Quote:
Originally Posted by oldmanstyle
The Porsche 911 and Cayman are designed as a sports car from the ground up. BMW M models are saddled with the limitations of being a sports car that is derived from a luxury coupe/sedan core.
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BMW has made a handful of "sports cars" during their history, if that. The M1, M-Coupe (Z3M) would be a couple of such examples. What BMW used to excel at was making "sports sedans/coupes," which were never intended as track cars, per se, but rather as a different class of vehicle with some of the attributes of a sports car and being hugely more practical. This history started with such (underpowered by today's standards) vehicles as the 1500, 1600, 2000, 2002, progressing through the early 3-Series, the Bavaria, etc.
Unfortunately, BMW has basically jettisoned that history in the hopes of expanding their customer base. They have obviously succeeded and are now one of the leading car manufacturers in the world, at least on a volume basis.
The problem isn't that a BMW isn't a Porsche; it never was and never was intended to be. The problem is that a BMW is no longer a BMW, or an "Ultimate Driving Machine" in very many senses of the word.