BMW Designer Behind the F87 M2 and Extra, Leaves BMW After 14 Years to Lead GM Superior Design Studio

There are folks you meet on this business whose fingerprints you may spot on a automobile earlier than you ever study their identify. Hussein Al Attar is a type of folks. After 14 exceptional years with BMW and Designworks, he’s leaving to tackle the position of Design Director at Basic Motors’ Superior Design Studio in Pasadena, California — and whereas I couldn’t be happier for him, BMW is shedding somebody extraordinarily gifted.

Hussein confirmed the transfer himself on LinkedIn, saying: “I’m deeply grateful to my BMW household for 14 implausible years stuffed with nice initiatives, thrilling challenges, and, most significantly, wonderful individuals who, knowingly or unknowingly, formed me to turn into the designer I’m immediately.” He’s not flawed in regards to the initiatives. Let me inform you about a number of of them.

The Man Behind the F87 M2

For years — and I imply years — every time I launched Hussein to somebody within the BMW world, I had precisely one line: “That is Hussein. He designed the M2.” That was all I wanted to say. Eyes would gentle up. Handshakes would flip heat. The F87 BMW M2 Coupe is a type of automobiles that earns its designer real road credibility, not simply skilled respect. Compact, aggressive, trustworthy — the M2 wore its proportions like a fighter who is aware of precisely how harmful he’s. Hussein led the outside design of that automobile, and each time somebody mentions the M2, it’s the F87 that first involves thoughts.

But it surely was an ideal introduction. Perhaps too nice, as a result of for some time it turned one thing of a working joke between us.

Then Got here the 6 Sequence Gran Turismo

Shortly after, Hussein turned the Lead Exterior Designer on the BMW 6 Sequence Gran Turismo — a automobile that sits at almost the alternative finish of the automotive spectrum from the M2. The place the M2 was taut and muscular, the 6 Sequence GT was lengthy, excessive and just too bizarre for my style. It was four-door grand tourer designed for individuals who need to cross a continent with out wrinkling their swimsuit, but in addition who possibly couldn’t afford a 7 Sequence.

So I up to date my introduction accordingly. “That is Hussein. He designed the 6 Sequence GT.” He thought this was hilarious. We joked about it for years — the concept that his profession was doing laps between two utterly completely different automotive philosophies. Compact M automobile for the observe rats. Stretched GT for a crowd that I nonetheless didn’t determine. As introductions go, it coated loads of floor.

The BMW X6 and a Decade of Affect in Munich

These two automobiles don’t totally seize the breadth of what Hussein contributed throughout his seven years based mostly in Munich. He additionally led the outside design of the BMW X6 — one of the polarizing but commercially profitable automobiles in BMW’s lineup, a automobile that primarily outlined the “Sports activities Exercise Coupe” section and impressed a era of imitators throughout each model. Designing one thing that genuinely divides opinion whereas concurrently promoting in monumental numbers is a selected form of ability, and Hussein had it. And he was fairly happy with that challenge, regardless of his coronary heart nonetheless being in that F87 M2. Actually.

California, Designworks, and the BMW M Hybrid V8

In 2019, Hussein moved to Los Angeles to hitch Designworks, BMW Group’s superior design studio, ultimately rising to Director of Automotive Design. It was in California that his work took a special character — forward-looking, experimental, untethered from manufacturing constraints in the very best method.

Essentially the most seen results of that interval is the BMW M Hybrid V8 race automobile, which he led as one of many designers, alongside Michael Scully. This machine — constructed for endurance racing, together with a return to Le Mans — needed to be each functionally excessive and visually coherent with BMW’s motorsport id. It’s a surprising piece of labor, dramatic with out being gratuitous, and it confirmed that Hussein’s vary prolonged properly past street automobiles into purpose-built competitors automobiles.

These 4 Sequence Headlights

There’s yet one more factor value mentioning. Should you’ve ever admired the distinctive headlight and taillight signature of the brand new BMW 4 Sequence Coupe — these sharp, crystalline gentle varieties that give the automobile such a particular face and tail — that design language has Hussein’s fingerprints on it too. Lighting design has turn into one of the necessary battlegrounds in trendy automotive design, and the 4 Sequence therapy is genuinely distinctive in a section stuffed with look-alike lamp clusters. It’s the form of element that designers care about deeply and most drivers by no means consciously register, which is precisely why it issues.

What This Means for GM

Hussein can be heading GM’s Superior Design Studio in Pasadena — not a manufacturing studio, however a forward-thinking artistic outpost tasked with shaping what comes subsequent. It’s the form of position that rewards curiosity and vary, each of which Hussein has in abundance. In some unspecified time in the future, he pulled up some sneaker designs he’d achieved on the aspect. As a sneakerhead, I can inform you — they had been genuinely good.

So what’s going to it imply for GM? I actually don’t know, however he can clarify it higher, as all the time: “I’m very excited to be becoming a member of Basic Motors, an organization with a deeply rooted design historical past, an progressive current, and a future I’ve been privileged to assist form, together with an ideal workforce whose work I’ve lengthy admired from afar.”

Earlier than his time at BMW, Hussein interned at Mercedes-AMG, Audi, and Daimler — the place he contributed to the Sensible eBike Idea that premiered in Paris and later influenced the manufacturing model. He has all the time been somebody who understood the complete spectrum of what design could be, from track-focused aggression to sophisticated magnificence to electrified futures. GM is getting somebody who has genuinely lived in all these areas.

A Private Be aware

I’ve been fortunate to know Hussein for a very long time, in actual fact, we met on a automobile discussion board. So lengthy sufficient to have watched my one-line introduction evolve from the M2 to the 6 Sequence GT to, ultimately, one thing way more difficult to summarize. Which might be the very best testomony to a designer’s profession — that it retains rising past no matter single factor you had been most well-known for.

BMW’s design language over the previous decade carries his DNA in methods each apparent and refined. No matter GM’s Superior Design Studio produces below his route, I believe we’ll be saying the identical factor about it sometime.

Congratulations, Hussein. You’ve earned it. And thanks for all the time educating me one thing about design. Even after I didn’t like a specific automobile.