For years, Frank Van Meel has been a performance-minded enthusiast, helping to develop some of the most incredible go-fast cars on the market. Years ago, van Meel was the head of Audi’s Quattro GmbH (now known as Audi Sport) and was responsible for some of its best performance cars. Then BMW M poached him away to be its own CEO and he’s responsible for the ever-so-brilliant M5. He then was promoted to the head of total vehicle development for BMW, which was his position until today. Now, van Meel heads over to Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, to be its Head of Product Line.
So van Meel is dropping his go-fast roots and slowing way down, to now head up Rolls’ new line of vehicles. This is an interesting move for Rolls-Royce, as van Meel is a bright mind and has been the brains behind some genuinely fantastic performance cars. So he can no-doubt help Rolls develop newer, more exciting cars but it will be interesting to see his take on luxury.
Former Head of Product Line for Rolls-Royce, Frank Weber, will move on to be taking the development board seat soon to be vacated by Klaus Fröhlich. Considering that Fröhlich has made some rather interesting comments about BMW’s future, and has had some polarizing opinions, this is an interesting move by BMW.
In addition to heading up the Rolls-Royce product line, van Meel will also be responsible for some high-end BMW products, such as the 7 Series, 8 Series and X7. So van Meel went from the performance mind in the BMW Group to the luxury mind, seemingly overnight.
While Rolls-Royce is getting a good one and that’s exciting, it’s also a bit sad. van Meel was a bright spot among BMW’s exces, as he could always been relied upon to deliver good performance cars. So we bid you farewell, van Meel, but we’ll be seeing you again. This time, it will be in a far more comfortable environment than tire smoke and screaming engines. .
[Source: Forbes]
