[mkoesel]

Originally Posted by 3XTR3M3

Thanks south. But I wonder how this is viable for BMW to develop and run a car for 1 year, unless theres some other plan.

Maybe they are just taking the majority of the ALMS GT car tech with new externals. But I'm pretty sure mechanical regs are different from GT to DTM too.

So curious how this is going to play out.

I had some related questions I had asked in a separate thread, but no one answered so I went and researched it a little. This quote, taken from wikipedia, basically confirmed what I suspected:

All DTM race cars have RWD and 4.0 L V8 engines which are air-restricted to 470 hp, no matter if similar layouts or engines are available in the road cars. Instead of the road car bodies, unrelated purpose-built chassis are used, which are closer to prototype racing. Many drivers have in fact described the handling of the cars as closer to single seater racing cars than road cars. Only the roof sections of the road cars are put on top of the roll cages, and lights and other distinctive design features are used in order to provide a resemblance to the road cars.

That is to say, DTM cars are not production-based cars at all. This is in stark contrast, BTW, to the M3 GTE/GT2 cars used in Le Mans and American LeMans respectively. Those start life as "production" M3s, with their body shells plucked right from the production line (though they then get built up into race cars and share very little with a road-going M3).

So, in reality, the changing of the guard coming up soon from E9x to F3x will have basically no effect whatsoever on BMW's DTM efforts. They are going to build a special racing chassis that, other than the roof, does note share a single bit of exterior with any production car - M3 or otherwise. In fact, further research indeed confirms the cars are based on purpose-built tubular spaceframes. In other words these cars are essentially the European kin to those used in our homegrown NASCAR series, albeit ones that are not stuck in the past and burdened by pushrod V8s and live axle rear ends.

What this all means is that the car will be easily updated to take on any F3x styling cues whenever BMW wishes. Maybe it's not just stickers like a NASCAR entry would typically get, but the changes needed to reflect a new model will nonetheless be minor since the car only barely ever looked anything like a production car to begin with. Now, these changes could happen soon after the E92 M3 ends production next year (i.e. they could take some cues from the new F30 3 series at that time), perhaps at the start of the car's second season in DTM. Alternatively they could just leave it alone until the F32 M3 shows its face in about 3 years time. Or, they could make a slow transition changing little things each year. But the bottom line is, this is going to be a chassis that is built to be used for many seasons (refined over time I'm sure), and it's lifespan will be completely uneffected to the lifespan of road going BMWs.