BMW Designer Behind the F87 M2 and More, Leaves BMW After 14 Years to Lead GM Advanced Design Studio

There are people you meet in this industry whose fingerprints you can spot on a car before you ever learn their name. Hussein Al Attar is one of those people. After 14 remarkable years with BMW and Designworks, he is leaving to take on the role of Design Director at General Motors’ Advanced Design Studio in Pasadena, California — and while I couldn’t be happier for him, BMW is losing someone extremely talented.

Hussein confirmed the move himself on LinkedIn, saying: “I am deeply grateful to my BMW family for 14 fantastic years full of great projects, exciting challenges, and, most importantly, amazing people who, knowingly or unknowingly, shaped me to become the designer I am today.” He’s not wrong about the projects. Let me tell you about a few of them.

The Man Behind the F87 M2

For years — and I mean years — whenever I introduced Hussein to someone in the BMW world, I had exactly one line: “This is Hussein. He designed the M2.” That was all I needed to say. Eyes would light up. Handshakes would turn warm. The F87 BMW M2 Coupe is one of those cars that earns its designer genuine street credibility, not just professional respect. Compact, aggressive, honest — the M2 wore its proportions like a fighter who knows exactly how dangerous he is. Hussein led the exterior design of that car, and every time someone mentions the M2, it’s the F87 that first comes to mind.

But it was a great introduction. Maybe too great, because for a while it became something of a running joke between us.

Then Came the 6 Series Gran Turismo

Shortly after, Hussein became the Lead Exterior Designer on the BMW 6 Series Gran Turismo — a car that sits at nearly the opposite end of the automotive spectrum from the M2. Where the M2 was taut and muscular, the 6 Series GT was long, high and simply too weird for my taste. It was four-door grand tourer designed for people who want to cross a continent without wrinkling their suit, but also who maybe couldn’t afford a 7 Series.

So I updated my introduction accordingly. “This is Hussein. He designed the 6 Series GT.” He thought this was hilarious. We joked about it for years — the idea that his career was doing laps between two completely different automotive philosophies. Compact M car for the track rats. Stretched GT for a crowd that I still didn’t figure out. As introductions go, it covered a lot of ground.

The BMW X6 and a Decade of Influence in Munich

Those two cars don’t fully capture the breadth of what Hussein contributed during his seven years based in Munich. He also led the exterior design of the BMW X6 — one of the most polarizing yet commercially successful vehicles in BMW’s lineup, a car that essentially defined the “Sports Activity Coupe” segment and inspired a generation of imitators across every brand. Designing something that genuinely divides opinion while simultaneously selling in enormous numbers is a specific kind of skill, and Hussein had it. And he was quite proud of that project, despite his heart still being in that F87 M2. Literally.

California, Designworks, and the BMW M Hybrid V8

In 2019, Hussein moved to Los Angeles to join Designworks, BMW Group’s advanced design studio, eventually rising to Director of Automotive Design. It was in California that his work took a different character — forward-looking, experimental, untethered from production constraints in the best possible way.

The most visible result of that period is the BMW M Hybrid V8 race car, which he led as one of the designers, alongside Michael Scully. This machine — built for endurance racing, including a return to Le Mans — had to be both functionally extreme and visually coherent with BMW’s motorsport identity. It’s a stunning piece of work, dramatic without being gratuitous, and it showed that Hussein’s range extended well beyond road cars into purpose-built competition vehicles.

Those 4 Series Headlights

There’s one more thing worth mentioning. If you’ve ever admired the distinctive headlight and taillight signature of the new BMW 4 Series Coupe — those sharp, crystalline light forms that give the car such a distinctive face and tail — that design language has Hussein’s fingerprints on it too. Lighting design has become one of the most important battlegrounds in modern automotive design, and the 4 Series treatment is genuinely distinctive in a segment full of look-alike lamp clusters. It’s the kind of detail that designers care about deeply and most drivers never consciously register, which is exactly why it matters.

What This Means for GM

Hussein will be heading GM’s Advanced Design Studio in Pasadena — not a production studio, but a forward-thinking creative outpost tasked with shaping what comes next. It’s the kind of role that rewards curiosity and range, both of which Hussein has in abundance. At some point, he pulled up some sneaker designs he’d done on the side. As a sneakerhead, I can tell you — they were genuinely good.

So what will it mean for GM? I honestly don’t know, but he can explain it better, as always: “I am very excited to be joining General Motors, a company with a deeply rooted design history, an innovative present, and a future I have been privileged to help shape, along with a great team whose work I’ve long admired from afar.”

Before his time at BMW, Hussein interned at Mercedes-AMG, Audi, and Daimler — where he contributed to the Smart eBike Concept that premiered in Paris and later influenced the production version. He has always been someone who understood the full spectrum of what design can be, from track-focused aggression to refined elegance to electrified futures. GM is getting someone who has genuinely lived in all those spaces.

A Personal Note

I’ve been lucky to know Hussein for a long time, in fact, we met on a car forum. So long enough to have watched my one-line introduction evolve from the M2 to the 6 Series GT to, eventually, something far more complicated to summarize. Which is probably the best possible testament to a designer’s career — that it keeps growing beyond whatever single thing you were most famous for.

BMW’s design language over the past decade carries his DNA in ways both obvious and subtle. Whatever GM’s Advanced Design Studio produces under his direction, I suspect we’ll be saying the same thing about it someday.

Congratulations, Hussein. You’ve earned it. And thank you for always teaching me something about design. Even when I didn’t like a particular car.