Car Design: BMW Gets It. Audi Pivots. Mercedes Is Clueless

Has Ferrari’s biggest design misstep in decades accidentally made BMW and Audi look smarter than ever?

The Ferrari Luce may prove to be one of the most important car designs of recent years, not because it is revolutionary, not because it is beautiful, and certainly not because it has been universally admired. Quite the opposite. The reaction to Ferrari’s first electric car has been so overwhelmingly negative that it may have inadvertently transformed how enthusiasts view every major design reveal that has followed it. That sounds absurd, but bear with me.

The Ugly Buffer Effect

What BMW and Audi have benefited from, whether deliberately or accidentally, is something I call the ugly buffer effect. Again, I hesitate to call the Ferrari ugly because that’s not really the point. The point is that the Luce was so shocking, so disruptive, so fundamentally at odds with what people expect a Ferrari to be, that it effectively reset the conversation. Suddenly, designs that might previously have been criticised for being radical, futuristic or controversial were instead met with a collective shrug and a response along the lines of: “Actually, that’s not so bad.”

Had Audi unveiled the Nuvolari without the Ferrari-shaped grenade having first exploded in the middle of the enthusiast community, perhaps people would have spent more time criticising its sharp edges and unconventional proportions. Instead, many looked at both cars and thought: “You know what? I quite like that.” Well I certainly do.

But there is another factor at play here, because neither BMW nor Audi simply turned up one day and surprised us with these cars.

BMW’s Long Game Is Starting To Pay Off

BMW has been preparing us for the Neue Klasse for years. The original concept appeared back in 2023. Since then, Munich has repeatedly shown variations on the theme, including the new i3, gradually acclimatising enthusiasts to the design language, refining the details, and repeatedly reminding us that this is where BMW is heading.

Personally, I liked it from the beginning. Not because it was electric. Not because it was packed with digital gimmickry. Not because it could display changing colours and graphics across its bodywork. I liked it because underneath all of that, it still looked like a BMW.

It still had a proper BMW saloon silhouette. It still carried hints of the classic shark-nose stance. It still featured the Hofmeister kink. Most importantly, it retained the traditional three-box proportions that have defined BMW sports saloons for generations.

At a time when every manufacturer seems determined to build yet another anonymous crossover or SUV, BMW is effectively saying that the saloon still matters. The sports saloon still has a future. There is still room for a car that looks like a proper 3 Series, even if it happens to be electric.

And then came the latest evolution, revealed at Le Mans. The Neue Klasse M. More aggressive. More muscular. More focused. The sort of car that, at first glance, I almost ignored because we’d become so accustomed to the Neue Klasse design language. Then I looked again and realised that BMW had quietly evolved the concept into something genuinely exciting. That’s the advantage of introducing people gradually to a new visual identity. The shock disappears and familiarity takes over.

There is another reason BMW appears to be winning right now. Only days before Ferrari unveiled the Luce, BMW revealed the stunning Alpina coupe concept. Here was a car that looked exactly as a BMW coupe should look. Long bonnet. Elegant proportions. Proper presence. A glorious V8. Suddenly BMW was simultaneously telling the market that there is still a future for electric performance cars, still a future for luxury coupes, still a future for V8 engines and still a future for traditional BMW values. That is an incredibly important message at this time.

Audi May Finally Have Found Its Direction

Audi, meanwhile, spent the last few years looking somewhat confused. The company went all-in on electrification. It experimented with confusing model naming strategies. It seemed uncertain about what an Audi should actually be in the future. At times it felt as though Ingolstadt was reacting to events rather than shaping them.

Then along came the Nuvolari. What fascinates me about the Nuvolari is that it is essentially an evolution of a design language we had already been introduced to through earlier concepts. Remember the Concept C? Many of us assumed that was pointing towards a future electric TT. It looked compact, clean and unmistakably electric.

