Xiaomi is going to get advice from the man who still gets proverbial bullet letters from BMW aficionados.
Xiaomi, that's one of those phones, right? Yes. The tech company from China is already immensely successful with smartphones, but they now want to make the transition to building cars. It is not the first tech company to want this: Sony previously presented a car, Apple appears to be working on a car and Renault has sold many of their models in South Korea as Samsung.
Design Xiaomi
What Xiaomi will also find out sooner rather than later: building a car is no small feat. We don't have to explain this to a multi-million dollar company, in fact, their first achievement is already more or less a reality in the form of the SU7. An electric sedan that, in a good way, reminds us of a Porsche Taycan. So those designers know what they are doing. Still, there is a chance that Xiaomi cars will become a little… more controversial in the future. They have 'hired' someone who is mentioned in the same breath as a very controversial design language.
Chris Bangle
Yep, the one and only Chris Bangle will join Xiaomi's design team in an advisory role. We think you know who that is, but if not, Bangle was the man at the helm of BMW's design team at the time of its big shake-up in the early '00s. The result is that cars such as the BMW 7 Series (E65), BMW 5 Series (E60) and 6 Series (E63) continue to divide opinions. The special butt of these cars, among others, with the strange lines that cross each other in the taillights and the trunk, has been popularly called the 'Bangle Butt' for years. The design language has its lovers and haters, and the undersigned believes that with the knowledge we have today, everything is not too bad. However, it is not as timelessly clean as an E38 or E39 and probably never will be.
On X Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun announced that Chris Bangle will join the team, as mentioned, as an advisor. Xiaomi's Helmut Marko, so to speak. It is not known how or if Bangle influenced the SU7, only that the brand 'adopted' him as of this year. If the SU7 is a good indicator, everything is going well. What we certainly don't have to explain to BMW and Bangle is how easy it is to ruin a good design. From a business point of view, it is quite a big step for a brand like Xiaomi to acquire such a big name before you have even sold a single car. On the other hand, Giorgetto Giugiaro isn't that busy right now either. You could have asked that too.
This article Uh oh, Xiaomi models are becoming ugly first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
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