Evolutions and revolutions – can you see the pattern? – click to enlarge
For BMW fans and potential owners, 2010 is the year that we’ll see the ‘eagle-eyed’ E60 be replaced by the all-new F10 here in Malaysia. Many view the F10’s design to be a much more conservative one compared to the E60, especially when you take into account the stark difference between the E39 and E60, and now between the E60 and the F10.
We all know that BMW designs usually follow the revolution and evolution cycle. The E60 was a revolution of the E39 and this F10 is supposed to be an evolution of the E60’s. But how exactly did BMW end up with how the F10 looks like, or with all of its other cars for the matter? I recently found out how right at the headquarters of BMW – the mothership as they call it – Munich.
How a car ends up looking is the result of so many factors – exterior and interior size requirements, crash compatibility requirements, aerodynamics requirements, as well as the actual aesthetics design direction itself. Sometimes crash tests alone can dictate how an entire generation of cars look like – I’ve heard many classic car owners lament on how there was a time where a revised US crash test ruling completely changed the course of car design.
But first, we check out where all the design takes place. The design of a new BMW takes place in the group’s Research and Innovation Centre. This is called the FIZ, which is an acronym for the same name in German language. The FIZ was designed to promote convenient and active dialogue between all the different teams that come together to design a car, down to the building’s very architecture, layout and structure.
According to a long-term study by the MIT, 80% of all innovative concepts and ideas are the result of effective personal communication between individuals. The BMW 5-Series is the first car that has benefited from the new FIZ Project Building, which started operations about 5 years ago.The FIZ Project Building is divided into a Central Area with four double floors, and a Ring Building covering 5 floors. This provides a gross work area of about 968,000 square feet.
Specialist work areas are laid out around an Inner Court within a Central Building in the middle. They are able to observe the latest developments in the car designing process at any time just “next door” to their own work area. Rooms are light and airy and located in close proximity.
Click to enlarge
And now to the actual development of the car. A new model usually takes a period of several years to develop, so this actually means that the F10 was developed while Chris Bangle was still in BMW. The features and requirements of a new model is defined in a “Package Plan” right from the beginning – usually about 5 years before the planned production start. It is during this initial phase that the designers start creating the first few scale models and renderings. The design process is split up into three phases – Understanding, Believing and Seeing.
It is under the Understanding phase which is where the features of the Package Plan is defined. You have to set targets for the car, things such as the desired wheelbase (which seems to keep growing and growing over the years), luggage compartments capacity, engine range (you need to design an engine bay that will clear all engines), interior width, safety requirements, and etc.
Then under the Believing phase, all the exterior designers come up with their own personal drafts and designs on how they think the F10 should look like. They compete with each other in a ‘creative contest’ of sorts, of course under the guidance of the Head of BMW Group Design.
At that time, Mr Bangle was the head of the entire group design while Mr Adrian van Hooydonk was the head of BMW design. Adrian is now both the head of the entire group design and the BMW marque design, while others are in charge the Rolls-Royce and MINI brands.
A few clay models based on these drafts and concepts are made and in an elimination process by the board, these drafts are eliminated one by one until finally the end result is selected. By this point, 2 years have passed and the final choice between the final two clay models is made about three years before the intended start of production. The clay model is 1:1 in size, which means it is the actual size of the intended production car. The clay model is covered by a special surface film similiar to Titanium Silver Metallic paintwork.
The designer whose design was picked as the final design for the F10 5-Series is 44 year old Mr Jacek Frohlich. I am guessing that the board is more than happy with his work with the F10 – he has just been promoted to the new position of Director of Exterior Design at BMW, replacing Anders Warming who penned the new Z4.
Next we have the Seeing phase of the design, which presents the design’s exterior and interior in all details for further refinement. The car’s interior design has already been chosen – the same man who penned the interior of the 7-Series and 5-Series GT. They are all rather similiar at first sight but have subtle differences about them.
But sometimes taking a design that just “works” and then altering it may create new problems that need solving. For example, while the 5 GT had some wood trim on the doors that connected with the wood on the dash, the wood on the door got thinner as the wood moved towards the rear. This was a design that’s pleasing to the eye.
But for the 5-Series Sedan (and presumably the Touring), the designer wanted the wood trim to continue to stretch towards the rear of the cabin. This meant that the wood would appear too thick. To ‘fix’ this, BMW added a trim bar to the bottom of the wood and added an upward swing where the dash and the front doors met. This is so that the optical impression of the trim’s width would be reduced and I must say it worked.