Then Audi pulled the rug from under everyone and revealed that the Nuvolari wasn’t heading down the route many expected at all. Instead, here was a 1,001bhp hybrid supercar powered by a twin-turbocharged V8 revving to 10,000rpm. That’s a heck of a statement. Perhaps even a u-turn.

Stylistically, I think Audi has done something very clever. The design feels modern but also feels distinctly Audi. Those sharp edges and bluff surfaces remind me of the original Quattro. The side blades reference the R8. There is a sense that Audi is reconnecting with its own heritage rather than running away from it.

It looks different. That should not be a revolutionary statement, yet in today’s market it almost is. Walk through any major motor show, or indeed through many city centres, and everything is starting to merge together. SUVs look like other SUVs. EVs look like other EVs. Aerodynamics has become the great homogeniser of modern automotive design. The Nuvolari doesn’t disappear into the crowd.

At London Concours recently, surrounded by extraordinary machinery, I found myself thinking that many modern supercars blur into one generic shape after a while. Beautiful, certainly. Fast, undoubtedly. Memorable? Not always.

I tried to imagine the Nuvolari parked alongside its luminaries. The Audi would stand out without any doubt. And in today’s market, identity is becoming increasingly valuable.

Mercedes Has Forgotten What A Mercedes Looks Like

Which brings us to Stuttgart. If BMW appears to understand its identity and Audi may finally be rediscovering its own, Mercedes seems increasingly uncertain about what made Mercedes desirable in the first place.

Growing up through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, a Mercedes possessed a very specific visual character. It was solid. It was imposing. It was dignified. It looked as though it had been carved from a block of German granite by engineers rather than sketched by stylists.

Classic Mercedes-Benz models had substance. A W126 looked indestructible. A W140 looked as though it could survive the apocalypse. A SEC coupe looked like it belonged to industrialists, diplomats and successful villains in Hollywood films. They all had presence.

Today’s Mercedes products often feel like the complete opposite. Rounded. Soft. Overly smooth. Designed by aerodynamicists who became trapped in a room with a bar of soap and decided to build an entire model range around it. The EQ range exemplified the problem. Technically impressive, certainly. Visually memorable? Not in the way Mercedes would have hoped.

The company has already begun rowing back from some of those decisions. The EQ branding is disappearing. The dedicated EV strategy is being reassessed. The electric G-Class has struggled to gain traction while buyers continue flocking towards traditional combustion-powered versions.

The Bigger Lesson For The Entire Industry

What fascinates me most about all of this is that it points towards a broader realignment taking place across the automotive industry. For years manufacturers convinced themselves that the future was straightforward. Everything would become electric. Traditional design cues would disappear. Heritage would matter less than software. The past would be discarded in pursuit of the future.

Reality has proved more complicated. Consumers still care about brand identity. They still care about emotional connection. They still want a BMW to feel like a BMW. They still want an Audi to feel like an Audi. They still want a Mercedes to look like a Mercedes.

At the same time, manufacturers are increasingly recognising that the internal combustion engine isn’t disappearing overnight. Hybridisation, plug-in hybrids and parallel product strategies are becoming the new reality.

BMW understands this (despite, incidentally, being the most successful of the German luxury marques in the EV sector). Audi is also getting there, but Mercedes still seems to be working it out.

And Ferrari? I suspect Ferrari understands it too. In fact, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the Luce turns out to be a deliberate strategic misdirection rather than the monumental miscalculation many assume it to be.

Regardless, the fascinating reality is that Ferrari may have accidentally done its German rivals an enormous favour. By creating a design that challenged expectations so dramatically, it lowered the temperature around every controversial reveal that followed.

The result is that BMW suddenly looks smarter, Audi suddenly looks more confident, and Mercedes… actually let’s not go there – unless they want to adopt my proposed design for the next generation 2030 S-Class (see video above). One thing they all need to remember though – in the battle for the future of automotive design, perception matters almost as much as reality.

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