BMW's design chief on the giant grilles: "The Chinese like it!"

The critics state that today's BMWs and their design language are the most ugly cars on the market. BMW's head of design says that really doesn't matter since the Chinese love it...
Text: Petter Hegevall
Published 2025-09-16

For a number of years now, the automotive world has made fun of BMW's current design language and the enormous gaps in the grille that have grown beyond all conceivable reasonableness.

Many thousands of BMW fans have demanded the resignation of design director Adrian van Hooydonk over the past five years, but despite all the criticism, BMW has continued to sell more and more cars with each passing year and a lot of this apparently has to do with China, where the big giant nostrils seem to be very appreciated.

Carexpert has spoken to Hooydonk who said this about the design choices they have made in recent years.

"Big grilles are popular in certain areas in the world, like China. People are still asking for big grilles. There was no backlash from customers. Indeed, of course, we took note of all the negative comments, but we never saw it in the sales figures. Actually, quite the opposite. So in some way or form, we didn't feel that we had to react."

In China the huge grill-nostrils are a smash hit.

<bild>Once upon a time BMW:s looked beautiful.</bild>

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