What are they thinking?! Mercedes’ design boss slammed BMW and Audi — has European car design lost its way? | Opinion

Mercedes-Benz design boss Gorden Wagener didn’t hold back.

In an interview with Top Gear at this week’s Munich motor show, Wagener gave his frank opinions of the latest work from his German rivals at BMW and Audi. The German took specific aim at the interior design of both the new Audi Concept C and the BMW iX3.

“That interior [of the Audi] looks like it was designed in 1995,” Wagener was quoted as saying. “It is a little bit too known, and there is too little tech. I have always claimed that I am a big fan of hyper-analogue things, but you cannot ignore a screen. When you have a small screen, you automatically send the message ‘congratulations, you are sitting in a small car’.”

As for the BMW, which not only had a large central screen but also a narrow screen that wraps around the lower edge of the windscreen, well, Wagener wasn’t a fan of that either.

“What the other manufacturer did? I mean, they showed the concept a couple of years ago with the information across the bottom of the windscreen. I have to say I'm not a big fan of that because it's so far away it’s hard to read. Everything will appear smaller so it’s distracting, and you need a device to operate it because it’s too far away to be touch-sensitive, so you have to put a touchscreen in there which they did. So it’s a pretty conventional solution, and actually a complicated one because you have information on different levels and I don't think that's intuitive.”

It’s always good to get honest comments from anyone you interview, but Wagener may want to look up the phrase ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ because, to be blunt, Mercedes’ design has been… hit and miss in recent years (to put it politely).

I will acknowledge at this point that design is subjective and each individual will look at any car through their own eyes and form a unique opinion. But as someone who drives a wide variety of cars for a living, so I get up close to them, I have to say the latest era of German luxury design doesn’t make sense to me.

Let’s do this alphabetically and start with the Audi. The Concept C is meant to preview the next-generation of design for the four-ring brand, ushering in a new ethos of ‘radical simplicity’, according to the brand’s design boss, Massimo Frascella.

The new design, with a new vertical grille and a sloping tail is a clear call back to the brand’s iconic Auto Union racing cars of the 1930s. Nobody loves Auto Union racing cars more than me (just ask the poor Audi Australia folks who accidentally brought it up once at a dinner and I proceed to bore them for the next 45 minutes with non-stop history of such things), but the new look just doesn’t work in my eyes. 

The ‘vertical grille’ looks more rectangular to me, which looks very much like it came direct from the 1930s, before the car industry learnt to make radiators in all different shapes and sizes so cars could stop having rectangular, vertical grilles.

Personally, I like the interior, but I also happen to think Wagener’s right that most customers will want bigger screens — even though, personally, I think a lot of brands are pushing the limits of how big in-car screens should be.

Overall, I think Audi has arguably the best-looking and most consistent design themes of the three German luxury brands, so it is a huge risk to change it. Personally, I can’t see this design language transferring nicely to the same variety of cars the current styling does.

Moving on to BMW, the all-new iX3 is also meant to herald the start of something radically different for the Bavarian brand. The so-called ‘Neue Klasse’ design theme is going to proliferate across the brand in the coming years, whether you like it or not.

Again, the looks are subjective, but what bothers me about the iX3 design is it is yet another huge change for the brand and its once signature ‘kidney grille’ look. Ever since the controversial ‘flame surfacing’ design era, BMW has taken its long-running kidney grille and distorted it into all sorts of different shapes and sizes. 

So much so that what was once an easily recognisable design element has now become something completely random. On one model it might be small squares, on another giant, gaping holes and now the iX3 a throwback to the tall, slender version of decades ago.

What is the point of a ‘signature look’ if it constantly changes?

Finally there’s Mercedes, and the car Wagener will have personally overseen, the new GLC EV. This replaces the EQC SUV, the brand’s first mainstream electric model, which vanished without fanfare after clearly underwhelming the market.

Maybe Wagener was lashing out at his rivals after the current EQ range of electric models has received ‘mixed’ reviews for their looks. Mercedes tried to clearly differentiate the looks of its electric models from its conventionally-powered range, but that has also been met with ‘mixed’ reviews and the new GLC attempts to correct course.

Unfortunately, in an attempt to make the electric SUV look more like a traditional Mercedes that appears to have copied a design from the 1980s, when the grille was huge and rectangular, and added an array of bling to it.

Personally, it’s not my taste, but for Mercedes’ sake I hope there are buyers lining up for the SUV with the big chrome face.

I certainly don’t envy Wagener and his colleagues and the task they have at the moment, trying to integrate modern technology while retaining a distinctive look and needing to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. But, to be blunt, if what was on display at the Munich motor show is any guide, then we may be entering a controversial period for all three brands.