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      12-15-2014, 02:35 PM   #102
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Adem1534 View Post
Thank you.

To me, it's clear as day, and I understand what others are saying, but to put it bluntly I think they're completely wrong.

A company does not re-design a car's roofline like that for nothing.

IT IS NOT A COINCIDENCE that the lower roofline is being tested with 4 (YES, FOUR) separate design choices that everyone was speculating about the M2.

Carbon Fiber roof.
Double Bubble roof.
Recaro Sport seats.
Carbon Fiber hood.

And now we see a suspicious M235i testing with these things equipped, and everyone is screaming Toyota/BMW sports car! Ridiculous.

From an engineers perspective. That car, with that well exectuted roof line, is NOT a test mule for a different car. Everything flows specifically with the 2 series body.

This is for the M2. Carbon fiber parts all over a suspicious 2 series and here we are, listening to people yell about how it's not an M2 because of the lowered roof line.

Ugh. Enough ranting for the day.
I usually agree with you on most things, but not this time. And this is coming from an engineer in the automotive industry.

I'm willing to bet that this is NOT the M2. Makes 0 sense to modify the wheel base and roof line of the car for an M2 that might account for 1/5 of the sales of the 2 series (consider that Europe gets diesel cars).

Not to mention we've already seen 3 prototypes (the black, white and then most recently the red one) that showed wider arches to accommodate M3/4 running gear. So all of a sudden, they went backwards and to an M235i style components? Makes no sense. Not to mention, on the red car they've more or less shown the front end of the car (bumper), and now all of a sudden they've gone back?

Think about BMW's Roadster, going all the way back to the 60s. Shorter rear end, longish front end. If you look from the character line down, you can almost see roadster proportions if you ignore the rear bumper skin.

Lastly: The 2er has already limited rear legroom. BMW is not going to shorten the wheelbase even more to make it essentially a 2 seater (again showing that this is a completely different project).

My 2 cents. Having said that, this kind of gives me hope that the M2 will get CF roof and hood. I'm really hopefully it does.

P.S. There are plenty of instances of manufacturers testing brand new platform on a current gen body FYI. Not that unheard of.
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