Although it was revealed in November, it has taken former BMW designer Frank Stephenson up until the new year to calm down enough to present his critique of the BMW XM concept. And he’s still not very calm.

So agitated is he by the design of the massive SUV, so frustrated is he, that his criticism sometimes boils down to a bewildered sigh. From every angle, he has criticisms (and not the constructive type) to level against the XM. His biggest complaint, though, is with the view from the side.

“The side view has to be, for me, probably the most ridiculous side view I’ve ever seen on a vehicle up to today. And that includes more than 100 years of automotive design,” says Stephenson.

Read Also: BMW’s Design Boss Explains Why The Concept XM Looks The Way It Does

As far as positives go, Stephenson can only find two places in which he feels the design is worth congratulating. The first is the hood, which is a “mini-clamshell,” meaning that it has no obvious seems and is one solid piece from wheel arch to wheel arch. The second, meanwhile, is the black applique line.

“I don’t like [it] in itself but it is a way to manage the design of the door handles, to eliminate that clutter on the side of the vehicle,” he says. “It’s a nice way to desensitize—or declutter, actually—the side of the vehicle.”

He offers a few theories as to why the company is producing such divisive designs. His first is the “New Coke Theory,” which is basically that BMW is intentionally making ugly cars so that it can go back to making conventionally attractive cars it attracts more attention and adoration, such as when Coca-Cola went back to “Coke Classic” winning back its outraged clientele.

His second is the “modern martyr of design” theory. Essentially he’s arguing that BMW is taking one for the automotive team by exaggerating what Stephenson believes are bad designs trends and slapping them all on one car to prove some kind of larger point. Alternatively, he theorizes that maybe “BMW have really lost their f#&%!^$ mind.”

For their part, Frank van Meel and Demagoj Dukec, the head of BMW’s M division and its head of design, seem quite happy with the design of the XM and don’t appear to have an ulterior motive.

They have described the car as having a “raw, massive, monolithic appearance” that is inspired in many areas by the original M1.