BMW’s future cars will move away from cookie-cutter designs

We’ll just have to wait until the end of the decade to see these new designs

It’s rare for a big automaker to shake up their design team, but BMW did just that last week. And it looks like they’re reading your comments, dear reader. Shakeups don’t always work, though. Sometimes, they go the wrong way. If BMW’s vice president of design, Adrian van Hooydonk, is anything to go by, the changes are positive and welcome.

He recently gave an interview where he gave us some details about the future of BMW design. In short, the themes we have seen over the past few years will not last long. The Neue Klasse concept we saw recently was a step in the right direction, with new hires Maximilian Missoni from Polestar and Oliver Heilmer from Mini taking the helm of future design.

More: BMW restructures design team, Polestar CEO Missoni takes over

“(The Neue Klasse) is so different to our previous designs, it’s like we skipped a generation,” van Hoeydonck told Top Gear. “Max won’t influence that, but we are working on the 2029 and 2030 cars and he and Oliver will influence those. We don’t want it to become a formula where you just print out a different size BMW.”

“We didn’t hire Max Missoni to bring Polestar design to us, that’s not what we wanted, and that’s not what he wanted. We very much want him to understand BMW, and we’ll give him some time to do that. I encourage differentiation, but that will happen naturally with Max and Oliver.”

It’s worth noting that Max will be in charge of mid- and luxury-class BMWs, while Oliver will be in charge of everything below mid- and luxury-class. Essentially, small BMWs and large BMWs will each have their own unique design language, and within each subset, the cars should also have their own style. At the same time, the branches on this family tree won’t differ too much.

“We still want the two teams to work together to create the right product for the customer,” he said. “My job is to make sure BMW remains one brand globally, with a recognisable design line. A new setup might cause tension or debate, but that’s why I’m here. I’ll be there before anything leaves the factory.”

We won’t see these products until the end of this century. Expect to see the first results of this effort around 2029 or 2030.