Photo: Car and Driver
There were a couple of interesting things said at the Detroit Auto Show once the dust settled and the details behind future plans of big companies were kept hush-hush. Even so, a couple of general outlines were disclosed by high-ranking officials, looking to get our hopes up.
One of them was the new BMW M division boss, Franciscus van Meel that joined the Bavarian company last year after a short reign at the helm of Audi’s quattro division. Seen as controversial at first by most of the journalists out there (myself included) because of his lack of results in Ingolstadt it’s now starting to make sense, judging by the statements he recently made.
We now know that the future M5 and M6 models will migrate to an all-wheel drive setup due to the ever increasing power and torque levels that might prove to be too much for the rear axle alone. That’s where his expertise will come in handy but he also had a thing or two more to say apart from the next M cars and their configurations.
‘We are not trying to make an i8M. That would be a mixing of cultures that wouldn’t work,’ he said on the floor of the Detroit show to Car magazine.
This is not the first time an official denies such rumors and they all have been pretty adamant in letting us know that the two sub-brands of BMW will never be mixed to create one car.
However, the technologies and principles from one could migrate to the other: “There is a very close collaboration between M and i – we have an open-book policy, and each brand can look into the other’s magic box of technologies and ideas”
That basically means that we’re going to see electric motors and batteries on an M car but only when the added weight won’t be a problem. Because adding power is easy but an M car also has to be agile and fun to drive and weight usually ruins such prospects.
At the same time, i cars have been using M principles in their creation. They are light and nimble (to a certain extent, of course) and easily outperform their rivals in this regard.
Speaking of other future project, van Meel wasn’t shy to say that a new project from his division will be unveiled at Geneva:
‘We will show a very interesting high-tech new USP that is even more M-like at the Geneva motor show in a few weeks’ time. I am very excited about this so I have to stop talking now.’
Could this be the M2 concept? We certainly hope so as the car is scheduled to start production in November. That would mean that if the concept is unveiled at Geneva, the production car would be shown in full at Frankfurt.
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