You could say BMW has been on a design streak lately. Whether that streak has been good or moderately horrifying is up to you, reader. But there’s no doubt that BMW’s designs are the cornerstone of many cases of Extreme Car Enthusiasm.
How many of you grew up adoring the E46 3 Series? Or, more recently, the F87 M2? For the sports car folks, how about the E85 Z4? You may think those cars came from BMW's headquarters in Munich, but almost all of them came from a company called Designworks.
Based in Los Angeles, Designworks has even more heavy hitters beyond what I just listed: The E53 X5, the I01 i3, and the stunning E31 8 Series. Designworks has even done random things, like the current-generation M Carbon Bucket seats, iDrive, and a first-class aircraft cabin.
I got a chance to visit the studio privately to see how BMW design really gets done. If nothing else, a company that produced both the F80 M3 and the BMW XM within the same decade is a fascinating one to explore.
It all starts with a design competition between three primary design studios. There’s Designworks USA, Designworks Munich, and Designworks Shanghai. BMW also has an internal design team, but it owns the majority of Designworks and uses the studios as its primary design team. When it’s time for a new design, the Munich mothership launches a design competition among all the studios. The winner of that competition gets to see their design to completion.
What is unique about the BMW process is that the winners themselves get to finish the design, no matter how junior. In most design studios, the task gets handed off to a more senior person. If you’re a first-year designer at BMW and you pen the best design, you are tasked with getting it to production alongside BMW's other teams.
In the case of Designworks USA, that’s how it managed to make some of BMW’s most iconic cars. The E46 was penned by then Designworks bosses Erik Goplen and Chris Bangle. Designworks USA handled the clay models, production design, and everything else required to make the car actually come to life.
While the old Newbury Park studio, where the E46 was made, is not the studio I got to tour, the new Santa Monica studio holds many of the old relics. While I don’t want to reveal too much for the video watchers, my favorite part was the back corner of the office. In that corner sat decades of accumulated info about the Individual program.
BMW nerds will know what Individual is, but for those who don’t, it’s a special-order program for any customer who requests it. You can choose from a library of exterior and interior colors, stitching, patterns, and trims to make your BMW your own. If you thought Porsche’s paint-to-sample department was unique, BMW has a formidable collection all its own.
On a few nondescript shelves exist thousands of color swatches and interior material samples for clients to choose from. Every popular color we love—Laguna Seca Blue, Imola Red, Dakar Yellow—all exist on original swatches on those shelves. Designworks even has the original master samples for interior materials dating back to the 1990s. Everything from cuts of fabric to book-sized squares of plastic made to replicate the exact texture and color of every surface that may be in a BMW cabin.
The visit was neat and very visual. If you want to see it for yourself, watch our latest video.
