Over the past 50 years, BMW M has provided the buying public with a greatest hits album of excellent driver's cars, but in recent times, it has watered its own image down by attaching the most powerful letter in the world to some altogether average cars like the M235i Gran Coupe. The skunkworks division is now associated with motorcycles too, although we will concede that we don't have too much of a problem with this. What we do have a problem with is that the first standalone M car in decades will be an SUV, and it seems that BMW M is willing to stick its name on just about anything. As if that's not bad enough, a signature design element seems to be losing importance in Munich; the famous tricolor M logo is going monotone.
While recent spy shots have suggested as much for the upcoming BMW XM, one might have assumed that this was a one-off for the standalone M car. However, an interview conducted by Australian publication WhichCar? has revealed that this monotone color scheme will be a growing trend going forward, but only on totally new things like that XM SUV.
"The overall future direction for complete new cars is that we have a black M badge and the existing cars like the M4, for example, we will not change," said BMW M sales and marketing VP Timo Resch. "For the next-generation type of cars, that's where you will see an M badge that is black. Only new platforms and completely new models will get a black badge."
In addition, the trim around the badge will be changing to help differentiate various models: "Our way forward instead of differentiating with any other schemes, we decided on this new black base color and then having the surrounding that has a specific color," says Resch. The recently revealed BMW M4 CSL was the first to showcase this, with a red border highlighting its badges. It seems that this trend will be explored with greater freedom in the future:
"I will not say that this has to be the future for the next 10 years, but right now we see it as a cool element and changing the DNA a little bit," continues Resch. "The black is giving us a bit of a twist into a future direction that we will also look into. When we look into future design, we will continue to play around with these colors, because they are part of the identity of BMW. They belong to us and you see them on the race cars. You will see cool ways of using these colors."
The M badge was created in 1972 by Giorgetto Giugiaro and has evolved over the years, but this monochromatic color scheme is by far the most radical change it has ever undergone. The M stripes, internally referred to as the ziehaus streifen, will probably form the basis of those highlighted black M badges of the future. Red will likely signify the top-tier of performance, as on the M4 CSL, while the dark blue could refer to your typical M cars like the regular M3 and M4 and light blue may be used to denote M-lite cars, like the M135i, X2 M35i, and so on. Whatever the future, it seems evident that BMW refuses to accept the status quo and is determined to shake up the established order - in terms of design, offerings, and even model designation badges. More power to you, we say.