► In comes ex-Polestar Max Missoni
► Domagoj Dukec moves to Rolls-Royce
► What to expect from Munich
In a significant re-organisation of its design department, BMW has brought in ex-Polestar and Volvo hotshot Max Missoni and moved former BMW studio head Domagoj Dukec to Rolls-Royce. There’s a lot going on here, with BMW’s restructuring in part reflecting the trend shifts in design more generally (increased emphasis on digital and sound design, together with sustainability). But the Missoni/Dukec moves are particularly significant. Cerebral and original, with a deep understanding of high-net-worth individuals and their shifting tastes, Dukec should be a good fit for Rolls-Royce, though he’ll have to adapt to a tighter creative leash at Goodwood. And with Missoni in charge of BMW’s upper mid-size and luxury-class cars, a return to elegance looks assured.
Dukec’s BMW design era has, since the 2019 Frankfurt show, been equal parts class and chaos. It’d be wrong to paint Dukec as its sole architect; Adrian van Hooydonk was in overall command and remains so. In its push to create more distinctive cars for its more extrovert clients, BMW design launched a thousand memes and, at times, threatened to break the internet with the ire it generated. The old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity surely doesn’t extend to car design.
There was at least method in BMW’s apparent madness, as explained by its top men a couple of years ago. The ‘classic’ model lines, notably the 3-series and 5-series, would, in the words of Ron Burgundy, stay classy. Indeed the current 5, in gestation then, is probably the pick of the current range for design. At the same time Dukec and his team would cut loose on BMW’s more dynamic, less conservative cars, as von Hooydonk explained: ‘If one kind of customer is looking for a beautiful and timeless car, then of course we will design it. But there are also customers looking for something like an X6, which is certainly polarising – you either hate it or you love it. That approach wouldn’t work for a 3-series or a 5-series because they sell in bigger volumes, so it’s clear you can’t come with just one solution.’
But too many cars – notably the XM SUV, the i7 and the Frankfurt Concept 4 and the M3/M4 that followed, with their wildly enlarged kidney grilles – lacked the elegant dynamism that has been a Munich hallmark for half a century. (Paul Bracq’s E21 3-series was surely pivotal, but so too were the earlier E9 and 02 cars.)
To their credit, Dukec and his boss weren’t fazed. ‘Actually, all the negative comments prove that we achieved what we wanted to achieve,’ Dukec told CAR in 2022. ‘Obviously it would be nice to always be getting compliments. But whether the comments bother me or not depends on the car. In this case [the XM] they don’t. But if people were calling a 5-series ugly that would be bad, because a 5-series should never be ugly. With the kidney grilles it bothers me only if they are an M customer. We know the customers for this car want to stand out. We are not doing this just for our own sake. We didn’t sit here and think, “Yeah, let’s do something provocative.” It’s because we listen. And of course our sales figures are improving. So, you can read many bad articles or comments on social media, “Oh, you’re going to ruin this!” But from the sales figures you can see we’re not ruining anything.’
Max Missoni’s hands are as safe as they come. A VW designer for 10 years after graduating from the Royal College of Art, he joined Volvo in 2012. The Swedish marque’s renaissance under Geely is a textbook example of how to breathe new life into a faltering brand, and Missoni’s work with long-time collaborator and supporter Thomas Ingenlath (who championed Missoni when they both worked at VW) was fundamental to its success. From the sophisticated, monolithic XC90 to the handsome V90 estate and smash-hit XC40, Missoni and Ingenlath made Scandi chic again.
His more recent role as head of design at Polestar, which has operated with a start-up mentality, has fast-tracked his experience, honing skills it might have taken decades to develop in a more traditional OEM. Totally immersed in the brand, his keen eye and sharp intellect informed everything from infotainment typefaces and theme colours to the engineering of the coupe/SUV 4, in which the deletion of a normal rear screen came from a willingness to look at old compromises anew and make brave decisions. And it’s testament to its design leadership that Polestar has made it this far. The Polestar 2, until recently the only model it had and a fairly average family car and EV by most metrics, sold pretty much on style alone.
Make no mistake, Missoni is no nostalgia-driven conservative. His BMWs won’t be safe to the point of anonymity. But given the man’s track record they’ll likely be beautiful first, bold second.