For a long, long, time subtlety was the order of the day for German performance cars.
This was perhaps a manifestation of that cliché that a nation’s identity somehow trickles down into the cars it produces. In this instance, that Germans are excellent engineers but their cars lack a certain visual panache.
Whilst this cliché can be stretched into a half-truth, the fact of the matter was that the Germans understood the power of subtle menace. The E39 generation BMW M5 was quite visually different compared to non-M E39 5 Series, but not in an exuberant ‘look at me’ sort of manner. Instead the E39 M5, with its dished rear wheels, slightly bulged wheel arches and quad exhaust tips was a car designed in sort of secret code. To most passers-by, it looked like any other 5-Series, but to people with an interest in fast cars, the differences were immediate and those visual changes worked as a non-verbal statement of intent: this BMW means business.
This kind of stylistic tweaking had been tradition since the first high-performance derivatives of BMW, Mercedes and Audi rolled off the production line back in the 1980s.
Fast forward forty years, and things have taken a turn. And not for the better.
In the recent five years, there has been a real decline in the stylistic subtleties of German performance cars. Cars that were once described as ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ are now visually bombastic attention-getters, and are all the worse for it.
A prime example of this is the newest Mercedes C63 AMG. Now this is not an attack on the newest W206-generation C-Class – a wholly unoffensive looking car – but instead, is a critique of the dubious styling additions present on the high-performance C63 AMG version. The biggest offender is the badge on the back. The red detailing is the big issue.
It’s almost as if cars at large German manufacturers are designed by one set of designers, and then the additional styling for the high-performance version is done by another team of 12 year-olds. Why does the badge have to be red? Were the massive 20” wheels, pumped wheel arches and quad exhausts not explicit enough?
Red badging is an issue because it has always been the colour deployed by car manufacturers on cars that appear sports but aren’t actually all that fast. As red is such an obvious go-to colour for a “sporty car” it has been a kind of indicator of something that talks the talk but cannot walk the walk. This embracing of red by the likes of AMG, M and Audi RS makes them appear like parodies of themselves. But being German, this adoption of red is very much to illustrate the sporting nature of the vehicle, and not as a more acceptable kind of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness.
BMW’s latest M3 and M4 do not escape from gaudy embellishments either. Complaining about the looks of the latest M3 and M4 feels a bit like kicking someone when they’re down by hey ho. It’s the detailing on the latest M3 and M4 that is the biggest offender here; in particular, the gear shift paddles on the steering wheel. They paddles are made from carbon fibre and have, correspondingly, ‘-‘ and ‘+’ cutouts on the left and right paddle accordingly. Whilst this isn’t offensive per-se, the cutouts are lined with an aggressive dark red. This visual touch would have looked so much nice if the cutouts were lined with perhaps like an aluminium silver or something a little less in your face.
The black of the carbon fibre and the red work to suck in light around them, and work as a horrible contrast to some of the more interesting interior colours that can be spec’d on the latest M3 and M4. Blue leather with yellow stitching and inserts then comes to a screeching halt as you get a massive colour clash of black and red. Has black and red ever worked as a good colour combination on anything but the A Team van?
Instead, what probably happened is that one of the twentysomething engineers at BMW M said that colour combination was ‘sick’ or some such and the design was ok’d. Being in my mid-twenties, I’m not opposed to some visual flair, but there is something called a time and a place. A grown-up £80k BMW is not the place for black and red shift paddles. A 20k hot hatch? Knock yourself out.
The latest M3 CS and M4 CSL are also big offenders when trashing German traditionalist ideas of what a performance car should look like. The front splitters, if you can even call them that, are just awful; the little flicks at the end, the half-arsed lip – all they are successful in conveying is that the splitter is purely for looks. Hey, maybe it reduces front lift at high speed, but an E30 M3-style lower air dam that protruded from the entire underside of the front bumper would have been a nice little homage and a far more effective piece of design, compared to some flicks that someone will definitely step on and break.
The M4 CSL doubles-down on this kind of childish approach to styling with an overabundance of red graphics and inserts to make sure even no-car people know how aggressive and brimming with anger this car is. “You what? I’m not a fucking standard M4 mate,” says the M4 CSL, “look at my red bits, grrrr…”
The final result is a car that is a parody of itself. It is so determined at looking visually aggressive, that instead it is a farce.
Whilst bitching about a red badges and stickers may come across as petty, it is actually a worrying indicator of the downward spiral of the sportscar image. These visual changes and indicators increase the degree of separation between performance cars and normal cars. As such, the gap grows and when one bad apple drives irresponsibly in a new AMG or M car, it becomes immediately apparent who the culprit is, and the vitriol felt by normal society regarding fast cars increases.
Visibility of an issue compounds the issue. 15 years ago, a dark blue E90 M3 would have been able to drift a roundabout and then slink away, as it looked like any other 3-series, but now when people ask: “who just did a massive drift around the roundabout?” everyone will immediately point to the dickhead speeding away in a Sao Paolo yellow BMW M4.
Kerbside 