But all in all the interior designs are significantly more attractive than the boring and symmetrical ‘hammerhead’ design that the E60’s interior employed. With these new series of interiors, we have finally gone back to the driver-oriented BMW dashboard, though I am guessing this will probably incur more production costs as the design of certain features are no longer as symmetrical as the E60’s?
The clay models are scanned into a computer with laser scanning. The development process is now taken into virtual reality, powered by a system that can put to shame the most powerful of 3D gaming rigs you can think of! Virtual designing methods are used for various design processes including the rapid prototyping of individual components. The powerful virtual reality computer system that BMW uses is called the Powerbench.
VIDEO: BMW Powerbench Demo
The Powerbench can create a smooth and fast high resolution rending on a large reverse projection wall measuring about 6 meters in width and 2.7 meters in height, allowing the designers to view their designs virtually. The total image resolution is about 4096 by 2160 pixels. That’s about 4 times the size of 1080p HD resolution. Each pixel measures 1.5mm in size. This allows the system to bring out the finest of details of the design being worked on, down to the curvature of the kidney grille or the seam pattern on the seats. Powering the Powerbench is a network of 23 high-performance computers with high-end graphic cards. And this is just for the 2D projection.
Powerbench is also capable of 3D projection. This uses an additional floor projection unit about 6 by 2.4 meters. The observer looks at the 3D images through special glasses, and the position of the pbserver within the projection area is monitored by 8 cameras. This takes into account the position of the observer and adjusts the 3D image for a more realistic presentation. This allows the observer to change the perspective of the model being presented from different distances of angles.
Every single degree of curvature of the sheet metal is there for a reason. You have to take into account aerodynamics, the way it looks, the way it reflects simulated light, as well as the feasibility of whether the metal can be made the way the designers want it or not, both in technical terms and cost terms. BMW showed us how slight differences in curvature can result in a completely different effect when it comes to the light play on the surfaces.
Everything has to be just right otherwise you will not get an aesthetically desirable effect, instead there would be just random scattering of light on the surfaces. And the designers have to work within the constraints of a few pre-fixed points to allow the car to have the desired crash safety.
You may think that the Hoffmeister kink on the new F10 was easy to implement. To us who are not engineers, it may seem just like cutting a Hoffmeister kink-shaped hole in the side of the F10 and being done with it! If only engineering was that simple.
They said it was pretty hard to get the desired angles of the kink. The actual kink is easy to draw on paper but apparently the shape of the chassis metal behind it required some pretty intense and precise math calculations, as if done wrongly, the metal would just tear during the production process. This is because the kink was wrapped so far back into the C-pillar, resulting in a thin C-pillar going as far back as possible and the ‘kink’ kicking in at a tighter than usual radius. But Powerbench helped them develop an ideal solution.
Both the F10 exterior and interior designers having a chat in their creation
That’s basically how the exterior of the car was developed, as that was pretty much what the design workshop presentation was about. But I also do have some technical tidbits about the car to share with you. For one – yes, this new F10 shares a common platform with the 5-GT as well as the F01/F02 7-Series. The Rolls-Royce Ghost does share some components with this platform but BMW considers that platform to be unique.
The decision to base the new 5 on the 7 was not something that was decided later. It was something that was decided when the 7’s platform was being developed. It is significantly harder to design something large and then try to scale it down and cram everything that you require into the smaller spaces, so the reality is the smallest platform was designed first, and then scaled up into larger versions. The 5-Series Sedan will include all the high-tech features that the F01/F02 features, such as the rear axle steering for rear wheel drive vehicles.
The new F10 5’s chassis is about 50% stiffer than the outgoing E60’s. This will improve drive and handling but it is also something that was required due to the lengthening of wheelbase. The longer the space between the two axles, the more strengthening of the rigidity between the two axles are needed, for both driving dynamics sake as well as for side impact safety. There is just simply more area to hit since there is a longer passenger cabin.
Of course, all of this also contributes to the F10 being heavier than the E60, but thanks to tech such as the active air flaps in the kidney grilles, the end result is still a more efficient car – both in terms of fuel consumption and CO2 output. Now that’s impressive.
