BMW BLOG

These are interesting times we’re living for car enthusiasts. That may seem obvious but today’s events with GM’s restructuring China officially becoming the largest consumer of cars and “hybrid” and “alternative energy” finding acceptance in the American car owner’s lexicon – the last time the automotive world saw such drastic change was the 1973 Oil Crisis.

That focal point of history and a page in time marked for change, it brought about wider acceptance of the smaller, efficient Japanese and European cars while American car manufacturers began the decline that has placed them in the perdicterments we see today. In 1973 – BMW managed to be toward the forefront of making efficient yet fun engines and, like they did nearly 37 years ago – they aren’t about to give up the game at another critical point in man’s continued development of the car.

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Regular tires vs. run-flat tires…..what a heated discussion this has been in the past few years and one of the ongoing topics here at BMWBLOG. Clearly after 70 comments left, majority of you favor the regular tires with the ol’ good spare sitting in the trunk.

Or…attached to the trunk?

Our friend Kamil over at CarGuyDad spotted recently an….let’s just say for now, interesting MINI Cooper. Nothing out of ordinary until now, right? Wait, we’re not there yet. What really makes this MINI so special in the spare tire attached to its trunk. YES, you read it right, no typo this time.

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Many of you might have already noticed the changes on here. Along with a more lean and mean code, which has significantly decreased the page load times, we have also rolled out an interesting feature.

The top section receives one of those uber fancy photo carousels that allows us to “manipulate” the way we display the news to you. Some of you might be asking yourselves: what does it really do?

Well, for starters, it allows us to select the news we would like to display there, from breaking news to some fairly recent articles that may have moved down the page or even on the second or third page. Those articles could be real masterpieces or they could simply relate useful information. Therefore, bringing them to your attention, increases the quality of our homepage and news reporting.

For now, we’re starting with the articles in the photo carousel, but that may change based on your input.

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All we have to say in the beginning is WOW! We’re glad the passenger made it out alive and we wonder if it was the angel watching over them or simply a combination of luck and a safe car.

The accident displayed below took place somewhere on the Angeles Crest Highway in California and the BMW 335i Coupe was driven by M3Kill3er, member of E90post. As he was driving well into the night, he panicked at the sight of three animals on the road, swerved, slammed the brakes, hit dirt road and flew straight off the ledge down the mountain. Landed 426 feet down the rocks!!

Here is the frightening story as reported by the car owner:

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Looking back where we started this year and what we have achieved as of today, December 31st, we have nothing but to be proud of ourselves and if needed, even giving a self-pat on our back. 2009 started with a promise that a new design will be rolled out, and not just any design, but an unique one, that will focus more on the user experience and improved navigation and content format.

After 6 months of planning and usability testing, we rolled out a design that us and many others, believe it was a huge step forward and a road opener for other publications as well, mostly because of the increased reading experience and the large center column that allows us to display higher resolution photos.

While the design was just the icing on the cake, our main focus in 2009 was to offer you a variety of BMW news, covering every angle of the BMW world, from spy photos, test drives, auto shows, videos to funny stories, technical articles, editorials, columns and so much more.

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WOW! What a year this has been, but more on that soon. This article is again about you and we, the entire BMWBLOG team, would like to take a moment and wish you, your family and loved ones a Happy and more prosperous 2010 year.

Also, we would like to thank you one more time for all the support given us throughout the year and without your input, comments, suggestions and even a slap on our hand sometimes, we wouldn’t be where we are today, the leading magazine in the BMW world and one of the top automotive publications (at least we like to believe that).

For now, take a moment today to enjoy the year change, spend time with your loved ones, celebrate and let’s hope that 2010 will be a special year for all of us, both at the personal and professional level.
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Regardless of popular sentiment, from either pole, Chris Bangle has had a significant impact on BMW. His retirement in March of 2009 marked the end of a decade and a half of service designing automobiles for the Munich manufacturer.

Some believe Bangle mangled the butt of the E65 7, and flamed out by applying flame surfacing on the Z4, but what really should his time at BMW be remembered for.

Maybe looking at BMW styling before Bangle would be helpful. BMW design since the stunning CS coupes of the late 1960s had been conservative and getting more so as time progressed, with conservative being a polite way of saying dull.

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At the end of an eventful year, we wish all of you, our readers, a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. 2009 has been a fantastic year for us, with visitors traffic levels at an all time high, news coverage more than ever before and most important, our goal to build a BMW community around the blog has been achieved.

Of course all of these would have been impossible to achieve without the support received from you, our daily readers that give us all the horsepower we need to continue delivering the most, if not all, BMW news out there. The BMWBLOG team has grown this year, we have seen new enthusiasts writers come on board, some of the previous contributors have return as well and together, several milestones have been conquered.

In our last post of the year, we will remind you some of the things we have done this year, where we started, where we are now and what 2010 will bring for all of us and believe me, it will be exciting.

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