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      05-01-2013, 09:36 PM   #101
e34LOVEfromRo
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Drives: Future Pre-95 BMW
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Bread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramos View Post
The results of this poll are no where near as close as I thought they would be.
Those who favor an I4 are a tiny minority of an enthusiast community. I would bet that they are even a smaller minority of the larger BMW buying population.

I am pretty certain that BMW's own market research would have come to the same conclusion... A 4 cylinder is simple marketing suicide for the M2, I think BMW is way smarter than that and will be fitting this car with a 350-370 HP Inline 6 / 3.0 liter Bi-Turbo (evolution of the N54 rather than an evolution of the N55)
Having worked in Germany and having plenty of friends in different countries, I think this is an extremely US-centric view. I realize we make up a good amount of total BMW sales, but I suspect that if this poll were more global, you'd see a closer balance in preference. I don't see the I4 winning in many cases, but I can see the number of folks not blindly favoring the bigger engine skewing way downward.

I also think that the market differentiation of having a relatively cushy, torquey M3/M4 and a more raw, peaky and challenging M2 would make more sense than having essentially two slices of the same pie. But then I'm not making these calls, and M has certainly changed a lot since the days of the E30 M3, so who knows what we'll actually see.
The difference in models makes complete sense. Why have two slices of the same pie? Im on the I4 train mainly because of better economy and lighter weight. Im only 19
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