Sometimes a lot – perhaps the storied history of racing prowess earned since the days of yore. Think Ferrari, Porsche or even Audi.

Sometimes very little. What a brand name and symbol took so long to acquire is sometimes devalued by the latest owners when marques change hands. Harley-Davidson in the AMF era from 1969 to 1981 comes to mind, as does (sadly) Saab under GM and Chrysler under the Cerberus conglomerate.

But what do people really think of your favourite car brand? Well now you can find out, or at least in terms of the Net-literate with www.brandtags.net.

The premise is simple: what pops into a person’s head first when they see a brand? Part market research and part pop-psychology, Brandtags takes these responses and sizes them according to the number of times a word appears.

Why the research? Well it’s interesting. Also it explains an experience I had driving the new, very gorgeous BMW Z4. It’s a surefire way of catching attention since the new roadster is much better looking than the old one, which resembled a sneaker.

It attracts both good and bad attention though – alongside the craning heads and bulging eyes were a lot of angry glares and disdain. I was quite puzzled (no I wasn’t driving like Kubica) but what made me really curious was the amount of aggression it seemed to elicit on the road.

The worst bit was a silver car tail-gating me very very closely at around 90km/h in the right lane on the TPE. In open traffic that’d be fine, I’d just pull over and let him through but the problem was we were boxed in by other cars, it being around 7pm. And then Mr. Road Safety began flashing his lights even though there was no room to move in front, left or right.

I guess he must’ve been having a baby, a hernia, or both and I began wondering if I had ever insulted his extended family in past life. In any case, bewildered and rather irritated, I pulled over to let him through and spread the joy with the rest of the world.

Then I went home and remembered what word the brandtag for BMW had most memorably.

To save you a Google and a click, it began with ‘a’ and ended with ‘hole’. Clue: It’s not ant-hole.

And it’s really curious because other luxury German marques don’t have that word writ anywhere as large, although on a side note all the major sports car brands have at least one occurrence of ’small penis’ (I’m serious!). My only explanation is the BMW has always been, and still is, the yuppie-mobile of choice.

So thanks to the power of the Internet all the aggression directed at the lovely, female-designed Z4 was explained, and then some.

Yep, you guessed it: the silver car was a BMW as well.

In a shock move, BMW’s head of design Chris Bangle has left BMW to pursue things “outside of the automobile industry.” Given I discussed him in my previous post I thought it appropriate to bring it up here too.

I guess it’s a shock move to the automotive world because most of the people involved in it are mad about cars, which explains their choice of employment.

It goes without saying this also includes the automotive press, like yours truly, but then again cars are merely the center of a universe, not the universe.

It’s a surprise because automobile designers usually stay within the industry – Bangle himself joined BMW in 1992 after vacating his post at Fiat. But it’s not unknown for them to branch out into other things either.

The legendary Giorgetto Giugaro (who designed the DeLorean DMC-12 aka Doctor Emmett Brown’s time machine) went on to industrial design and penned cameras and keyboards.

Bangle’s biggest steps, and biggest uproars, were probably the introduction of the 7 Series luxury sedan and Z4 sports car in 2002. His use of flame surfacing (obvious concave or convex shapes in the sheet metal) as a new design direction was met with both extreme applause and disgust though as usual it was the nay-sayers that roared the loudest, but he never seemed to tired of defending his design choices either.

I admit that the infamous ‘Bangle Butt’ didn’t agree with me at first too. But getting the opportunity to talk to him in person at a design workshop here a year or so ago was a big step towards understanding what his intentions were.

One was the understanding of how car design goes through alternate cycles of revolution and evolution. The first cars were the revolution and now we’re seeing the fruits of evolution in the sleek looking new Z4 and 7 Series.

What struck me most though, was how his points of reference were always from outside the automobile industry – talking about what influenced him most in the design of new cars he used examples ranging from the spectacles he wore to things like chairs and can openers. His main aim, he said, was to “make human, organic shapes” that everyone could appreciate.

So while other car designers saw the big picture, it seemed he always saw the BIG picture. Plus looking like a messiah always helps:

So is Chris Bangle the mad genius who brought BMW’s design to greater heights or just mad?

That’s still up to you to decide but in my eyes it’s the former.

Next up: We talk about something other than butts.