click above image to view a gallery of the new BMW M3
Since its creation, nearly everything about the M3 -- cylinders, horsepower, weight, price, you name it -- has grown. The 2,866-lb, 4-cylinder, 192-hp E30 M3 cost a little more than $30,000 dollars when it was new, and sold 18,000 units. The new E92 M3 weighs in at 3,650 lbs with its 420-hp 8-cylinder lump, and will leave you more than $60,000 dollars lighter. It's more than twice the car at more than twice the money, and BMW wants to move more than five times as many of them, hoping to shift 100,000 models.
Said Carsten Pries of the M division, "With every new model, we want to offer a better product and sell more." That's only a 10,000 unit increase on the 3rd generation M3 that ceased production last year. With the variants to be offered on the new model, reaching the goal shouldn't be a challenge. But the move to a greater mass market draw also explains the pealing choir of journalists declaring that while it's still a fantastic driver's car and a lot of fun... it's soft. Of course, "soft" is a relative term in this case, and there could be worse things than having to see more M3s on the road.
[Source: Auto News]
Sign in to post
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Continue