[ad_1]
A lot of work takes place behind the scenes of an automaker that the public rarely gets to see. Designs and styling features are envisioned years before going into production, tweaked and refined over the years to their final shape. A new video from the BMW Group Classic YouTube channel lets us take a peek behind that curtain, showing the secret BMW ZBF 7er design study created in the mid-1990s. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. not?
One of the most remarkable aspects of the car is the way it was built. BMW used an older bodywork method to hand build the concept, which included hand-battered sheet metal for the bodywork. BMW design expert Joji Nagashima designed the car, including the tire treads – a first for him – which were then cut by hand. The end product is a familiar but clumsy sedan, although the concept was not intended as a stand-alone model. The BMW ZBF 7e represented the future direction of the design of the company’s flagship products.
The mashup pushed the boundaries long before BMW dared to drop the massive grille on the public. The concept allowed designers to think outside the box, which allowed them to enlarge the grille. Nagashima explained several of the car’s styling features, such as the chrome trim that extends from the fender to the door which was added to accentuate the otherwise slab design. Inside, the car even featured an early iteration of BMW’s iDrive rotary controller, which debuted on the production E65 7 series in 2001.
The concept included plenty of styling features that would debut on the E65 and eventually spill over into the rest of the BMW lineup. But many of those ideas became a reality half a decade before the car was presented to the public. The video is a reminder that it takes years to design a car and that ideas take time to mature into something consumer-ready, but after 25 years many weren’t ready for the massive grille of the car. new Series 4.
[ad_2]
Source link