Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyberdemon
Auto journalists will always find something to wax nostalgic about and complain about. They'll complain they miss the high revving NA I6 but not appreciate the fact that they have a ton of low end torque and a gearbox that can deliver 30mpg.
The steering will never be as good, ever. They drove hydraulic steering once and it was the bees knees. They could feel every grain of salt that they drove over, and it improved their driving skills ten-fold. The car is also too heavy...even though the E46 with some real world options could hit 3500 lbs.
Also, the tape deck was awesome, fuel economy doesn't matter because it's a race car and gas is $1.29 a gallon, and George Bush is still president.
At the end of the day if you love the E46, or E30, or E90 etc they are still available for sale and you can go buy one for a very reasonable cost.
If you want a modern RWD sports coupe that is built for performance at the same time as having the luxury comforts you expect in a $50k car, the M1 will probably be phenomenal. The M235 is already so fun to drive that it will be hard to make a more aggressive, more powerful version worse in any way.
I expect it will be an epic vehicle, and people can draw whatever comparisons they want because at the end of the day it will be faster, more efficient, and won't have a tape deck and a bunch of burnt out red LED's in the dash cluster.
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I also wanted to point out 3 benefits of the "modern" BMW M's that I think make them so desirable from a combined use DD and occasional-track-car perspective (the last of which you've already mentioned).
(1) They now have track-capable brakes!! They finally did it, thank you BMW!! Not only did they essentially give us big brakes as a standard item but they included the easy pad swapping features on both the front and rear calipers. This is really a home run for an occasional track enthusiast or even a die hard track junkie.
(2) They finally have track-capable cooling for the engine!! Granted this remains to be seen for the M2, but from anecdotal evidence from the masses of F8X M3/M4 owners and m235i owners, the cooling issues of the past have been resolved. (Not sure if this was an issue on every car, but I know folks have had issues keeping there oil and coolant temps in check.)
and
(3) Torque. Thanks to turbocharging we have engines that output significant low-end torque, which makes for more fun everyday driving (because you can experience the sensation of power at lower rpm's). Then the max torque numbers are also much higher, which can be quite useful on track.