From what I heard, we’ll be able to see the end result of what the F10 project team worked so hard on (with the help of Powerbench) for about 5 years on our roads sometime in Q2 or Q3 this year. We’ll bring you a test drive report sometime next month so watch out for that!
[zenphotopress number=999 album=646]
[zenphotopress number=999 album=647]
Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.
5 years of works really make it no wonder it is an amazing end product.
berapa riban ni?
nice..like a work of art
the price im guessing around 500k-600k. personally thinks the exterior of the E60 is better.
Same old mafia design , or just more of the same .Boring germans just like their soccer.
i would want to see the m-sport version of this f10..
e39! my fav..hehehe
i.m no fan of the BMW design cues eversince chris bagle,,i think BMW is now all confused about which desingn direction to take,,and it is showing on the ir cars. prefer merc
Errmmmm. Looks Like E90 To Me?
That's one heck of an article you wrote there Paul. A good heck. :D
The head of designer seems like gay to me. The hairstyle is gay.
j/k.
I still like the old design of e34 n e39.. the old version car look more macho n handsome compare to e60 n the 2010 version.. which soo elegant n polite on the road.. just my 2 cent.. happy motoring..
I think a…personally the E60 was totally different from the E39.. How to say a, at first glance, the E60 was not so much of BMW typical look compared to the 3- and 7-, agreed? Still, my interest of 5- stopped at E39. Even the E65/66 has not much eagle eyes compared to E38…Hmm, just can't take it..just wondering how long the beauty of these design will end.
hey paul,will this car assembly in malaysia like E60 before?
E60 looks better but wait till we see it life….lik the new Merc Eclass…it look stunning, saw it yesterday…
I noticed the lifespan of the BMW models getting shorter and shorter…to a place like Malaysia, where the models were launched years later..the situation even worsen.
Thinking of buying the car that cost a bomb and gonna be replaced faster than your loan term……..erm not me!
i believe the "5-series" series never disappointed to BMW fans. Even E39 model still look WOW on the road. Some said the new model look "less" then E60. maybe the timeline was wrong. the new model come first after E39, then E60 for this year..hehe..
BTW, the new model always better then previous model. they already benchmarked, add new tech, better chassis. So, nothing to worry for BMW, even if they design next model with more and more bigger grill and jammed with more electronic and computer, it will become a success model.
We need to BRAND our product first… like what P1 is doing…
join F1 is a good move..
Personally I find the E60 design a bit loud, not discreet like the E39. The F10 follows the E91 and and the E90 LCI design which is much more pleasing and flowing.
Mercedes on the other hand took the opposite route and their C class and the latest E class is something like the E60 in design.
nice things takes time and hard work to do it.
there's no two way about it…
Oh Germans, Oh Germans! They always do things so perfectly… and nicely!
A wonderful piece of technology!
great writes up Paul, Kudos to you!!
It was not easy to design this piece of machine. I solute the BMW for their efford and design.
Now that's what I call Precision German Engineering. Now let's see some precision engineering of our own.. Then again, isn't this how everyone develop their car? Consumer input not included ke Paul?
This round, I think the W212 will outsales F10….
With so much R&D into minute stuff like the curvature of the metal, that is why BMW is so successful. I wonder how much R&D do other car manufacturer pored into…
My view is that in Hooydonk era, talk is more to cover that less work result. Exterior is bland. No clear design direction! Just look at the line on the hood, it just not match with anything at the nose. I mean it just stop up there nowhere!
Second I dont agree is the sheer growing size. Some say it's for crash test, some for the underpin sharing. Now look back, e28, e32, e34 shared very same cassis components. They did it. While world is going more crowded, BMW makes bigger cars …emm, to choke it even more.
Overall lately, BM design looks going hairwire.
However, thumb up for the rear light.
Great article, Paul! 5 years of well engineered product, that is one of the reason they are one of the top company. There is one company proudly pronouce their 18 months product from concept to production, the end product is disappointing!
This is really a amazing design, our Local designer must learn…!!!
a Bigger car looks Smaller; the interior is just tastefully done…
i wil take curent generation e39 anytime..i jus cant get used to this new front end of bmw's…this one and the new 7 series , btw , the guy in the first pic looks like hes got HIV or sting…or a little gay-ish !
amazing design…
head lamp is like pre-FL vios 06…
hakhak..
