W
e consider German cars to be the sine qua
non of function: steadfast and reliable, yet excitingly fast.
Perhaps no German car has quite the cachet of BMW;
it is Yale, to Mercedes' Harvard and Porsche's Stanford,
catering to a certain taste for the modestly esoteric as
well as the excellent. Its visual features were slightly
eccentric: round, goggle-eyed headlights as sentinels
flanking what included often a pair of grilles. If you imagine
a contiguous surface from hood to trunk, the cars, for
many years, seemed to take the shape of a cake just
out of the pan. They appeared poised for amphibious
adventures, recent models far less so.
HYLAND