Sometimes as a journalist, you have to fall on your sword and admit that you were too harsh, and that’s what I’m doing today. Back when BMW debuted its iX, I initially kept my stance on its rather polarizing looks (giant grille, squinty headlights) rather neutral, realizing that I should give the car a chance. But then BMW did some bizarre marketing, as the brand is wont to do, and I let ’em have it (well, a little, at least). Now it’s time for me to just say: I was a bit harsh. The BMW iX flagship electric SUV is quite stunning in person.
Look at how fairly I covered the BMW iX when it debuted in November of 2020. I didn’t even mention that face in my headline!:
Hell, my conclusion paragraph was rather mild, too!:
This is a big deal for BMW. As the world transitions over to EVs, brands like Tesla, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Jaguar and Audi have put lots of focus on offering a compelling crossover SUV option. It’s an important segment to be in, and based on the little information BMW has given about this new iX—set to hit the U.S. market in 2022—it seems the brand is going to have a genuine competitor.
I’d just like to point out at that readers were not so kind. Here are the first few comments on my article:
Wow those are hilarious. My favorite is “Bangle looking like Michelangelo right now.” So good!
Anyway, I was fairly nice on that initial article, but then came a weird marketing campaign, and I just had to land a little jab:
Here’s one of my main points in that article about BMW’s seemingly-defensive new catchphrase “What’s your reason not to change?” and specifically its use of “OK Boomer”:
BMW is so keen on defending its iX that the brand tweeted the marketing slogan preceded by the expression “OK, Boomer” (see below). This seems like an even more questionable move than simply trying to convince people who find the design ugly that they’re being too narrow-minded. After all, despite their copious flaws as a group, Baby Boomers do have one thing that younger generations don’t: Money. And lots of it.
Dismissing that demographic with the phrase “OK, Boomer” seems like a questionable call to make, especially for a luxury automaker
Someone on Twitter answered BMW’s new catchphrase with pure comedic genius:
And BMW responded! “In order to go new ways you sometimes have to try new looks” was the brand’s response to “Because I don’t want to drive a slit eyed Allegro with squirrel teeth.”
Bold on BMW for responding, there. The right move? I don’t know. I did write about it, so perhaps!
Here’s a bit more from that article in which I criticized BMW’s defensive marketing/PR strategy:
It’s worth mentioning that the campaign “What’s your reason not to change?” isn’t just about the iX’s appearance, it’s actually focused on folks’ reluctance to adopt electric cars. On the campaign’s main webpage, you’ll find BMW’s answers to a number of questions that people have about EVs and their limitations. But of course, there’s still plenty about the iX’s design. Here’s a quote:
You will always have plenty of reasons to change.
But the truth is: It’s always easier to find a reason not to. It might not be the best time for you right now, or perhaps you find yourself in the wrong place. You might think that technology still hasn’t reached its peak, or that the design looks strange.
Here’s another:
The monolithic design with few, very precise lines demonstrates character and gives the car a modern appearance. The BMW iX is bold and yet clean and elegant.
Domagoj Dukec
Head of BMW Design
And another:
The BMW iX shows how we can give new technologies a very modern and emotional design.
[…]
Adrian van Hooydonk
Senior Vice President BMW Group Design
After all of that — after the vicious criticism and BMW’s many attempts to stop the bleeding — time, the decider of many controversies on this earth, has seemingly sided with…BMW!
Obviously, this is not an opinion shared by everyone, but as someone who was initially critical, I’m perhaps less inclined to admit this than others: The iX looks quite nice in person. I didn’t think this could be possible, even after a businessman at the German Car of the Year event in Germany told me this after having purchased his own — but it turns out that he was right.
You know who else was right? Autopian cofounder Jason Torchinsky, who wrote this way back in September of 2021:
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[Editor’s Note: I stand by this still. This is one of those cars that just works better in person than in pictures. None of the critiques are really wrong, they just don’t seem to matter as much when you’re standing next to the thing. – JT]
I say this because I recently spotted an iX in the Ace Hardware parking lot, and I thought it looked great in person — sharp, futuristic, sleek. I’m into it, especially in this color:
I’d initially planned to toss this article into the trash, as our very own expert designer, Adrian Clarke, threatened me with things too diabolical to even mention, but I recently spotted this tweet from a car photographer I follow in Twitter, and now I feel like I’m less alone, here. Plus, I’m hoping Adrian doesn’t see this article:
Looking less weird to me these days as well????♂️???? (also props to the A6 owner keeping that alive 😉
— JC (@jcorriv35) January 17, 2023
Is the world coming around to the iX? To those of you who’ve seen one in person — how are you feeling these days about Munich’s flagship electric SUV?
