Quote:
Originally Posted by stefan
Of course not but on the other hand if they keep making fast RWD manual cars I think they'll still have a niche. Everything went downhill when M did a 180 on "we'll never make an SUV" and "we'll never make a turbo motor".
Personally I think the entire SUV and turbo trend is so counter productive. They handle like garbage and create enormous emissions from their weight. I'm not even sure turbos save any emissions in the real world compared to a well tuned NA motor. It's just a sham and M is not better for it. But they acquired Mini and turbos hit EPA metrics. And the economies of scale on tuning turbo motors versus a bespoke S engine are huge. Gotta deliver that shareholder return.
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The turbo fobia started because of the taxes reglementation in Europe. Every vehicle until 2000 cubic cm has a normal tax system. Once you passed the 2000cmc the taxes are sky high. The amount of taxes asked for V6 (forget V8 and so on) are enormous.
For this reason everyone tried to squeeze as much power as possible from a 2.0 l engine.
Sad but that's the story.
BMW just followed suit in this one as the people that buy a V6 / I6 in Europe are very few.