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Totally Frank Words: Will Beaumont Photos: Chaydon Ford
Frank Stephenson worked in BMW’s design department for over a decade, he penned some of the company’s most influential cars and witnessed the creation of even more. Who better to talk us through the 70 years of BMW design that the club has been around to witness?
I
can’t pretend that being a motoring journalist is the most stressful career, it really isn’t. But there are moments before any job that can spike the anxiety of any motoring writer. Before any feature with a classic car, will the owner turn up? So far, I’ve never been stood up. It’s similarly nerve-racking before an interview. Will the guest arrive? Will they arrive on time? So far I’ve been lucky on both accounts. Will they be pleasant and amiable, or will they be a demanding diva with a complicated coffee order that requires milk squeezed from exotic beans only found at the foothills of the Andes? Sadly, that situation isn’t as rare as the others. Not even the swanky café area at the heart of Cotswold BMW’s sprawling dealership can completely calm my nerves as I wait for ex-BMW designer, Frank Stephenson, ahead of our live broadcast that evening. And I’m still anxious when his car pulls up to the door. Take a look at Frank’s career and you can see why. He’s a big deal. After studying automotive design at Art Center College of Design in California he was employed by Ford. He then moved to BMW and worked for the Munich company for over a decade. Stephenson can take credit for two of the most influential BMW designs of the past 30 years, the first generation
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X5 and the new Mini. Simply being here is all well and good, he certainly has the credibility and authority to talk me through BMW’s design history, but the success of the night really depends on just how engaging and charming he is. And more worrying for me, how well we get on. As soon as he steps out of his taxi, halfway through having a joke with the driver, all my tension evaporates. His huge smile, open posture and deep chuckle are captivating and I know the event is going to be a success. To top it off, his coffee, no make that his drinks order is wonderfully simple: pretty much anything with caffeine. Cotswold BMW is full of cars, far more than we had anticipated. The plan was to have eight, one per decade from the 1950s up to today to celebrate the Club’s
70-year lifespan so far, but there’s half a dozen more than that. Next to the superrare 1957 BMW 503 is a 1M, an E92 M3. There’s an immaculate AC Schnitzer-tuned E39, an Alpina B3 Touring, two E9s one of which is a CSL, a Z8, a Z3, an E46 Coupé, an E30, a 2002 and an E24 M635CSi. That’s before we get to the brand new cars. Where to start? There’s an obvious choice, an early E53 X5. Frank’s design. As this was BMW’s first offroader, SAV, SUV… whatever you want to call it, you’d expect that a lot of time was dedicated to the task of getting the design correct. Apparently not according to Frank: “We were told we had six weeks. I assumed that was how long they were giving our design team for the sketch period.” Which is a tight timescale to come up with some resolved sketches. “The six weeks was www.bmwcarclubgb.uk
