An Aftermarket Company Finally Addresses the BMW Grille Problem

• ADRO has come out with a replacement grille for the “controversial” stock grille on the current BMW M3/M4, with a lower profile.

• But ADRO has bigger plans, including becoming a carmaker.

• The idea is to get a “skateboard” EV platform from an existing OEM and add its own body on top. Look for a car in the next three to five years.

Just like the weather, everybody complains about the front end of the BMW M3 and M4. But no one does anything about it. Well, someone finally did something about it.

A company called ADRO (Aerodynamic Development Race Optimization), with design offices in Southern California and production in South Korea, made not only a front clip for the Bimmer’s offending schnozz, but an entire body kit: nose, side skirts, rear valence and goose-neck rear wing.

It wasn’t easy.

“A lot of companies tried to change the front, and during the process they realized that the making of this bumper is a huge investment because it’s a plastic-mold-injection bumper, and they would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it,” said ADRO Chief Designer Davis Yongwon Lee. “But we thought it was worth the investment. Not only in terms of sales, but in terms of making a statement.”

So ADRO invested “a lot of money” into making the body kit. The reason it costs so much was integrating the six sensors in the BMW bumper, including radar and camera units that are all fixed into place as hard points.

“Which leaves very little room to design,” Lee said. “Designing something is super easy, but taking it to reality and making it functional is another subject, and we had to go through all of that to actually make it feasible, which was a very time-consuming project. But I’m happy with how it turned out and how it worked.”

The team took the bumper off the BMW and 3D-scanned it and the car to try and get the holes to all line up correctly.