{"id":1836752,"date":"2026-03-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1836752"},"modified":"2026-03-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T21:00:00","slug":"bmw-design-boss-on-the-new-i3-ive-had-30-years-preparing-for-this-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1836752","title":{"rendered":"BMW design boss on the new i3: “I\u2019ve had 30 years preparing for this car”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThe 3 Series,\u201d says Adrian van Hooydonk, \u201cis the essence of BMW. It\u2019s about driving, sportiness and elegance, combined in a relatively compact format. The 5 Series is geared more towards autobahn driving. The 7 Series looks like you could go fast but don\u2019t really need to. The 3 Series is about agility and precision. It\u2019s always moving even when it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the very definition of a heartland car \u2013 for its maker, and for most of us. Van Hooydonk, the BMW Group design director, owns an E21 316, the first generation 3 Series, and a car that somehow looks fresher with every passing year. Especially painted orange, as his example is. That and its early Sixties forbear, the original Neue Klasse, are two lodestars on BMW\u2019s 110-year journey, so it\u2019s no accident they\u2019ve been invoked as the company unveils \u2013 after years of conceptual preparation and clever comms \u2013 the new i3<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is the biggest of big deals, as we know, and there is a sense of history being made. Yes, everyone says that, but today it might actually be true. CEO Oliver Zipse receives a two minute standing ovation as he arrives in the arena (usually a basketball venue), a rousing moment that\u2019s reminiscent of the fervour that greeted the late Steve Jobs. A clever strategist and clear thinker, Zipse has helped navigate the company through the perilous pivot to electrification without the shocking fiscal pain the upside down car world has inflicted on virtually every other big legacy name.<\/p>\n

Partly, it must be said, because BMW called it right by remaining \u2018technology open\u2019; petrol, diesel, plug-in hybrid, BEV and hydrogen fuel cells are all in play for the forseeable. The new iX3<\/a> is also a hit, so much so that the plant in Debrecen, Hungary where it\u2019s manufactured is running double shifts to meet demand. This is the EV that nukes any lingering doubts you might have about fitting one into your life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But it\u2019s also proof that the design strategy is working. Good job, too, because 40 new or revised models are heading rapidly along the product pipeline, X5, refreshed 7 Series and ICE 3 Series among them, all bearing the new NK imprimatur. TopGear.com grabbed 20 minutes with Van Hooydonk, for a debrief, update and a double espresso. It had been a long day.<\/p>\n

TopGear.com: Do you feel a sense of relief? The i3 is finally here\u2026<\/h3>\n

Adrian van Hooydonk: <\/strong>We started communicating the Neue Klasse before the first car was completely finished. And we had the iX3, 3 Series and others all happening in parallel. So the last four years has been very intense because we were basically doing the entire line-up simultaneously. That\u2019s not something that happens very often. Actually, it brought the design and engineering groups and the marketing team very close together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was like the BMW i days [that resulted in the original i3 and i8], only bigger because we had more to do. But there was the same spirit of starting something completely new.<\/p>\n

Is this a career high for you?<\/h3>\n

In a way, I\u2019ve had 30 years preparing for this car. And that\u2019s what I told my team. Everything we did before was good preparation. Of course, we\u2019ve done a few generations of 3 Series already so I certainly didn\u2019t have to explain what makes a 3 Series. The previous i cars and the iX were stepping stones, but the world is changing so fast that we felt encouraged to make a bigger leap still.<\/p>\n

The research was less about electric mobility. We felt OK on that, we know charging times are going to improve, range is going improve, and we know how to deal with proportion on an electric car. We figured out that the digital thing was the harder thing to integrate into a car made for people that love driving. That became the focus of the programme.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve really pushed the double kidney grille\u2026<\/h3>\n

The grille on the i3 is actually a glass surface, like a modern electronic device, and when it lights up it comes alive. But what got us to this point was a desire to reduce the number of parts, sustainability and circularity being among our goals. We wanted to simplify things. Some brands are illuminating their logo in various colours, but we decided not to do that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s vertical on X models, and we looked at doing that on the i3. But I felt that the whole brand would have become rather narrow if we had. It would have taken us back to the Seventies, but we\u2019re making far more cars now and selling them to a wider variety of customers. Proportionally, if you want the car to appear low and sporty, the horizontal treatment is better.<\/p>\n

Is the new design philosophy across the board? By which I mean, less market-specific.<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s a global design language. We\u2019re taking two steps rather than one, it\u2019s not evolutionary. But we\u2019re not breaking with our past. It\u2019s modern, but you also need to demonstrate that you know where you\u2019re coming from.<\/p>\n

How are you with \u2018software-defined\u2019 cars?<\/h3>\n

Customers don\u2019t really love every software update that they\u2019re forced to make, so this is now the challenge \u2013 to get all that stuff right before you deliver to the customer, though you can obviously do some updates.<\/p>\n

And how is AI impacting your work?<\/h3>\n

In design, our work is still the same. There\u2019s software in the background, not the foreground. There\u2019s no software that will tell me what to do, and we still have to be creative. Yes, we use tools, and you can move faster now from a sketch to an animation, build a city context around even a rough sketch. But it\u2019s what you put in that dictates the outcome.<\/p>\n

AI won\u2019t change the fact that you need creativity and a good eye. Of course, I see stuff happening out there, and I can see if there\u2019s a good designer behind it.<\/p>\n

The Panoramic iDrive has been well received and works beautifully. What did you think of the Ferrari Luce interior<\/a>?<\/h3>\n

I have tremendous respect for Jony [Ive] and Marc [Newson], they\u2019re incredible designers. As for the interior we saw, it\u2019s pretty much what I would have expected them to do if they\u2019d done a car at Apple. There\u2019s a mix between soft and hard keys. From what I can tell, you use a hard key and then something happens on the screen. We\u2019ll have to wait to find out more.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s going to be a trend, and we always wanted to keep a couple of hard keys, like the toggle switches in the Mini, and as BMW does in the centre console of its cars. I\u2019m relieved by this direction, because it confirms our thinking. I\u2019m quite sure that when Ferrari does something, and those guys do something, the industry as a whole will take note.<\/p>\n

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\"BMW<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe 3 Series,\u201d says Adrian van Hooydonk, \u201cis the essence of BMW. It\u2019s about driving, sportiness and elegance, combined in a relatively compact format. The 5 Series is geared more towards autobahn driving. The 7 Series looks like you could go fast but don\u2019t really need to. The 3 Series is about agility and precision. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-1836752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1836752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1836752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1836752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1836752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}