Mercedes gives Bangle a backhander

Newswheel staff :: 20 September 2005 :: Filed under Saloon, BMW, BMW 7 Series, Mercedes Benz, Mercedes Benz S-Class, Europe & UK, US

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Controversial BMW designer gets the thumbs up…from Mercedes-Benz

Long, long ago there was a time when Mercedes-Benzes were quietly confident cars with real class. Not anymore. Take the latest S-Class. With its heavy-handed wheel arches and in-your-face light clusters, the poor thing is squealing for attention. A triumph of effortless industrial design it is not. Still, there’s no doubting it’s a massive step forward over the outgoing car – that vehicle looked like the result of an ill-advised joint venture with a Korean car company. What’s more, the new S doesn’t look half bad with the recently revealed AMG body kit bolted to its flanks.

More importantly, however, it is at least a car with a clear identity. But only on the outside. When the S-Class was unveiled earlier this year, we shared with many others the feeling that we’d seen the interior somewhere before. And now we have the perfect pictures to prove it. We double dare you to deny that there’s much more than a mere whiff of Bangle-era BMW 7-Series inside Mercedes newest big-scale barge. Everything from the centre console design and air vents to the BMW iDrive / Mercedes COMAND armrest control pucks and the hideously huge satnav screens are borderline interchangeable. The board of BMW may eventually loose patience with Bangle’s batshit designs. But his legacy will live on – inside a Mercedes-Benz.

7-Series above, S-Class below. No, hang on…

 
Mean machine: the new AMG styling kit for the S-Class (click for larger image)