Does this model look fresh to you? Does it look like the kind of thing you would expect a designer to come up with right now, in 2021? Because it does to us, and we think that says a lot about great designs and how well they age.
The name for this rendering is BMW ConnectedDynamics, and it belongs to a man called Lukas Haag. It was developed for his bachelor’s degree at the Pforzheim University together with BMW, and while we don't know how old Lukas was back then, what we can tell you is that he's almost seven years older now.
That's right, this thing saw the light of day a few months before the BMW i8 was officially launched, and even though the Bavarian hybrid sportscar has nothing to do with the story of this fictional model, we're just mentioning it to offer a little perspective. Recently, though, Lukas came up with a few tweaks and a new set of images, which is how his creation ended up on our radar now.
Ironically enough, Lukas went on to be employed by Mercedes-Benz as a designer, though the people at BMW must be kicking themselves for letting him go. It's not often you see something that is beautiful, true to the brand's values, and extremely different from every other model wearing the same badge, all at the same time.
Photo: Lukas Haag via Behance
The ConnectedDynamics concept was created as a solution to the "threat" - as Lukas refers to it - posed by autonomous driving technology, particularly to a brand like BMW that speaks so much about the "joy" of driving. It was, if you will, a car meant to quell everyone's fears that self-driving tech can't co-exist with fun and engaging cars that can raise your blood pressure better than a strong coffee.
Looking at the ConnectedDynamics (we'll call it "CD" from now on), it immediately presents itself as a car you would love to drive. It has that short nose of a mid-engine hypercar complete with a forward-slung cabin that screams "performance," and the aggressive, angular lines on the side do very little to change that impression.
However, the CD is actually a four-seater, making any parallel with the Koenigsegg Gemera seem quite fitting. Unlike the Gemera, though, which has to bother with real-world constraints, Haag's concept could roam free on the fields of unlimited and unrestricted creativity.
That's why its cabin is much roomier than what the Koenigsegg actually gets, with the trapezoidal shape meaning the front seats are much closer together than the rear ones. The same space repartition is kept once we move to the Z-axis, with the heavily sloped roof potentially making life hard for any tall people who would dream of driving this thing. The low, laid-back driving position could also prove problematic for anyone with a bad back, especially since it's not entirely clear what kind of acrobatics one would have to pull off if they wanted to get in or out of the front seats.
Photo: Lukas Haag via Behance
The slope in the roof isn't there for aesthetic or aerodynamic reasons. It may play a role there too, but its main purpose was to facilitate the mounting of the LiDAR sensor up top and give it the angles it needed to scan the surroundings with maximum efficiency.
The integration of the sensor might not be the greatest you'll ever see, but bear in mind this was done in 2014, and back then, LiDARs were considerably larger than they are now. Besides, wasn't it BMW that first introduced the shark fin antenna at the back of the roof? Well, you can just call this a Megalodon fin, then.
Before we go and you start drooling over the pictures in the gallery, let's talk a little about the grille. You know how BMW struggled to keep it relevant in the seemingly upcoming EV age? Well, it turns out they had a much better solution than the big black plasticky thing they seem to have gone for on the i4 right in their backyard.
What's wrong with Lukas Haag's solution, or any other variation on this theme? It's different, no question about it, but it's also instantly recognizable as a BMW. Plus, unlike what we've seen recently from the Bavarians' latest models, it's not ugly.
Ever since the new 4 Series was introduced, we've seen countless better solutions from other designers that it just seems as though BMW chose the worst one possible. Maybe it wasn't BMW who didn't want Lukas, but after spending some time working with the company's design department, it was actually the other way around.
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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