Quote:
"In the past few years, there has been a lot of discussion about our kidney," says Dukec, "but it’s important we bring future customer generations and fans together. Fans aren’t always customers, but we want customers to become fans."
"You can’t just design to keep your icons alive: you have to create new ones."
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Point taken. Been discussed
ad nauseam and not intending to fan the flames about the controversial kidney grilles.
But here's a simple query for Domagoj Đukec: one can wonder how, on a personal level, Đukec truly feels about the fact of being required to repeatedly explain and justify criticized design choices; to be required once again to attempt to get his message across. I do not refer to any marketing prepared narrative. I refer to what's going through his mind when he drives home after yet another meeting or interview facing those very same challenging questions that keep recurring. Cannot be merely, let me guess,
"look, this is part of the job",
"opinions can be like wine that tastes better with age" or
"you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink", no ?
I genuinely think that Đukec and his team gave their level best and that they believe in their designs. But it must be heartbreaking on a personal level to repeatedly face an unusual barrage of unfavorable criticism from different corners of the car enthusiasts community. Ask yourself, wouldn't it be more satisfying for a car designer that a novel car design instantly or quite rapidly strikes hearts and minds of many car enthusiasts with good vibes, rather than striking their nerves ?
Imagine as car designer to be that 8-year old petrolhead kid again of decades ago, asked for an honest, visceral opinion about the design of a new high performance car.
Litmus test: do you, as that kid, like the design thąt much that you'd even hang a poster of that high performance car on your bedroom wall ?
Impossible to please everyone and of course there are the inevitable practical constraints (physics, functionality, car parts, engineering, financial resources, development time window, car design history, rules & regulations, etc.). But car manufacturers should never forget that the customer is their boss. And also a part of the car enthusiasts community happens to be existing or potential customers, usually voting with their wallets.
As BMW and BMW M are no charity, sales figures do matter, of course. But no rocket science or PhD is required to know that a design mostly perceived as 'attractive' by the target demographic, usually stands a better chance to generate (even) more positive buzz and sales, than a design mostly perceived as 'less attractive' or 'unattractive' by the target demographic (which, unfortunately, usually also casts a shadow over the intrinsic qualities and excellence, not doing justice to all the R&D engineers' hard work).
To all those brushing away most car enthusiasts' criticism by name-dropping the idea of
avant-garde and by quoting sales figures as some sort of
appreciation meter: the minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.
Video of former Coca-Cola boss Donald R. Keough announcing in Spring 1985 the re-introduction of "Classic Coke" after a very bad reception of "New Coke":
"These people [criticizing the "New Coke" introduction] and thousands like them have gone public with their love affair for Coca-Cola [...] So what does all of this really means ? It only means what we say: that our boss is the consumer. Some critics will say «Coca-Cola has made a marketing mistake» and some cynics say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is: we're not that dumb and we're not that smart."