2005 BMW Z4

Cornering the Roadster Market

Few companies get to corner an entire segment of the market. Leave it to BMW to do it twice in a decade.

Design

If BMW had problems getting its styling message across with its new 7 series, the great fear among fans of the Bimmer (what BMWs are called by those in the know) was that the Z4 would be even more "unique" looking. A valid concern, true, but you should hear BMW's take, we think, before you make your judgments.

Anders Warming of Designworks/USA (a studio owned by BMW that creates cars but also cell phones, office chairs, etc.) and other BMW artists started several years ago to give the carmaker a new look. This effort debuted a few years ago with the controversial X9 concept car. Warming designed the interior of that car. When he got around to remaking the Z3, Warming says, he sketched something that looked almost precisely like the car you see here.

That was no accident, because what Warming and company had in mind was something very much in keeping with BMW tradition. No, that didn't mean it would be conservative, or that the external sheet metal would echo BMW's past, but the proportions most certainly would.

Think of the current BMW Z8 and you can see a direct link to the 1950s BMW 507. What both cars have in common, and what they share with the Z4, is classic roadster proportions. They get a high, long hood line that then gives way to the cabin. But the driver himself sits way back in the car, with his head and derrière as close to the rear axle as possible. From above, such cars aren't square but hourglass-shaped, with a wide hood and a narrowing line that angles inward toward the driver. The perception of driving such a car is one of power, since you look out over a long hood, like an engineer in a locomotive.

At the same time, the narrower point near the driver also gives you a sense of control, since you can literally see the front corners of the vehicle and you're nearly sitting on the back ones. Thus, the rotational point of the car is essentially you: Like a man at the center of a kayak, the car turns around you.

In contrast to the traditional fit of the Z4, the "skin" of the car is anything but traditional. "We didn't want a retro thing," Warming says. "Traditionally," the young Dane notes, "you take a surface and make it look like it's wrapped around something," like a tight outfit over a muscular body.

"But we wanted to show passion -- action -- in the surfacing," he says. To that end, every corner of the car has been reinterpreted with this new language in mind. Just scope out the carved side-view mirrors; the point where the lines of the hood and headlamps intersect; the rising curve of the integrated rear spoiler; or how the tail lamps are made into the shape of the car rather than taken from the parts bin and the car made to fit around them. Those tail lamps are also recessed into the body, so they comply with federal standards, but even this is done with a certain flare.

We think the new language works pretty well. The only area that doesn't seem fully baked to us is the nose, where a wide, low air intake gives the Z4 a semi-frown. And although this car continues the long BMW tradition of round headlamps, it hides them behind clear lenses, so for all intents and purposes they are no longer a part of the design but an afterthought.

Nonetheless, from the side or back, the car looks at once classic and fully like its own new animal. And when you drive one, it turns a lot of heads. That, of course, is what BMW had in mind.

"We didn't want a confining BMW character," Warming said. "We wanted something far more dynamic, that would indicate the bookends -- the limits of either end of the spectrum, with the 7 series on one end and the Z3 on the other. The idea isn't to have just one car in different sizes."