Special Car, auto, cars, vehicles

Yet Bangle's cloth-covered GINA concept, which features movable elements under the skin that changed the vehicle's surfaces, remains one of the most innovative concept cars ever built. GINA was typical Bangle: an iconoclastic take on something most automotive designers take for granted -- that an automobile's form is, folding-convertible roof aside, immutable.

Chris Bangle's BMWs are deliberately confrontational. Some work (6 Series coupe, current M3); some don't (X3, 1 Series hatch). But his influence on recent automobile design has been profound. Bodyside sections that undulate off a crisp boneline; trunklid bustles; swept-back headlight graphics -- these Bangle design signatures have been subtly appropriated and reinterpreted by automakers as diverse as Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai, Toyota and Chevrolet (take a close look at the new Cruze).

Ford global design chief J Mays is no fan, but he admits Bangle has been significant in reshaping modern cars. Ford of Europe's Martin Smith talks of him as an instigator of the trend toward "surface entertainment," something Smith himself has used to great effect with his "Kinetic Design" cars. "He's certainly the most talked about [designer]," says Renault design boss Patrick Le Quement. "His designs have a great deal of presence, and they're well proportioned. He's been highly influential."

When Ohio-born Christopher Edward Bangle was given the top design job at BMW in 1992, it surprised more than a few auto-industry insiders. After graduating from Art Center in the 1980s, Bangle had worked for GM's Opel division in Germany and headed Fiat's design facility in Turin, Italy. But he'd been credited with only one complete car, the Fiat Coupe (below left), which featured unusual slash-like creases defining the upper limit of the wheel openings. They were a hint of things to come.

Bangle's first BMWs -- the E46 3 Series and the X5 -- were relatively conventional. The E46, launched in 1998, was a simple evolution of the previous-generation E36, and I well remember how its conservative looks were a hot talking point among journalists attending the car's launch in Spain. I still remind colleagues who later lauded the E46 as the last of the good-looking BMWs that at the time they thought it was boring and derivative, just another cookie-cutter BMW with predictably cloned design cues from the larger 5 and 7 Series models.

The media chatter in the aftermath of the E46's launch clearly rattled BMW's senior management team. This was a company that had become hugely successful building cars with a fairly singular design language. And now, journalists were effectively saying, it had run out of adjectives. Change was needed.

Change was needed for another reason: BMW was expanding into new vehicle categories such as SUVs and broadening traditional offerings such as coupes and convertibles across different price and size segments. The cookie-cutter approach simply wouldn't work. What Bangle realized was the company needed a design language that would allow its products to look different, yet still be clearly recognized as BMWs. His solution was to develop dramatic surfaces and startling graphic signatures that would instantly identify the vehicle as a BMW, regardless of its body style or proportions.

Those who believe Chris Bangle single-handedly brutalized BMW design should remember his strategy had the full backing of senior BMW management; they signed Bangle's BMWs into production. And that includes BMW product wunderkind and tastemeister Wolfgang Reitzle, who was fired over his bungled attempt to succeed Bernd Pischetsreider as BMW chairman and later distanced himself from the highly controversial Bangle-designed E65 7 Series (pictured), saying he always meant to go back and fix the car once he'd gotten Pischetsreider's job.

I once toured the Geneva show with Chris Bangle, just the two of us walking around and talking about the cars. The conversation was all off the record -- ever the gentleman, Bangle would never have wanted to be seen to be criticizing his peers' work. But it was worth the caveat, because I learned a lot in that hour or so. Chris Bangle's view of the world is very different from that of most car designers.

"You know, my mind is now somewhere else already," he told my colleague Gavin Green in an interview published in Motor Trend a few years back. "I worry that the industry isn't looking far enough forward. We're closing in rapidly at the end of the current paradigm in the evolution of the car, and if this paradigm lasts beyond 2020, I'll be amazed. After that, cars, as we understand them now, will be different animals."

As we look at what's happening to the global auto industry, at how long-accepted business models and consumer assumptions are being turned upside down by economic chaos and growing pressure on resources, it's hard to disagree. "Automobiles are now like computers in 1952," says Bangle. "We're a long way from PCs that you go down to Wal-Mart to pick up. We're miles from where personal mobility could be if it achieves the efficiency and lost-cost dynamic we've come to expect from other industries."

Iconoclast. Visionary. And never boring. Thanks for the ride, Chris.

Automakers sold about 668,000 cars and trucks in the U.S. in January, compared with about 790,000 in China, according to DiGiovanni. The Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) was an estimated 9.5 million last month, or 9.8 million counting medium- and heavy-duty trucks.

