I'm not sure what to call BMW's current design approach: Statement-based automotive design? Their new XM, a plug-in hybrid SUV, seems like a collection of discrete design statements that look interesting individually--but do not relate to one another to create a cohesive vehicle design.

It's as if one designer did the grille, another the taillights, yet another the door handle, etc., then they all connected the elements in a game of Exquisite Corpse, where no one could see what the other person was drawing.

The overall gesture of the vehicle, too, seems oddly disconnected; in the shot below it looks like these are the front half and rear half of two different vehicles.

We should talk for a moment about market placement: The XM is not aimed at soccer parents. It's the company's flagship SUV and an insanely powerful M-series to boot, pairing a twin-turbo V8 with an electric motor, providing 644hp and 590 lb-ft of torque. And it starts at $160,000. An even more powerful and exclusive version, the XM Label Red (shown below), was announced this month, and that one starts at $185,000.

In other words, the price tags say the person who will buy this car can pretty much have any car they want. What is it about this disjointed design that speaks to them? Apparently the XM's target market is "people who don't care about the establishment," according to BMW design chief Domagoj Dukec, in an interview with Sharp. "That doesn't mean they don't care. They have maybe even higher values, but they also have tattoos…. It's not about tradition. These people, they are looking for something different."

"Some people are convinced that if you just make something beautiful, everybody is going to love it, but that's not how it works," Dukec says. Good design, he explains, must tell a story. "It's much deeper than a superficial look. Other cars, which just take a superficial approach, will work in the beginning but will fade, you will forget it," he says.

In the same interview, Dukec revealed this interesting tidbit:

"We have someone on my team who is a design psychologist, to really understand what drives people. What is a customer's background, and what will make him think, 'This is what I need.'"

I am dying to know what the psychologist's report said!

Something else that might explain why the design seems so strange to me, is that I'm an American of a certain age, who grew up in an era when European design sensibilities dominated the luxury automotive market. But the XM was not designed for that era nor the European market. "The key sales markets [for the XM] will be the USA, China and the Middle East," BMW writes in the XM press release.

The wording is slightly altered for the XM Label Red's press release: "China is one of the most important sales regions for the BMW XM Label Red, alongside the USA and the Middle East." I think if I'm going to stay in this game, I'm going to have to learn some new design languages.