Outsider’s Perspective: Homage cars done right

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The BMW 3.0 CSL Homage concept has to be BMW’s biggest missed opportunity this year. Every motoring journalist in the land would’ve waxed lyrical about it and about how BMW still has it despite seemingly selling their souls every day they release a new vehicle to fill a gap that doesn’t exist (Not that they are in the business of keeping it real you understand). Instead their homage has inspired criticism for looking like they just took every idea they had for the concept and put them all together without any regard to whether they worked together.

I like a good homage car. One of the best I can recall from recent history is the new Lancia Stratos. That’s a good idea, brilliantly executed. So brilliantly executed than the only reason they didn’t made 50 of them was that the CEO of Ferrari didn’t want anyone making more money than him on modified (and extremely good-looking) 430’s. But it managed to take the Stratos design and bring it into a road-legal thing of beauty.
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It doesn’t even need to leave the digital pages of a rendering to be a faithful homage/concept/proof of design that most people would agree is quite nice-looking. What you see above is David Obendorfer’s 2011 interpretation of what a new Renault 4 would look like. And it’s surprisingly restrained in taste and very nice looking. Stuff that 0.9-liter turbo they have under the hood and you can almost see it parked next to a Fiat 500 TwinAir for a comparison test.
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Now as far as I can tell the reason that I like those is that they do not stray too far from the original designs and intended purpose. Just enough to be contemporary and not trying to go twenty minutes into the future. Unfortunately for the 3.0 CSL Hommage they went and decided they didn’t just want to make a tribute to the ultimate E9, but also something that would make people swoon even when they remember it 30 years into the future. That wasn’t the goal of the original CSL, the original looked like it did because it was a homolgation special, everything from the mad bodykit to the huge rear wing were there because they had to be. They served a practical purpose on the race car, perhaps a lesser one on the road-going version.
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So instead of a car that looks purposeful and fit to take on the racetracks of the world. You get a car that’s…ugly. I’m sorry I can’t be more verbose in my description on how bad-looking I find this car. It’s just Horribly proportioned, the kidneys in the front are far too big and get even worse when your only point of comparison are the squinty little headlights. Speaking of which, get it? the blue LED’s are supposed to resemble the tape they put on the headlights at the time oh hooray. Then there’s the widebody effect, to my eyes, it looks as if someone clipped a giant version of an Otterbox phone cover to a car.
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Then there’s the color, it’s baby sick. What other way you can describe it? I may work on an E46 M3 but here….nah. It’s supposed to be a Homage to the 3.0 CSL! Where’s my art car paintjob? where’s my DTM racing livery? Come to think of it, the one point where I don’t have a problem is the back. I like the styling, it seems to gel a lot better than the rest of the car, even if it looks a bit like an angry face.
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So now that I’ve had a bit of a rant about it, you may be wondering what would a 3.0 CSL homage would look like in the world according to Solis. Well, you don’t need to wonder a lot, you only need to take a look at another item from Mr. Obendorfer’s portfolio. His BMW CS concept is a more faithful (and considerably more beautiful) homage. Just add some more grilles to flank the slim kidneys (not like BMW is having a grill aversion at the moment), stick a spoiler, a bodykit and the engine from the M6.
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Speaking of which, wouldn’t a racing version of that be the real holder of the E9’s Herritage? Look, it even comes in racing livery for pacing the MotoGP races. The X6 in the background of that picture is perhaps less easy to rationalize.

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  1. tonyola Avatar
    tonyola

    The attractive BMW CS rendering by Mr. Obendorfer looks like it’s supposed to evoke the old 2000CS in front. That’s probably why there are no side grilles.

    1. wunno sev Avatar
      wunno sev

      the 2000CS is ugly, too. i remember having a “collector card” with an old CS on it that i kept in the “special cars” section because it was fascinatingly ugly.
      now the 3.0cs……sign me up, mate. that’s a pretty car. once we’re a fully spacefaring species, i’m going to launch a 3.0cs into space so there’s no water vapor in the air to rust it. (along with a few others.)

      1. tonyola Avatar
        tonyola

        Sure, but the 2000CS is ugly only at the front – the rest of the car is fine. The Hommage is ugly all over. Besides, the old CS could be worse – it could be the US version with quad round lights.

  2. Sjalabais Avatar
    Sjalabais

    Truly impressed!

  3. jim Avatar
    jim

    Never liked the new Stratos (or the Ferrari it was based on, for that matter). I’ll take an old one every day of the week.

  4. Cameron Vanderhorst Avatar
    Cameron Vanderhorst

    Still hilarious to me that BMW’s “teaser” photo was quite possibly the only attractive part of the car.

  5. rickbradner Avatar
    rickbradner

    “homage”, it’s the new retro…

  6. Monkey10is Avatar
    Monkey10is

    There only seem to be a small handful of these ‘homage’ (BMW: “hommage”?) designs that really work for me. The 2005 Ford GTand that forward-control Jeep concept stand out as really successful design. Usually it seems that all of the delicacy and poise that made the originals work — both in their time and still today — is lost when pasted onto the bloated, over-tyred, airbag-packed, computer modelled forms of todays cars.
    The less literal attempts to evoke an era or style rather than a particular design (such as Nissan’s IDX) work much better.
    The ‘homage’ too often seems to be a lazy ‘cover version’. It’s lack of purpose and depth of design is shown up especially when — as is intended for this CSL — it is taken to Villa del Este and parked alongside true design classics.
    Does this make me homagephobic?

    1. Monkey10is Avatar
      Monkey10is

      (Senor Solis: I am currently running one day late on my Hooniverse consumption, so it was only after posting that I saw Friday’s articles including yours headed by the lovely Nissan IDX. Synchronicity.)

      1. Gerardo Solis Avatar
        Gerardo Solis

        It really was a mistake releasing it at a concours. All the surrounding beauty really stacks the deck against it.