- BMW’s facelifted 1 Series hatchback has been criticized for the design of its (what else?) grille.
- Forum posters have noted the similarity between the 1 Series grille and Kia’s grille a decade ago.
- The similarity to the 2010 Kia Ceed is hard to ignore.
The current designs of Korean brands exude a confidence that tells us that the car manufacturers know what they stand for, who their customers are and what they want. However, there was a time, and not so long ago, when the best Kia could do was try to copy the brand they admired most, and that brand was BMW. But now it looks like it’s BMW that has run out of ideas and is ripping off the Koreans. Only it’s ripping off their rip offs!
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On the left of the photo at the top of this page you see the new BMW 1-Series. But from some angles it could pass for a five-year-old Kia Ceed, like the car to its right, or perhaps a new Ford Focus. It’s not unattractive, but it’s distracting.
Related: New BMW 1 Series and M135 Ditch the ‘i’ and Manual Gearbox
If we were to hide the blue and white propeller decal on the nose, it would be difficult to identify it at all. And you can hate all you want on the gigantic grilles that BMW has been putting on some of its cars in recent years, but the one thing they did right was make sure you knew you were looking at a BMW.
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It’s not that we’re hardcore traditionalists who think every BMW should have a compact set of kidney grilles with chrome rims in the center of the nose. We are completely open to the brand’s designers coming up with new versions of the grille, as they have done many times over the years.
The ’80s Z1, ’90s 8 Series, 1995 5 Series, and last year’s Vision Neue Klasse sedan concept all featured grille treatments, and we loved them all. And we’ve seen the brand join forces with other recent models like the 5 Series and we didn’t mind as the cars still had a clear identity.
But as Reddit users have pointed out, the grille on the latest 1 Series looks far too much like an old version of Kia’s tiger nose grille, or the equally BMW-esque Skoda grilles that the Czech brand is now moving away from. Only it’s much uglier because there’s that awful sensor panel in the middle. And what do you think about the grille bars on the 120 M Sport (below) going in different directions?
It’s worth noting that this new 1 Series is just a heavily updated version of a 2019 car, and not a sleek redesign (despite BMW calling it a 4th-generation model), and that the 2021 i Vision Circular hatch concept hinted at more exciting, more inventive things happening with the 1 Series a few years later.
And the next generation of Neue Klasse sedans and SUVs that will come on the market from next year promise to make us enthusiastic about BMW design again. But this new 2025 1 Series will be around for a few more years.
Leave a comment below and let us know if you think we’re being overly harsh or if you think BMW messed this up – and maybe the XM’s grille isn’t so bad after all.
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