Another month and yet another article on a BMW supercar. Ever since the M1 came to life in 1978, the BMW community has been craving for another supercar to keep up with the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini or McLaren. Over the years, there have been many supercar projects conceptually put together in Munich, but none of them survived the BMW board’s review.
According to many of our sources, the sketches and even full sized concepts were constantly put forward for review, and some of them were quite spectacular. Unfortunately, due to many budget limitations and investments in electro-mobility, the BMW supercar never came to life.
Of course, with the arrival of a new BMW M CEO, the topic of the BMW supercar has returned. Markus Flasch is now in charge of the M Division, a young executives who aims to take the sportscar division into unchartered territories. Technology like electric cars and autonomous driving is what keep M engineers up at night, and for many of them, these could be the biggest challenges of their professional life.
So naturally, when UK outlet Car Magazine sat down with Flasch for an interview, the unicorn came up.
“There are no supercars that we’re working on right now,” Flasch says. “But the idea of a supercar is something of course that sticks in the mind of any BMW engineer, especially M engineers. We are constantly reviewing it. Not working on such a project, but reviewing. I wouldn’t rule it out.”
The question now is whether the recently unveiled Vision M Next could lead the way for a true M supercar. We learned that the Vision M Next will indeed head for production in early 2023, but it’s unclear whether it will be an i8 replacement or simply a new model engineered by M.
We’re also not certain if an M supercar would be using a plug-in hybrid technology or a fully electric drivetrain as many of the modern hypercars. Regardless of the drivetrain choice, if BMW decides to do a proper supercar, it will aim to have the M DNA embedded within, so that should translate into fun driving dynamics.
“We’re not working on one.”
Same thing they always say. It’ll be newsworthy when they say the opposite.
They never ever seem or sound keen on making a supercar. Big car manufacturer like BMW with so much sporting tradition, history, and heritage spanning well over half a century should understand importance of supercar “halo effect” on a brand. BMW/M aren’t Hyundai or Kia or Mazda and should by now have made a hypercar like their fellow competitors (AMG and Porsche) have done, much less dithering on making a supercar. Come on now, just get on it with it and make it already.
They probably still sell more Ms than others…and also, you see so much more M4s or generally BMWs that do Nordschleife laps than any other brand. I don’t think the strategy is wrong, they build/and sell cars that people actually drive on race tracks.
What is RS and AMG doing?! You barely see any C63 or RS4 doing that. Probably because they aren’t good enough and their owners can only drive straight :D
A super car and it’s halo effect is of course nice, but it will not dramatically change the M brand/reputation. People already know what M stands for…
Can’t disagree with your comment. Still, they need that supercar for overall BMW brand halo effect. It helped poxy Audi increase market share and improve brand perception when R8 was released, and it also helped Merc in so many intricate brand value ways when AMG GT was released.
I agree with you, a supercar from BMW would be amazing and something all enthusiasts like us have been waiting for ever since the M1 ceized production.
However, we have to look at the big picture here. Why is Mercedes able to create supercars and specifically developed sports cars like the AMG GT and GT 4-Door? They have trucks, vans and so on, much more stuff than BMW has. I’m pretty sure that means they have a bigger budget and are able to develop cars like that from scratch without it having to return actual big profit and therefore profiting more from the halo effect than anything else. However, would BMW be able to do that, business-wise? I think not, and that’s why they haven’t created one yet.
The Audi R8 would have never been created if VAG hadn’t acquired Lamborghini, the first R8 as well as the current R8 are just a more boring looking version of the Lamborghini Gallardo and now the Huracan… So there’s that. And then again, VAG also has a much, much bigger budget than BMW.
All that you said is true. Imagine a scenario where BMW put out the concept or final design of supercar and provide all technical details/specifications as well as price/options pricing and inform on how many they plan to build annually over the run of a number of years. They can then ask buyers to pay deposits. It’s worked for Tesla (see Model 3, Model X, Roadster), Corvette (see C8), Polestar (see Polestar 1) etc. The deposits would fund development & production costs. The project can pay for itself if done right.
That actually makes a lot of sense, why can’t anyone in the BMW Board come up with something like that lol
As if i was surprise by any of what he said lol
AKA BMW Will NEVER MAKE A SUPERCAR, Period.
Wake me up when the Actual mule of one is actually testing on the roads…