Models, Production Dates, Similarities & Difference

Quote:

Originally Posted by ///MD Real question, not being argumentative. What difference does it make?

It doesn’t because it’s just a machine, and yet it does. I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany with the Germans on various BMW M trips, events and schools. I’ve come to learn about their anal, obsessive technical nature. The have a penchant for following the rules and the process; to a fault, as history shows. These are the people who overwhelmingly bought the DCT in the F8X chassis not because of traffic or the wife needed to drive the car, but because it was technically superior.

They also, especially in southern Bavaria, have a serious pride about BMW; not an “I got a great job and I love this company and brand” pride, but a “this is my homeland and this is what we make pride.” Germany, more than anywhere, is divided down to the region by car. The only car that crosses the various regional boundaries with a unanimous level of national pride is the 911.

Tell a Bavarians you have a BMW and you can see them thinking “this stupid American has an X5,” as they respond with their quintessential, “oh, really?!” When they hear M car, it’s as if you’ve joined the family…in a roundabout German way, but it’s the best they can do. They’re not Italians, after all. I can manage a little bit of German and when you land in Munich and tell the customs officer you’ve come to go to the “Nurburgring mit Bay-Emm-Vay,” it’s pure “freude am stampen” with a hearty “wilkommen,” on the other end. Like Oktoberfest, BMW lives in them.

The M5 may be the expensive M car and the M2 may be the true successor to the M3, but the M3/4 are the halo cars for BMW. I don’t care about the series cars or the SUVs. But the halo car? The halo car should be made in the homeland, by the obsessive, technically anal, prideful Bavarians.

Deep down you know this. I know this. The Germans certainly know this. They can explain to me in their reads-like-an-owners-manual direct translation until their blue in the face, “makes no difference.” But they know. A 911 will never be made anywhere else. That they have to admit. The Germans will never buy a German made tequila. That they have to admit. An M3 or M4 should be made in Bavaria, by Bavarians, even if all they do is turn on the machines.