Quote:
Originally Posted by EdwinF10
Okay, no production car but remember this legendary turbo engine powered Brabham-BMW?
BMW M division in fact build the first turbo charged engine ever to win the formula one world championship.
I assume it's safe to say that M are no complete idiots when it comes to developing turbo charged engines  |
Thats your own personal assumption, but not a fact. The fact is that they have never offered a turbo production car, so all will suffer with their growing pains for perhaps many many years.
Think about SMG, for example, they used it in racing for a long time, but it was not a roaring success when introduced to production line cars. It took them a decade and 3 iterations to make it reliable, and then they had to drop it anyway, so regardless of tech that may work in a race, it often, and usually, does not equate to successful transition to production cars. And my point is simple, do you think they had an active program going on for turbos that they just continued down the line and made the S63Tu? I dont think so, its not like with Porsche where they've offered the turbo as one of their top of the line vehicles for the past 30+ years. I have alot of faith in the P car because they've had the time to fail and fail until getting it better and better with each successive iteration of the 911, for ex.
With M, its been 30+ years of high revving NA power only. They had no clandestine project for turbo tech that they were hiding but developing with this day in mind. No, someone, on the green kick, decided that BMW needed to be a good citizen and stop the terrible NA performance engines for the advancement of forced induction and supposed efficiency. One day we're at the top of the hill, cruisin in our V10 S85s, and then someone comes and pulls the rug out and says, sorry, you cant have that anymore if you want to stay with M, you must take what we are telling you is what you want, you want turbo because its better for the environment. And thats why we are having this argument, because of a political philosophy and not because of economics or driving dynamics, and in that BMW and M have besmeared all of their history and alienated a good portion of their loyal enthusiasts by not offering us what we want.
Again, using Porsche as the example, they are very well in tune with their core constitutients, and they offer them exactly what THEY want, not what Porsche's management says their customers want. If you want high end NA power, you can get a GT3, if you want serious FI power, you can get the TT, if you want insane track ready world killer FI power, you can get a GT2, but never has Porsche said to its enthusiasts, "We know best, We know what YOU want, and We are going to give you what we say you want".
This is what BMW and M have done. They took their entire philosophy and threw it away because someone high up the ranks was able to force their political ideology on the management team and convince them that they know best. That is the failure of BMW and M that will be the lasting effect. Id have no problem with M if they offered both a NA based engine, and a FI based engine, but to tell me what I must drive to stay with the brand is unbelievable, and ends a long tradition that they started.
Enjoy the turbos if you will, but they'll NEVER be true ///Ms
