German Car Forum

Nobody said customers did want turbo engines. What are you talking about?

Turbo engines are just the tech fitting current & future regulation requirements better.

Yet what customers want is more day-to-day friendly ride - less raw racing feeling, more comfort.
And they also like to see various body sahpes - fitting them best.

Regarding engine development: as Scott said: BMW are testing various solutions. And, sorry, I still don't know what will be offered in the end. When I will, I will be glad to announce it here.




Yes. The exhaust problem. Also there is a problem with intercooler.
There are thermodynamic limits. At a current configuration & solutions.
Of course some proper solutions can be found.
But currently costs are still to high to implement proper solutions in a series car. Nor the tech (the whole engine) is reliable enough to be offered to average customers.

Perhaps in some racing engines, but not in series ones.

But in the future? Who knows ... Tech progress & development is dynamic, and I'm quite optimistic in this case.

Yet ... I still don't see the point of having high-rev turbo engines (with very insignificant boost) to emulate NA engines. But I guess if customers will want that - and if that would fit into brand image (like in M or BMW case) - I'm sure such products will be offered in the future (when the tech is ready) - at least in sports cars - eg. M.

The japanese are beating the germans on their hometrack. I wish BMW followed the trend by producing intresting sportscars.

Of course it's not the same, and BMW know that calling it the X6 M adds a few more sales. The unanswerable question at this stage is what damage this decision does to the overall M brand in the long term. I know in my eyes AMG was always at a disadvantage compared to M because they were less about pure motorsport. However, now M also produce SUV's this perception has been eroded. The time I come to replace my M3 that disadvantage will have been reduced to some degree and the AMG option will not automatically be rejected as it was one year ago.

Or maybe are MB's bread and butter models about to be replaced/upgraded (new E-Class, E-Coupe, S and CL FL)), explaining why the sales aren't so high right now?

So if you're in the market for an M3 sedan or C63, you instantly choose the M3 sedan because Mercedes used to make an R63 AMG too, so the C63 can never be good?????
Makes. No. Sense.
All this M not more being pure and what else nonsense is really getting on my nerves.
Just wait for the new M5 and see how crazy much that one will be improved over the current one. It will be E39 vs E60 all over again, and people will be happy.... Too bad I will have to wait a few years before people stop bitching about BMW M on internet message boards.

I think I have said all I need on this subject. Sporty image... well, yesterday, maybe today but not tomorrow. It is not just the direction of BMW that is changing, brand perception will as well.

Which is exactly what I was saying and what Klier fails to grasp in his post above.

One could start wondering, who it is that can't let go of the past - those saying that BMW should build sportscars like the Z4M or CSL, or those who say that no matter what BMW does, the brand will always be regarded as the most sporty on the market?

I am simply saying that even before I set eyes on either the C63 AMG or the E92 M3, or I turned either cars wheels during a test drive, the MB was at a disadvantage because AMG doesn't have a pure motorsport image like M does. How can you take any company's sporting credentials seriously when they make an AMG version of virtually every model in their line-up. It just comes across as "how can we make as much money as possible" rather than "what would be the right thing to do". Now, because BMW have released two M SUV's, they don't have that automatic advantage, in terms of image at least. And lets face it, when you buy a BMW and even an M, part of the decision is based on image, and anybody who denies this is either deluded or lying.

It doesn't mean that my next car is going to be an AMG. I'm a long time BMW fan (like you seem to be Klier, although unlike you I recognise BMW are not perfect), and the car at the top of the list to replace my M3 is the F10 M5, and that will be the fifth BMW in a row for me, and fourth M. I've never owned another manufacturer's car. That is unlikely to change. However, I will at least look at other possibilities now.

Does. That. Make. Sense. To. You?

will the next M5 have just 5200 RPM ???? sorry for the question but i want to know =D

I don't know but my guess is no.

if the next M5 rev only 5200 rpm, then I´m moving to Alaska and living among bears.

Why 5200? Where does that number comes from?

No, no way. 5200 is way too low. Turbo engines generally rev till 6500/7000rpm, it's above that that it becomes problematic.

5200 is only the redline of the 50 years old Bentley V8 of the Arnage. The M5 will clearly rev wayy more than just 5200rpm!

I think that 5,250 figure is a "straight out of the hat" example used in a previous post about how the rpm works with power.

There is no way even BMW would release a car like the M5 with an engine that revs as happlily as a semi-modern diesel.

Eg. the S63B44 engine (X5 / X6 M) reaches max power of 555HP @ 6,000rpm, while max. rpm (engine cut off) is @ 6,800rpm.

So, hardly a low-rev engine.

Sure it's not 8,250 rpm max, but ... I guess 6,800 rpm is more than enough for all the engine screaming & rumbling.

you can have tons of torque because of turbo. But nothing feels as special as 8400 rpm in the M3 or even more in a porsche GT3.

I grasp it alright, I just don't agree with it. BMW's sporty image will only grow to the average Joe because of the X5 and X6 M. Some of you are making it sound as if BMW will stop making M cars after the X5 and X6 or something

Nope, they have just stopped making/decided not to make, the best ones.

