The E39 BMW 5 Series Could've Looked Much Different, Early Sketches Show

The Drive

08-05-2025

If you were to poll a group of BMW enthusiasts about the best-looking 5 Series of all time, the E39 generation would likely snag the most votes. I would cast mine for the original E12-gen car that was co-created by the two legendary designers, Paul Bracq and Marcello Gandini, but what do I know? There's no sense arguing against the claim that the E39 5 Series was a beautiful sedan, one that's aged like wine three decades on. However, it almost had a very different look, one that would have been far more futuristic at the time.
BMW Classic just shared some different, but ultimately rejected, design sketches for the E39 5 Series, penned by Joji Nagashima. Nagashima would eventually go on to create the finalized E39 design we've come to know and love. But it's interesting to see what his original vision for BMW's fourth-generation 5er was long before it went on sale. BMW Classic via Instagram
Nagashima's original design—the white sedan at the top of the page, dated 1989—was vastly different from the one we eventually got. It was far more streamlined and had a bubbly, wraparound front end reminiscent of Italdesign's gorgeous Nazca M12 and C2 supercar concepts that followed. It wasn't quite as pretty as the Nazcas, and frankly reminds me a bit too much of the first-generation Dodge Intrepid, but there's an '80s-futurism to it that I find interesting. I also dig the big disc wheels.
As we move to the sketch of the burgundy car, we can see shades of the eventual production model begin to appear. The kidneys, for example, are similar, as is the squinty nature of both the grilles and headlights being the same height across the front end. And while the hood lines are far curvier in this artwork, you can see how Nagashima eventually got to the finalized design.
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At the time of the first sketch, the E39's predecessor, the E34 5 Series, was only two years into production, with its ultra-boxy silhouette. So, what we're seeing from '89 was already radically different than anything BMW had previously made. Back then, BMW's design language was sharp and wedgy, but the company's artists were already looking well into the future. Chris Bangle is largely credited for BMW's drastic aesthetic departure of the mid-to-late '90s and early 2000s, for better or worse, but he didn't become chief of the brand's design department until 1992, three years after Nagashima drew up this swoopy sketch. I wonder if the E39 would still be considered the classic it is today if this look had been chosen instead.
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Nico DeMattia is a staff writer at The Drive. He started writing about cars on his own blog to express his opinions when no one else would publish them back in 2015, and eventually turned it into a full-time career.