Alright. Let's do this dance again. BMW has once again released a car with a maw the size of a small moon, and the internet has taken divisive positions on it. This time, it's the brand's flagship luxury sedan, the BMW 7 Series under the gun.
The new 7 Series is a continuation of what makes BMW design controversial. The grille takes up much of the car's front end. Actually, "much" is too kind a word. The cavernous buck teeth eat up any available real estate that could be used for the actual design. The sides now feature the headlight cheekbones from the BMW X7. But this render might be onto something.
As you can surely tell, the render is heavily influenced by the "Sharknose" era of BMW design that was present on the 6 and 7 Series models. Specifically, the cars above are a first and second-generation 7 Series, known as the E23 and E32 7 Series, respectively. Those cars featured a small, more upright grille.
In fact, its shape (but not size) is somewhat close to the big-grille cars of today. Also present are four total light projectors on the car, with foglights down low. The design gets its name from the slight angle of the front grille, which slopes ever so slightly in and down, like a shark's nose.
Much of that has been applied to Sugar Design's render. A small grille is flanked by four light projectors, with a simple lower fascia. Modern cars often incorporate foglights or DRLs into the headlights themselves, and we're guessing that's what's been done here. But the most important part of the new design is what happens after the headlights.
The strakes running down the face of the car, as well as the creases along the hood and below the headlights, give the car its new sharky shape. Those help give the car the illusion of forward momentum, just like the older E23 and E32 models. The lines also run nicely down the body, which helps give the rendered 7 some cohesiveness.
If you ask us, it works. BMW likes to cite airflow for more powerful engines as a mechanical constraing for the new grilles, but there's plenty of room to make that lower fascia larger without ruining the design. It's all subjective, but exploring some new ideas to tie the new 7 Series to the cars of old is certainly interesting. Maybe it's something BMW should try and do themselves.