[Designer’s Note: Hi, it’s Adrian Clarke, The Autopian’s in-house car designer. Nice try, David. No way you were publishing this without me noticing.
Readers, I think all this worrying about moving has reformatted David’s head, rewriting the bit that controls the eyesight. I mean, I know he wears glasses but I had assumed as he can drive his optical cortex was functioning somewhat, but it appears not. There’s so much wrong with the appearance of the iX it’s hard to know where to direct the spleen juice first. Remember when you were little and tried on your dad’s suit? That’s what the body of the iX is like. Flabby and oversized and creased in all the wrong places. There’s competing shapes fighting each other all over the place, the wheel arch flats are stolen from a completely different car making it look under wheeled and the C pillar is all wrong. There’s corners where there should be curves and the whole thing shrieks of inconsistency inside and out. The color ways are bad, the wheels are terrible and there is not one thing I can find about this eyesore that I like. Put the entire production run into a burlap sack and chuck it into the Danube so no-one should ever have to gaze upon the horror ever again. -AC].
DT is right. It’s just not that bad.
Syphilis is just not that bad either. It could have been Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
I like your subversive tone.
Well, it’s…still ugly as hell. But then again, that’s pretty much BMW these days.
As for the ‘change’ bs, BMW, seriously? Really? I still don’t know why I would choose a BMW over anything else at this point. Previously there were reasons but now…eh?
Old man yells at cloud territory, I guess, but good lord that thing’s ugly.
I’m not a buyer but …. It’s awful
“It doesn’t actually look as bad in person as it does in pictures. I kinda like it.”
If I follow you around all day every day playing the same song, you’re gonna hate me for the first couple days/weeks/whatever your tolerance is at. After long enough of it, you’re going to tune it out. You’re going to subconsciously ignore me and my tune. New people that come into your orbit are gonna hate me, but eventually they’ll leave or they’ll get used to it.
The human mind has an incredibly agile ability to twist itself into convincing itself that what its hearing isn’t there, what its seeing isn’t there/is something else.
No matter what though, the iX is going to be an ugly ass car, and if I follow you around blasting MMMBop long past the point in time where you have begun to ignore me its going to be an annoying song.
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Oh yeah
I was at a BMW dealership last weekend. It really is “stunning” but only in the worst kind of way. It’s especially bad in that storm cloud blue-gray.
It’s stunningly ugly. The giant non-functional grille is a stupid cartoon feature pasted on the front of a decent brick of an SUV. From the side, it looks almost like a GMC SUV. From the back, the tailgate and bumper cover are pretty attractive. But walk around to the front, and the grille dominates and negates the rest.
No car needs a grille this large, and no electric car needs a grille at all. It’s intentionally offensive, like so many in politics these days. That is a large part of why I find it so abhorrent. It’s like screaming a cuss word at full volume at a fifth grade recital.
Erase the grille, mentally for a moment. A fresh look at the BMW shows a giant blank frontal area that looks they simply couldn’t figure out what to do with. I actually like the headlights. Someone got incredibly lazy with the rest.
The black diamond pearl Nissan Ariya in the showroom a few doors down at half the cost looked about a thousand times more attractive, and at least that much more classy, too. It was actually quite impressive how clean and composed it looked, not just from the front, but from all angles. And I am someone not at all impressed with Nissan recently.
If I could post photos, I would provide proof. Please, if you have any doubt, have a look for yourself. The Nissan looks much better. The Nissan looks pretty good in copper as shown on the front page of their web site. It looks amazing in black.
Scroll to the bottom and test all the colors. There isn’t a bad look in the Nissan choices, although I do wish they had a chili pepper red or yellow choice.
The BMW? Good design? No. It’ll gain acceptance only because people recognize it as expensive.
I love David to death but once again I’m with the skinny goth. This thing looks horrific.
It’s not just the face. Like AC says, the proportions are off elsewhere. The wheel arches are terrible, the floating roof makes it look like a Nissan, and the taillight treatments are all squinty-eyed. Not sure what happened to the company that produced the lovely 2002, the shark-nose coupes like the 3.0 CSL and the 635i, and the E38 and E39.
Although I agree with Jason that it is somehow better in the metal it’s still seriously uggo.
The red example from your first example really shows it, everything in that image from the B pillar back especially. The ill defined shoulder flops onto a badly contorted wheelarch and the whole area looks heavy. The previous commenter who mentioned the Allegro is into something, there’s something strangely BMC/BL about it, maybe even moreso than the 5 door MINI.
I’m looking forward to seeing one in person. Just want to know if the haughty beaver look carries over irl.
It’s still ugly, man.
