Designworks, a California-based creative design company, fancies itself as the door into BMW, but it’s so much more. The team, based in Santa Monica, has created trains, planes and public transit stations among other projects.
“Our mindset is really about how we take that idea of eyes and ears and make things tangible,” a company representative told Newsweek. “We’re not just observing passively, we’re creating it and we’re anticipating it for the BMW Group…We get to be the design team that’s working in California, and a responsibility we don’t take lightly, because we’re more than just a traditional satellite studio. We like to think of ourselves as the door into BMW.”
An autos project that started two decades ago has finally revealed itself fully in the debut and launch of BMW’s Neue Klasse next-generation vehicles.
At a closed event for media, BMW pulled back the curtain on some of what Designworks has been a part of over its decades-long history, including a project that started in 2002 to design an SUV for the American market.
The large model, which was not allowed to be photographed, had a large body form that appeared like an amalgamation of the current X4 and X7 SUVs, similar in size to today’s X5 SUV.
“Looking at this now, we could probably see some hints [of products to come] many years later,” the representative said. That concept model produced “little seeds” that have matured to become the iX3, he said.
The 20-year old concept’s a long, longitudinal grille area is unmistakably linked to the new BMW iX3, the automaker’s first Neue Klasse model to become publicly revealed and go on sale. Despite that linkage, the design took decades to come to fruition as BMW worked through variations of its X portfolio body and grille designs.
Adrian van Hooydonk, senior vice president of BMW Group design, explained that the design work can take years to marinate and a final design only comes to fruition when the time is right, undergoing variations along the way and being refined depending on company product goals.
The iX3’s grille is a “new interpretation of the four-eye face” the company said in a press release when it debuted. Its horizontal light signature replaces the traditional chrome trim elements found on previous generations of BMW vehicles and gives the face of the SUV depth.
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