Like which ones??? When the E85 Z4 was launched they officially said there wouldn't be a coupé and M version...and look what happened. And the E46 M3 CSL came with the facelift of the E46 coupé, so we might even see the E92 M3 CSL next year, with the facelift of the coupé.
The only M car missing right now would be the 1er M, but a 326 hp Performance 135i with all performance options is pretty close to that...

Next M3, next M5, next gen 1er M, upcoming Performance line for Z4,, etc. are all going to be wonderful...what's wrong with the future??? Soon we even have an M pack for the 7er, that's a first too! And a 4 cylinder M engine for the Z2 in the future surely??

Statements like this just show how naive you are. The E92 M3, until recently, has not been selling well. The world's financial situation hasn't helped at all, but I know at least in the UK (third biggest market for M), you could pick up an M3 at 10K off list with only a few hundred miles on the clock. It was a really dire situation for BMW UK. Due to cutting off supply, the excess of M3's has been reduced substantially. But do you seriously think BMW would now think about a CSL version? The E46 CSL version was a limited edition and the main reason for building it was to see if people would pay more for less (in effect), and to develop techniques for intergrating new technologies on a mass scale i.e. CFRP roof which were later incorporated into the M6 and M3.

By the way. The E46 CSL did not sell well at all with dealers unable to shift them. Now the values have held up pretty well, but this was not the case when they were released. And that was into a far more financially healthy world.

Do you seriously think there is a market at the moment for a GBP70K+ M3? The market for ANY GBP70K car is small. When that car is aimed at a very specific target market, and the development costs are very high (the M3 already has technologies like CFRP), releasing it now would be suicidal. Also Scott and ENI are very quick to give away development info, yet they've never mentioned a CSL.



Do you remember when it was simply called the "Sport" pack? Yet another example of BMW plundering the M brand.

I think that when they make 1500 E92 M3 CSL, they will be solt relatively easy. There still are a lot of rich people, and BMW is a hot brand.
But I am naive yes

As BMW, apparently, is not a brand that can produce and sell a sportscar like the CSL just for the sake of it, there must be some sort of technology that can be researched along with it as a bouns. The E46 CSL introduced the CF roof and some other weight saving technologies. What is next? What will they do? And will the car be light enough for it to earn the CSL badge?

The sales of 1,400 cars really does not tell me much, I don't know how much BMW spent during development of the last CSL, and I do not know what technologies was researched during this development.

The E46 CSL down here in SA (a small country with a high percentage of affluent car buyers relative to the total market size) was a sales success. BMW sold each and every one of them to supposed discerning and deserving clientele.

The CSL was however not a customer success story. Many put their names down and got more (or less as Betty astutely put it) for their money. Every CSL was ordered with full climate control and a premium sound system - because that's what customers wanted - and this just goes to prove how misguided the majority of buyers expectations were. It was all about owning the latest and greatest from a poseur perspective. And, when many of the original buyers ended being surprised and disappointed by the CSL's uncompromising hardcore nature they traded them in in droves. Consequently, residual value of the CSL dropped by half in a matter of months. [Leaving a number on sale with low mileage as absolute bargains for the true afficionados]

The CSL concept, as inspiring as it is for internet car forum junkies is just too hardcore and uncompromising to be viable for a car maker like BMW in an economic downturn.
Furthermore, with the advancements made in vehicle manufacture and mechanical technology, an E92 comes with a CFRP roof as standard and with a quicker, smoother M-DCT transmission on the spec-sheet. So now, it is that much harder for BMW to differentiate a CSL model from an exisiting E92.

As for the lovely debate around turbo's and engine rpm - well I've long been a fan of both approaches given the different character of the experience. The whole idea around high-revving NA engines is to make them rev in order to make the desired power out of the available torque capability of the engine.
Because turbo's introduce more torque through volumetric efficiency, the need for the engine to be high-revving is largely negated - just apply the maths according to the formula described by EnI earlier in this thread.

We had a whole different story up here. Sales were a bit slow. Not that slow, all but a very few was sold directly to customers and those few that remained at the dealers did so for variuos reasons.

Also, here the cars were not allways fully loaded. Many had neither full clima nor sound system. Many were driven hard and long. It is not at all uncommon to see examples with an exess of 60,000 kms on the clock. About 10,000 kms a year.

Resale value for the CSL, at least here in Sweden, and in many respects also in Germany, are quite good. In general, a car sold in Sweden has lost less than 30% of its value in 5-6 years.

Well that's the way it should be Dr.D. Moderate initial depreciation followed by a levelling period before the car finds its way into icon status as a collectable.

Icons and collectables, as desirable as they are, do nothing for the current balance sheet I'm afraid. What BMW needs now is a range of performance vehicles that are presently relevant, profitable and sustainable. If this happens to include M cars that are turbocharged and only rev to 7000 rpm then many [brainwashed by BMW's own doing] BMW fans are set to be disappointed. It's neither right nor wrong - just sad that it had to come to this.