Now is this anything to do with the "turbosteamer" they were mentioning or are they sucking the smoke out of our collective butt?

that grille is WAY too tall. it looks like a kid with his nose smushed against a window.

Looks fugly.

pontiac g8 headlights OMG

There is a feng shui problem here: the design elements of "grace" and "beauty" are over-represented in the photograph. The real Bangle/van Hooydoonk design will contain more "visual barf" and "fugliness"

Lots of issues with scale. The grille looks too big, so does the side marker. The euro plate looks too small on the front. So does the roundel and the foglights. The motion blur of the wheels doesn't look right, like it's been brushed on. I wouldn't expect the headlight halos to be so yellow.

I rememberd the shark facia of the BMW....this pig thing...I don't know.....It just a picture....some like pigs or the artist does not like BMW

Worst. Photochop. Ever.

@nicjasno: Perfectly in keeping with the BMW design philosophy.

Maybe the plan is to try and shed the "pricks on the inside" image by making the cars so ugly that only someone dedicated to the driving experience would buy one.

LOL- BMW tries to build a Bentley.... The grill doesn't work

change the title to:

2009 BMW 7-Series Lacking?

Easy...Its has a NORMAL trunk instead of the Frankenstein Saturn grafting the regular 7-series has

@nicjasno:
Couldn't have said it better myself.

Although, I'm not sure that the target audience of this car cares much about how it looks, because, its a bimmer.

the front seems strangely mongoloidic

Even though it's photo-chopped (most-likely), I bet it's a fairly close approximation of what the 7 series will be. To be honest, I like the current model MUCH better.

ps: the car looks like it was snifing shit....

And the current model ain't a beauty queen either...

It's not so often that one can call a design both porcine and bovine.

one question: does it still have Bangle-butt?

What's with that huge door handle-level crease? Jumbo knife sharpener?

C+ on the photoshop, BTW.

@damnElantra: I don't believe that that is the preferred nomenclature these days.

say it ain't so. how do you say fugly in German?

An obvious photoshop, though I have to say I don't really mind this design. If it had a little bit more hood and Z4-style taillights (since it has the same rear angles) it might be palatable. Hmmm...where to begin?

Most obvious is that both the wheels are the same image, duplicated and resized slightly. The vertical bars in the grille don't mesh with the rest of the image and were shot with a separate light source. The fender vent/sidemarker also was grafted on, as there's no shadow where the depression by the door would be. I've done better bored doodles in my datebook.

@smsolo1: Farfugnugen

@Number_Six: tiss ok, not even a real word

@Number_Six: haha i see what you did there.

i definitely agree with the size of the front plate....no way that's to scale. the blunt, upright front end could be legit though, those European pedestrian safety laws are a bitch. the whole thing just looks fake though, it's too airbrushed and "pretty". also, what the HELL is going on behind that front wheel? that's just terrible. the motion effect on the wheels isn't right either

And they have changed what?

Wilhelm Hofmeister is rolling over in his grave right now, hopefully ending ass-up so Chris Bangle can kiss it.

@Steel_ETC: You've convinced me.

looks like a manatee

the rear 3/4 looks a LOT like a passat,

Are plastic surgeons able to perform rhinoplasty on their own cars?

Pontiac G8 + Honda Civic + Volvo Sedan, yet it's vastly uglier than any of those cars.

I guess this must be that new lame-surfacing they've been talking about.

... looks like a goddamn Pikachu.

But in typisch German zilver.

Looks like a Chinese knockoff of a Jaguar S-Type, but it is really just a bad photoshop.

Hey... That thing looks kinda familiar.
Like a newer version of an E39.
Great work Bimmer!

God Lord, I hope it doesn't look anything like that...

the front and rear wheels are offset from each other. it's like an escher drawing that makes sense until you look at it for more than a couple seconds.

hmm... looks like Toyota and Honda (new Accord) are doing some freelance work...

Headlight curves at the bottom don't seem to match. Also, there's a weird bit going on where the hood & fender mate up to the windshield - that kick toward the center just looks unnatural and dangerous to service ersonnel.

It's not fake. It's the real thing. All new BMWs WILL look that ugly from now on, as they have dumped soul in favor of conformity.

The photo may be leaked but I aint drippin'.

Several problems... Firstly: the artist forgot to add a seam where the right-front fender meets the bumper cap. Additionally; the driver is wearing no clothes, and the overall light-source seems to be coming from his ass.

Uglier than current generation 7-series. Not that I think the current generation is ugly.

I saw a test mule on the freeway in LA 2 days ago. All those body panels (door skins, fender bulges, quarter panels, etc.) are just plastic panels bolted on to the real panels, ala last generation Nissan Frontier. I wouldn't expect the final version to look too much like the car in the spy photos

- The apparent rubber strips at edges of the headlights seem a little wider BMW quality control would allow.
- Different edges and seams have different levels of crispness (Mark Miller mentioned the missing bumper seam. Also, the edges of the headlights are too crisp in comparison with the seams around the hood.)
- The front grille is quite as perfectly aligned as BMW quality control would require: the viewer's right is slightly closer to the hood seam than the viewer's left.
- BMW's side auxiliary turn signals have recently been a little wedge-shaped thing somewhere close to the front of the character line (except for the Z4 where it is hidden behind the side roundel). That silver thing mid-way up the front seam of the front door doesn't seem like a BMW side aux turn signal, which BMW would make much more subtle. The side aux turn signals seem to be too low for the Euro-spec. The side aux turn signals seem to have been moved to the mirror tips of all manufacturers if not in the area of the front of the character line including on the mule we've seen in spy photos (though that may be because of the cladding they were using on the mule).
- Where are the rear side marker lights which European vehicle regulations would require to be very visible from the "photographer's" angle? And the swaths of red plastic which would surround the rear side marker lights?
- The lower air intake on the front has no texture to it. It was clearly painted with a paint tool using the color black.
- The front and rear wheels have reflections in exactly the same place which would be unlikely even when the picture was blurred.
- The front license plate is too bright. At that angle and with that cloud cover, it would have looked slightly more gray.

That's all I see.

Oh, another thing.

BMW would probably not design a front fascia in which a Euro plate would hang slightly over the lower air intake. The current 7 comes close but it still doesn't. US plates hang over all the time on all sorts of cars but Euro plates would be factored in to the design on a BMW. I therefore decree that the grill hangs too low because it forces the license plate down over the lower air intake.

I didn't think they could make anything uglier than the existing 7 series

The '89 750iL I just bought pwns this.

Any of you actually have driven/have current 7 series? Or it's just bunch of losers who do not know what they are talking about? I actually own a current 7 series and it's the most beautiful automobile I have EVER driven. You drive it and feel like a King. This new 7 series does not look to have many changes from current, but I am sure once you drive it you will fall in love with the car. If you are looking for something that looks like a teenager's car, look somewhere else.
7 series is supposed to look "business-like". By the way... ladies LOVE BMWs! :) They sit in it, see BMW logo and melt ;)