…are you okay?
The only distinguishing feature that sets apart from every other egg shaped pile of shit is those grills looking like a retarded beaver coming down the road.
I’ll never understand how anyone walks into a dealership and looks at anything like this and just has to have it. Sounds like torture to me!
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It's a squinting beaver.
Icky, icky, ick :-{
I’ve seen one and the only nice thing I’ll say about it is that I don’t hate the headlights when it’s dark. During the day though I am disgusted.
A black iX in dark isn’t probably that horrible than I first thought when I save the pictures, but still it is at least ugly. Not “rage vomiting on your neighbour who paid for that what the oh my god” -ugly, but still nothing to be envious of.
I saw one in person when I was out on a walk a few months ago and really stopped to take it in. It’s an absolute abomination from every angle. The grilles are miserably hideous but they’re not even the worst thing about it. I agree with Kakairo that the rear end and bulbous side profile are somehow worse. In any color but black all the different colors of trim pieces make it look like a disjointed mess.
Honestly the car looks like BMW dropped a mountain of blow on the table, grabbed their 3-4 most bro-ey designers, and said MORE IS MORE ASSHOLES MAKE THIS THE MOST RAD AND EXTREME EXAGGERATION OF BMW DESIGN FEATURES AS YOU CAN!
…but the worst part of all of this is it’s working. People are buying these, they’re buying M3s, the current 4 series, etc. As I said in the Morning Dump comments, the sort of people who buy this drivel want to be noticed. They want everyone to know that they have money. They want everyone to know that they’re fast. They want everyone to know they’re BETTER than you.
In the era of social media, clout chasing, and turbocharged conspicuous consumption, this is what people want…and it sucks.
Someone mentioned that China is driving this. Over there more is more, and not in an unhealthy way.
Not sure I see that fully, but they kept Buick alive long enough for them to be revitalizing themselves AGAIN.
Totally true. BMW is missing out in that demographic by not offering this in factory gold wrap.
I don’t want to speak too highly of yuppies, but at least there was subtext of wanting *good* things instead of just *expensive* things. New BMW’s look like the gaudy rolling bordellos that drove them into German showrooms in the first place.
It’s hideous. I’ve completely lost interest in BMW at this point thanks mainly to their styling, but also thanks to their continual dilution of the M badge. You used to know what you were getting with the M version of a particular model, but these days it’s mostly just another marketing gimmick (with a couple of exceptions).
I would never buy a new BMW but I have bought 3 yr old off-lease cars, and there is nothing in their lineup that I look forward to coming off lease in 3 years.
As an Allegro owner I’m torn between saying leave us out of this and pointing out that the more apt comparison is to the Vanden Plas 1500.
I’ve driven behind then past one on the road. I stand by my posting the Team America: World Police vomiting gif, I involuntarily cringed seeing it in the wild.
I’ve seen a few IRL. They are just as grotesque in person.
You should see an optometrist immediately, sir.
If you only rate them as grotesque as in staged photos, you clearly are unable to see the true horror they are. On the other hand, that might not be a bad thing.
They’re straight up Eldritch.
The face is actually the least offensive part to me. That bloated side profile and generic looking tail are travesties.
I’m on the opposite side of that statement. I can tolerate the body lines (?) but the “pineapple pattern” grill insert just kills me.
I can’t unsee the pineapples now. It’s the official car of awkwardly horny Steiner Ranch couples who are just a little too aggressive at the bar.
I was just thinking this. The grille isn’t that bad. What’s bad is the side profile, the C pillar, and the weird arrow/triangle things in the front corners.
In this case I think the grill is the only part making it noticeable as a BMW. If I saw this from the side, I would honestly have no idea what brand of vehicle it is, because it looks like many other CUV’s out there. So the Grill is the a very fast way for me to identify it as a BMW (not seeing logos withstanding). I still hate it, because it is generic and I really don’t like the grill.
There’s nothing wrong with change. But it’s also important to remember that not all change is inherently good, nor is change for the sake of it.
Worse
It bad.
I still say someone should paint that grill like butterfly wings and paint little antennae sticking out of the BMW logo. Beyond that, I struggle to have any strong feelings about the design. It’s not good, but it isn’t particularly egregious in today’s car market. Meh.
It’s still quite ugly and just an incoherent design. The fact that you qualify “isn’t particularly egregious” with “in today’s car market” of various ugly cars and bad design just reinforces that. It’s still quite egregious.
I do like the butterfly idea.
Someone in town has one. As with many vehicles suffering from grill inflation, it doesn’t look quite so bad in black. It’s still ugly, but I could name half a dozen BMW models that are worse looking from the last decade or two.