Each of the Detroit Three pointed to huge drops in fleet sales. Unlike retail sales, fleets buy cars and trucks in a just-in-time, special-order fashion. With all factories essentially shuttered from mid-December to January, GM's fleet sales fell 80 percent (retail was off 38 percent), Ford lost 65 percent (retail off 27 percent) and Chrysler lost 81 percent (-35 percent, retail). Toyota Motor Sales USA lost 34.4 percent, American Honda fell 30.7 percent and Nissan North America fell 29.7 percent. None of the imports broke out fleet sales changes.

GM, Ford and Chrysler have been talking about cutting unprofitable fleet sales for more than a year, but the lack of production accelerated the drop far past the rate automakers want. With business and leisure travel plunging, rental car agencies are holding on to cars and trucks much longer. Chrysler's Jim Press said the drop in fleet was good news, but admitted that the company seeks a fleet percentage back up into the 20s. So, to the details ...

GM: 129,227 units, off 49 percent
*Chevrolet Traverse, 5,215 units, but all others on the Lambda platform were down.
*Saturn Astra was up 283.3 percent, to 824 units. Still a pittance for a $20k compact, but with a better dollar-to-euro relationship, GM may be making money on the Belgian-built model.
*Only other gainer was the Pontiac Vibe, all new for '09, up 7.4-percent to 2,512. Toyota doesn't break out Matrix sales from its Corolla number.
*Saab sold 624 units (-54.3 percent), Hummer sold 1,222 (-59.9 percent) and Saturn sold 6,172 (-59.3 percent).

Toyota: 117,287 units, off 34.4 percent (on a daily selling rate basis)
*Toyota listed retail sales only for specific models.
*Camry sold 20,792, off 36.8 percent.
*Prius, 8,121, off 31.4 percent.
*Tundra was at 7,076, off 43.6 percent.

Ford-Lincoln-Mercury: 90,596, off 39 percent
*Lincoln (6,091, off 23.7 percent) outsold Mercury (5,183, off 44.2 percent).
*Ford Taurus sold 1,705, off 59.2 percent.
*Fusion was off just 11.2 percent, at 8,152 units, passing Focus in sales.
*Flex sold 2,459, more than 2,700 short of the Chevy Traverse.
*F-Series was at 25,237, off 38.6 percent, but ahead of Camry.
*Lincoln sold 1,535 of its new MKSes and 1,561 MKZes (the latter off 42.4 percent).
*No gainers at Ford.
*Volvo brand sold 2,910, off 63.8 percent, amidst rumors that Renault may buy it.
*Bestselling Volvo is the XC90, at 573 units, off 70.1 percent.

Honda: 71,031, off 30.7 percent
*Fit was up 1.8 percent, to 4,745.
*Acura TSX was up 11.6 percent, to 2,406.
*Everything else was down. Accord, at 16,581, was off 33.5 percent.

Chrysler: 62,157, off 55 percent
*Dodge Challenger (2,757 units) outsold Avenger (2,171, down 70 percent) and Chrysler Sebring (1,943, down 79 percent).
*Dodge Ram fell 35 percent, to 12,843. Chrysler says most were the '09 model.
*Chrysler 300 was off 71 percent, to 2,250, while Dodge Charger was off 49 percent, to 4,028. Two words: cop cars.
*Bright spot alert! Jeep Wrangler was up 4 percent, to 6,362.
*Dodge Viper was up 74 percent, to 127 units. Still, Press says Chrysler is fielding three proposals for the sale of the model.


Nissan: 53,884, off 29.7 percent
*Sold 1,280 370Zs, up 47 percent over the old model.
*Rogue was up 6.8 percent, to 5,802.
*Infiniti was down 20.9 percent, to 7,115. EX and FX, both new models, saw big increases.

OTHERS:

*Hyundai's 14-percent increase, to 24,512, included rising sales for Accent, Sonata, Santa Fe and Veracruz. It sold 1,056 of its new RWD Genesis sedan.
*Mazda, at 15,420, was down 27.3 percent. The 3 was up 16.3 percent, to 7,649, but even the new 6 dropped, 60.1 percent, to 2,529.
*BMW Group was off 15.5 percent, to 12,232. Mini posted record sales of 54k units last year, but was down 15.4 percent, to 2,082 versus January '08.
*Subaru posted an 8-percent increase, to 12,194 units. That's all due to Motor Trend's 2009 Sport/Utility of the Year, the Forester, which was up 115 percent, to 5,162. All other models decreased.