves it, so it shows you how the time factor becomes involved. We knew that the 7 was going to be very provocative. We knew that a lot of things about the 7 were going to be worthy of discussion, but we also had a lot of commitments on this. I never had once a feeling inside BMW that there was anything other than commitment to what we had done.
Don't forget, that environment [before the 7 Series launched] is where we made decisions to go ahead with the 1 Series, where we made decisions like the 5 Series and the Z4 because the media on the 7 started years ago, way before we launched. Tons of spy photos being retouched into everything possible. That's probably the only time I really have issues with the media is when they do that, and then they sell it like the real thing. And that's when you get letters from people saying "How can you...", and I say "I'm not! I didn't do this, you know, it's this guy's idea of what we're doing. It's not real."
The media itself puts its ethics in question when it does this. In this case when pictures are created falsely and represented in a format where nobody picks up on the super fine type that this is a fake, computer-generated picture. They're creating an atmosphere of mistrust around what is reality, and that I think is an issue.
Q. There seems to be a guaranteed controversy when you release a new design. Do you think the media should give it a rest?
A. Really?! Do what you want. The media's free, I have no problem with that. Like I said, if you guys are honest and open and fair, why should I have a problem with it. It's your job. You're open to dialogue -- I guess -- that seems fair. When things are unfair then I have issues with it. Like retouched pictures, to me is unfair.
Q. Do you set out to be provocative?
A. The word provocative never appears in any briefing. It never comes up. We try to make a decision based on what we need; the right car at the right time for its authentic package and content. If that turns out to be a lot more unusual than somebody else would do because they want to do the same old thing again and make it as absolutely normal as possible then so be it. This is a company that tries to be authentic to itself.
Q. Do you think the reaction to the 7 Series wouldn't have been as dramatic had it not had iDrive as well? Two issues at once?
A. iDrive we think is a correct component, and certainly merited its share of praise, but also probably came in for some controversy, and whether that gets turned into a design discussion is another issue. The thing I have learned is don't second guess the media.
Q. What emotions do your designs across the various BMW vehicles express?
A. Dynamicism is a part of BMW, so if the cars are BMWs, they are by their nature dynamic cars. If you look at another brand, they might have a different type of promise that they offer that therefore the message of the medium of design is a different one. With ours, it's all about a dynamic. One should understand the expression "The Joy of Driving" isn't just a bunch of hollow words. It's a real commitment and therefore, when you look at the cars, you want to drive the cars.
I don't know if you have this experience with the other -- I was going to say victims -- with your other interview subjects, but BMWs are traditionally cars that work much better moving on the road than they do in a static photograph. I've always had feedback from people saying: "Saw it photographed and saw it moving and saw it completely differently". And almost always for the positive, which is a good thing.
Q. Is there a particular country or countries that you get more positive feedback or more negative feedback?
A. I think we get a lot more positive than people give us credit for. And that also explains the sales. That is also because in the media nobody was ever paid to write something nice about anybody. It's not to say that we live in a world of controversy anywhere near the level that you're painting this. It really isn't like that, OK?
On the level of the people on the shop-room floor, they have their experiences with the customer, just like every other company has. Maybe we have better because we happen to be doing pretty good right now. So there's a general tendency for journalists' stories out of Germany to be different in a certain sense to stories that are driven out of America, and definitely different to stories that yourselves have written.
Q. Do you think all the debate about your designs has helped BMW sales? Is there such a thing as bad publicity, or is it all good?
A. I have no idea
Q. Are you the most controversial automotive designer?
A. Really I have no idea. You may say that, but that doesn't mean I know what it means.
Q. Can you name another automotive designer who's had so much time ... in the spotlight...
A. In the barrel I think is the phrase you're looking for.
Q. ... who's had to answer so often for his designs?
A. I have no idea. I really couldn't say. Hang on a sec... I'm formulating an answer here.
I had an interesting experience not long ago when I was reading about the history of magic -- stage magic, not that Harry Potter stuff, not theatrical magic. The story I read said that for hundreds of years performance magicians worked at a very low level of magic. It was not that complicated, it was very simple and always the same thing. They never changed it, but they had an enormously tight clique of secrecy about it which they maintained and then went out and entertained the various country-sides.
It stayed like that for a long time, until one guy wrote a book called "The Boy's Book of Magic" -- so we're talking 1800s or so -- and in this book he explained it all. Pictures, diagrams, he explained it all, right. He wrote it anonymously because they probably wanted to pillar him. Overnight he changed the landscape of what was the comfort zone of this profession and he forced them to find new levels in their own profession, to think deeper, to be more sophisticated. To find things in their profession of stage magic that they'd never to confront before because they were getting along doing this lower level of work, right.
The Golden Age of magic, Harry Houdini, Robert Houdin and everything, apparently was triggered some decades before by this phenomenon. They had to go forward, and they went forward in a much grander fashion. The reason I'm thinking of this is, the other day somebody sent me a question asking "Do you think car design is going into its Golden Age?"
I though about that and I wonder if you can go into a Golden Age if you don't leave your comfort zones behind. A Golden Age doesn't just naturally flow out of a comfort zone. A Golden Age is a stage that you can reach after you've left behind a lower level of dialogue. I think the magic story seems to be a good metaphor for this. And I think that maybe what we've done is kind of upset the comfort zone.
You can't just reach into your bag of tricks now and say "we'll make it emotional by making a little wedge here". People are starting to discuss what a surface is. They're starting to look at what is the relationship of the car's authenticity to how it looks. Think of all the discussion that cars with rear wheel drive coming back into the fore, and how that's going to affect the design.
BMW put a lot of work into researching where our future could go. One of the reasons maybe why you don't see this type of surface work being done on every other car is that it's not easy to do. The 5 Series door, when it goes from a positive curve to a negative curve on the door, that's where the metal flows from one tool to another.
I was talking to Prof. Dr. Clemens Schmitz-Justen, he's a good friend, and he's also responsible for all 'body-in-white'. He just took over Spartanburg and he was explaining to me that at that point in the curve, the tool tolerance is 1 Mu (1000th of a millimetre). If you look at the bodyside on a Z4 where it does that positive to negative, this isn't just your average everyday "Let's make big beer cans with four wheels". This is a very sophisticated metalwork that's going on here.
We did our homework, we tried to find out where can we take our profession to a higher skill level as well. We didn't set out trying to make their life difficult. But it turned out they're up for the challenge as well. The guys in Eisenhach where they make our tools are really fabulous toolmakers. So maybe BMW is trying to go forward out of its own comfort zone. And maybe as time goes on we will approach what will be our Golden Age of design. I'm not saying we're there yet, but maybe we will. So if other people are going to do a Golden Age of design, they better leave their comfort zone.
Q. Golden Ages are always bestowed retrospectively.
A. Yeah, exactly, so we'll find out later.
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