BMW has No Interest Creating Retro Models

Retro BMWs from the Seventies and eighties are starting to become quite trendy as the collectible market begins to shift into newer classics. But that doesn’t mean BMW has any interest in retro. In a interview this week with Top Gear, Head of BMW Design Adrian Van Hooydonk shut the door on BMW becoming part of the retro phenomenon:

“I feel that retro design works well if you want to reposition a brand that has sort of lost its way. You want to trace back where you came from and pick up on the trail where you were successful and go on from there.”

Adrian Van Hooydonk, Head of BMW Design

Despite some of the most iconic designs produced in the 80s and 90s, BMW seems focused on designing for the future and in a very modern design language:

“We’ve been looking at our back catalogue constantly over the past 10 years. We’ve always looked at our heritage and debated what we could do, or re-do, without ever going retro.”

Adrian Van Hooydonk, Head of BMW Design

However what’s really interesting is that Van Hooydonk doesn’t see the recent series of Homage cars as retro.

“At Villa d’Este, we’ve done a series of what we call ‘Hommage’ cars, where we’ve always received quite a positive reaction. But they were never retro designed cars.”

Adrian Van Hooydonk, Head of BMW Design

So perhaps there’s hope yet for those of us that want to see more E24 6 Series design cues and less of that new 4 Series.