…..really? Not sporty like sayyyyy miata? s2000? The successor to all modern BMWs the 2002? For 1988 a 200hp 4cyl was more than sporty. It was almost exotic.

Those were the days.

It seems that we all agree on it, but that we are seeing it in different ways, for me the summary is:

- BMW has to step up to the HP war and have more HP in the new M5 for marketing reasons, and we agree that this is not the spirit of M cars, M Cars are about balancing HP with handling, control, and feedback. The original M cars essence put them on the opposite side of muscle cars, while it seems that Audi and MB are dragging the Sport sedans towards the center or even closer to the muscle cars.

- BMW HAS TO reduce cost in order to be competitive and make profit (although they are already one of the most profitable companies, but hell yeah if they could make more profit then why not).

- BMW has to attract other customers who don’t understand or dont appreciate a sports car engine with peaky torque and high revs, so BMW has to compromise and go for more muscle car like engine. They already had to compromise feedback and roughness with smoother and softer E60M5 and E92M3.

- BMW has to reduce emissions but without increasing costs, and perfectly engineered N/A engines are more expensive to develop, uses expensive materials, and built on such precision to go up to 9k rpm without a problem. and all that means the car costs extra and the maintenance is even more.

all the Has to/had to statement are related to marketing, cost, new M customers, ,,,etc , non of them is about making a better car, keeping the legend of the M brand that gave BMW that great reputation, keeping the enthusiasts who fuel that reputation satisfied, or to say the least caring about making a better sports car in the definition that M Div engineers talked/bragged about for 30 yeas.

For us, those “has to” statements mean nothing, we don’t have shares in BMW, and we are not married to the corporate to worry about their sheet numbers and profits. We need to say it, that from our perspective we don’t like that a bit, otherwise they might continue this surge and we would end up with a MB kind of car that has a BMW logo on it (MB themselves had to go through lots of other kind of compromising, way before BMW, and look where this took them in the long run).

From my perspective, whatever justifications we listed, they dont change the fact that the new M cars have very little M-ness in them and if they change the high-revving, peacky multi-throttle engine they will have almost 0 M-ness left in them, except for the logo and it’s already loosing it’s appeal and reputation.

Whether to search somewhere else, it depends on what you need. If you’re looking for the best handling coupe for 4 adult persons, it still will be BMW (M3, of course :D) or if you are looking for driving pleasure in saloon, M5 will be the best offert, or if you are searching for large coupe, M6 still will be lurking offert for you. In upcoming future there will only less and less NA engines in cars in these segments. Personally, I’m not against turbo engines in BMW since their resposiveness is great (in X6M it’s amazing, according to journalists) and they provide max torgue from the lowest rev speed. These engines don’t need to rev to almost 9000rpm, becuase range of rev speed that is for disposition is greater than in any NA engine. Anyway, it still doesn’t mean that I don’t admire perfect engineering in BMW’s NA engine, but there too small numebers of customers, who would buy a car because it’s a piece of great engineering when they can buy a cheaper car with similar performance. Sad, but it’s the world we live in and BMW has to change to survive. I wish them best on the new path since I still believe that they are making the best cars in their segments and doubt that I won’t buy BMW in future.

The E30 M3 was raced as a touring car and a DTM;

BMW’s current touring car star is the 320si…. right.. yes, anybody think BMW should ditch the M3 in favour of the 320si – to go up against the RS4/5, C63 AMG, IS-F ? And in future the S2000 regs governing touring car racing are likely to become S1600 regs, meaning 1.6l Turbo’s…..

.. and what if BMW entered DTM? Still no joy, unlike when BMW were competing in DTM, DTM cars currentley ARE NOT based on road cars, they have custom built spec racing engines and drive trains, they are silhouette cars for all intents and purposes.. it would be as much use to a road car as BMW joining NASCAR.

So… what other options are there? Well, let’s not forget the E46 M3 GT-R… a snip at £250,000…. for other reasons, they decided not to build it… but that wouldn’t have mattered… M cannot exist based on the sales of £250,000 cars…

… my point is, M road cars have changed because their original reason for being does not exist anymore, M hs moved from Motorsport to Marketing.. and they’ve never done better to be fair to them.

It’s Natural selection, things must evolve or they die. I do not want to see the M brand die, and I also wouldnt want to see BMW making the same product for 50 years as Porsche has done with the 911, it lacks any originality.

Don’t forget that inevitably cars grow in size from one generation to the next, they are also expected to offer more safety and additional features. So not only are you trying to make a product weigh less than its predecessor, but you are also invariably adding more weight to it before you even begin!