I just love that long bonnet…i thought Chris B did a blunder but he proved critics wrong. E60 sold like there was no tomorrow. Adrian V H did some fantastic job on it. Now the car is much lower than the previous model(E60) and it does brings back the good old memory of E38 as the latter used to be knwn as the low rider. Still and will always love my fav model..E39. I hope F10 wont dissapoint me in the future
E60 after the facelift it gained a stupid but cheeky grin , somehow i felt like it was done by a marketing person , not a designer to keep the car fresh looking , i tot only korean/japan pulls these kinds of jobs . E60 was revolutionary but too square and some styling cues like the lack of a shoulder line and the once 'daring' eagle eye also now looks forced upon . E39 looks much evergreen in comparison to E60 . Now F10 i feel is the best looking 5 series, even if its just an evolution , but the added lines and fluid curves give it much more depth , and its best angles are everywhere on this car , it evokes your mind on how much attention to detail was given to car…its brilliant and will last a long time
This model looks so much better compared to the out-going E60. Somehow, this seems more like the evolution between the E39 to the E60- it looks right in place between both these models. And boy, does it look good! I like Alfa Romeos, and generally Alfistis dislike Beemers; but I have to say that this F10 looks good in the flesh- improving on the overall handsome E39 of the yesteryears :)
What is the big deal…..5 series looks like bigger 3 series … hey wait a minute 7 series looks like bigger 5 series…. BMW lost it character. All look the same…. what is the point….
E60 was unique cos 7 and the 3 did not look like it. On the road u can easily idenfify 5 series. Now with the new model. How ahh….
Hmm…those nostrils are getting bigger and bigger..,
Paul, can show pictures about what you mentioned about this bit:
"But for the 5-Series Sedan (and presumably the Touring), the designer wanted the wood trim to continue to stretch towards the rear of the cabin. This meant that the wood would appear too thick. To ‘fix’ this, BMW added a trim bar to the bottom of the wood and added an upward swing where the dash and the front doors met. This is so that the optical impression of the trim’s width would be reduced and I must say it worked."
I don't understand it
agressive looks is in the E60, but now F10 is much more polite look, it has the business man looking car and friendly looking. well it is a big leap design.
from the first pic, i can see the pattern… their 'nose' getting bigger..
It is desperately in need of an M bodykit
BMW at a level where only not styling make a different but the passion of driving and feeling when sitting and touching at superb hierarchy.not like P1 and P2,still struggling to achieve styling and good quality interior,exterior and performance.
KIA pun not so good yet,pretty sad when sitting in Kia Forte and Honda City, City more rigid and good feeling.will check the handle painting of Kia Forte after 2 years from now :)
ps: but not really like the BMWs' styling at nowadays
it amazed me alot!! nicely done.. but i was expecting to see something like the z4 (2009) the centre console..
dont like the design…ill take Lexus GS 300 with F-sport kit
WTF said,
January 7, 2010 @ 9:48 am
I noticed the lifespan of the BMW models getting shorter and shorter…to a place like Malaysia, where the models were launched years later..the situation even worsen.
Thinking of buying the car that cost a bomb and gonna be replaced faster than your loan term……..erm not me!
————————————–
BMWs has always been replaced with a new shape afters 7 years..no change here
being a BMW you can expect it to still sell well no matter what you say about the design,especially after the reconds become available. a lot of the E60's you see on the road are reconds.
fantastic design
I still prefer E60 "eagle eye" design, and smaller wheelbase. No point to drive a big car in Malaysia or places like Penang with small parking spaces
what a beauty
Everybody's been talking about the appearance of the car (dissenting appears to be gaining here) but F10 has got so much going for it in the engine dept and elsewhere. last time I checked the 520D aced the Merc E class 220 CDI and pretty much every other engines. In carbon production, speed and fuel economy. Its chassis is widely recognised as being one of the best (if not the best) for pure driving experience. As a package i think this F10 takes some beating what with the leather seats, climate control etc being included as standard(UK). I would leave the design alone – to each his/her own. I think I would wait for the touring model. How much would the 5 series cost in Malaysia? anybody?
you were in Munich !!! (JEALOUS) (VERY JEALOUS)!!! who invited you there?
when did this model will arrive at malaysia???
I really love BMW i hope this model will beat the new e class and audi a6…..For me the MB and audi has already beaten by BMW…
love that shark nose
E39 the king ;)