Photo: j.b.cars/Instagram
Back in 2019, BMW talked about a survey showing that 80 percent of 1 Series owners believed their cars used front-wheel-drive. I never trusted that poll too much and yet the time has come to face the Bavarian carmaker's FWD revolution - BMW released the 2020 1 Series yesterday, with the compact machine having switched to a front-paw platform, sharing this with multiple 2 Series family models and MINI vehicles.
We've already discussed the 2020 BMW 1 Series, so I'll skip straight to the performance drawbacks brought by the FWD switch.
Sure, some might argue that the performance versions of the compact come with xDrive, so understeer isn't an issue, while also mentioning that rivals such as the Mercedes-AMG A35/A45 or Audi S3/RS3 also feature smiliar layouts.
However, the BMW's change means the delicious straight-six is gone, since it was longitudinally-mounted.
And while there's a 2020 BMW M315i xDrive with 306 hp on tap, this is slightly slower to 60 mph (96 km/h) than the said German rivals, at least on paper.
Oh, and let's not forget that all-out drifting, which was a treat of the old 1 Series, is not gone, even though small slides should still be possible.
As you can imagine, the Internet is not happy about all this. And the result is the rendering we have here, which portrays the newcomer in 1M guise, while also gifting it with the forbidden 3-door layout.
While I'm not a huge fan of the latter feature (while have fewer doors on a hatchback anyway? It won't magically turn it into a coupe), the 1M certainly sounds appealing, especially since the M Division has ruled out such an all-out version.
So we'll probably have to turn to such imaginary tales when seeking a rival for the Audi RS3 and the upcoming Mercedes-AMG A45 (by the way, the Affalterbach compact monster is expected to pack north of 400 ponies).
Sure, some might argue that the performance versions of the compact come with xDrive, so understeer isn't an issue, while also mentioning that rivals such as the Mercedes-AMG A35/A45 or Audi S3/RS3 also feature smiliar layouts.
However, the BMW's change means the delicious straight-six is gone, since it was longitudinally-mounted.
And while there's a 2020 BMW M315i xDrive with 306 hp on tap, this is slightly slower to 60 mph (96 km/h) than the said German rivals, at least on paper.
Oh, and let's not forget that all-out drifting, which was a treat of the old 1 Series, is not gone, even though small slides should still be possible.
As you can imagine, the Internet is not happy about all this. And the result is the rendering we have here, which portrays the newcomer in 1M guise, while also gifting it with the forbidden 3-door layout.
While I'm not a huge fan of the latter feature (while have fewer doors on a hatchback anyway? It won't magically turn it into a coupe), the 1M certainly sounds appealing, especially since the M Division has ruled out such an all-out version.
So we'll probably have to turn to such imaginary tales when seeking a rival for the Audi RS3 and the upcoming Mercedes-AMG A45 (by the way, the Affalterbach compact monster is expected to pack north of 400 ponies).
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